Boundary, Alaska, Historical roadhouse
It began to rain last evening, just as we were leaving Dawson for the Yukon River campground, which is across the ferry on the other side of the river. We got the tarp up over the picnic table, the tent up dry between spits of rain, and all our gear into the tent without getting it wet.
It rained heavily a few times during supper, but then it cleared a bit, so we walked down by the Yukon River. The bank of the river looks very muddy, but the ground is actually quite firm. There are many rocks right along the river, each one about eight inches to a foot in diameter, that have been swept clean by the fast current in the Yukon. The river is very high, and very muddy. It is so fast that the ferry makes a wide sweeping arc as it crosses the river.
Rain continued quite steadily through the night, but stopped by about seven this morning. We packed up, and got everything away quite dry, except for the tent fly which is saturated, and so we packed it in a garbage bag separately from the rest of the tent. We left for Chicken, Alaska, at about 8:30 in misty rain. As we got to higher elevation the rain increased, as did the fog, for we were now driving at the same altitude as the clouds. It was very wet, and very hard to see.
We got to the border just about ten a.m. and the border crossing was having trouble with their Internet because of the rain. They use a satellite connection, and with all the cloud the signal was not very strong, and so very slow. We waited about ten minutes at the crossing while they checked our passports.
“We hope the road isn’t closed,” Enid said as the border guard handed our documents back.
“Watch the shoulders. They’re very soft with all this rain,” replied the guard.
We drove on, past the junction to the road with Eagle. It is clearly marked “Closed” with a large fluorescent sign. At about twenty miles past the border we kept meeting vehicles, a couple of motorhomes, so I thought “good, the road to Chicken must still be open.”
Within another mile or so Chicken Creek started to run beside the road. It grew rapidly into a muddy torrent, ripping through the willows, and racing beside the road, great standing waves of muddy water crashing over every boulder, and nearing the top of the road. As we crested a hill, we saw a blue flashing light, and a truck sitting sideways across the road, just ahead of where the creek was now overflowing its banks and crossing the highway.
A grizzled bearded worker, very stereotypically the Alaskan bushman, walked up to us and said, “You’ll have to go back to Dawson. The road’s closed, and it’s the third time in the last two weeks.”
So that is what we did. Along the way we flagged down most of the oncoming cars, including a couple of motorcycles, and told them the news. Unfortunately, we were the first car turned back. We stopped at a rest area just across the Canadian border, and talked to the drivers of the last two vehicles we’d met. They said they had driven across, but that there was a lot of water running over the road. One driver said he’d met the service truck coming down the hill.
Chicken is out for this trip. The only place we really saw in Alaska was the tiny hamlet of Boundary, just across the US – Canadian border. There is an historical roadhouse there, which is the subject of today’s picture. Unfortunately we didn’t get to see much of the magnificent views from the “Top of the World Highway,” just the mist covered tops of the mountains below us.
We are now on our way back to Whitehorse. The forecast for Dawson is not good, no sun until next Thursday and so we decided to stay in a hotel in Dawson today, as it is still pouring rain. We will drive to Whitehorse tomorrow. We’re in a nice little cabin, with a kitchenette, so it will be the first supper indoors for us since we left Prince Albert. We’ve also got the tent fly hanging up inside it, so it should soon be dry.
We had a diagnostic light that’s been on in our Yukon for the last two days. We stopped at a service station when we got back to Dawson, and they checked it out with their computer. They indicated that it’s probably not a big problem, but they couldn’t fix it anyway, and we’d have to go to a dealer. The closest one will be in Whitehorse. The light is off now, though they said it will eventually come back on again, so if it does before Whitehorse, we’ll have it looked at there. That would mean we can’t leave Whitehorse until at least Monday.