occasional justus: Excellent roadtrip...Part 4...Gold country

The Taylor Highway, open only in summer, leaves the Alaska Highway at Tetlin Junction near Tok, climbs to Chicken, then carries on to Eagle, on the Yukon River. From the Eagle turnoff to the Canadian border it becomes Boundary Spur Road, and then, in the Yukon, the aptly-named Top of the World Highway. This takes you into Dawson City, also on the Yukon River.
When Nora traveled this route in the summer of 2004, she couldn't actually see most of it because of the smoke, and the fire evidence still remains for as far as you can see, on both sides of the road, until just before Chicken, where we camped for the night.

That night I wrote in our trip record:

When we came to our campsite, our next door neighbour was inclined to small talk. No, we weren't planning any gold panning; we were headed for Canada in the morning. He had considered going to Canada, but gave up when they wouldn't let him take his guns. Yes, we agreed, we Canadians are very particular about that. We don't encourage people to arm themselves. So how did we protect ourselves? How about you don't have to if people don't carry guns. Well, apparently crime runs rampant when the citizenry isn't armed, and our claim that the Canadian crime and murder rates are considerably lower than those of the States clearly cannot be true.

Next morning early we lined up to take part in the morning convoy,

convoy lineup

which took us across the road repairs needed to fix the numerous July and August washouts and left us at a resort just before the border.
That's when the route lives up to its name, becomes truly spectacular.

customs

The famous "Fortymile" Caribou herd was reputedly in the area; in fact, they were so close to the highway that the hunt had closed the day before we got there after only one day. However, we didn't catch even a glimpse.
We did see a pair of owls up close, however.

northern hawk owl

Dawson City was starting to slow down from the summer

ferry across the yukon

as we arrived; the hotel employees in the house across from Kathy's were having their final party.

downtown

most photographed house in dawson

But there was still lots to see and we even got a shot of the town from the Dome, which had seemed unlikely until we got up there.
It rained buckets in the night.

from the dome

Next day we drove the forty kilometers south to the Dempster,

then seventy to the Tombstone Territorial Campground, where we found one of the last spots. This is the edge of the tundra, and the vegetation, where the ground isn't flat, hence boggy, is no handicap to walking.

I walked up the hill across the road to a ridge, and followed it for a couple of kilometers before running out of time. I'd guess you could spend days...The others did a trail along the North Klondike, easily accessible from the campground.

The next day we went to the 100km mark, where there is no question about being on the tundra.
And then the clouds moved in, so we elected to head south.
Back to the Klondike Highway...

...with views of the Tintina Trench...