Tok - Chicken and back.

Tok (pronounced toke) is where you can turn left onto the Tok Cutoff south to Glennallen or just stay on the Alaska Highway to it's northern terminus at Delta Junction.
Someone asked me "what's in Tok?" To which I answered "nothing". Actually it has a RV repair, a service station where I had the truck tires rotated, a grocery called The Three Bears, a visitors center, a food trailer that serves Thai food and some great bike paths.
We took a ride 9 miles down the Tok Cutoff and saw nothing but an empty highway, but it was nice to be on the bike on a beautiful day.

Going south

Going north













And then there's Chicken. Yep, that's what I said...Chicken. It was originally going to be called "Ptarmigan" but the miners couldn't spell Ptarmigan so it got the name Chicken. Chicken is 68 miles from Tok and 90 miles from Dawson City, YT at the northern end of the Top Of The World Highway.
Chicken is a gold mining "community" that consists of three buildings, two RV parks and many active gold claims.


This is the heartbeat of the thriving metropolis of Chicken. From Left to right: The Chicken Mercantile Emporium, The Chicken Liquor Store, the Chicken Creek Saloon, all linked together and run by (as far as I could tell) one person. The Chicken Creek Cafe is on the right.

We stayed at the Chicken Creek Gold Camp, a working gold claim that was turned into an RV park with a cafe/restaurant/gift shop.
In the background is Pedro, a gold dredge.

Pedro was in use in the early 1900's to mine gold in the Chicken area. The dredge dug it's own moat as it worked its way through an area with gold ore. Steam pipes were inserted in the ground ahead of the dredge to melt the permafrost so Pedro could dig. The rig is huge and was transported in pieces via horse or mule drawn wagons.



At the entrance to the Gold Camp we were greeted by this oversized chicken and signpost directing us to such places as, Barnyard, KY, Roosterberg, Belgium and Fowl Cay, Bahamas.

The big chicken had friends everywhere! 

Every year the Chicken Creek Gold Camp has a music festival called Chickenstock. Unfortunately we weren't going to be around for this sold out event.

Below is a picture of the stage, called the Chicken Coop

Because we were camping on an active gold claim we had to participate in the age old practice of gold panning. After instructions on how to pan for gold we were turned loose on a big pile of paydirt.

First, you start with a pan full of dirt and rocks. Then swirl it in the water so the heavier gold settles to the bottom of the pan.

Then, as you swirl, you sweep out the bigger rocks with your fingers till, voila! You have the small stuff where you can find dust or flakes or "pickers", small nuggets you can pick up with your fingers.

After 3 hours of panning we had enough to...say we panned for gold!

Warning: objects in this picture are (much) smaller than they appear!