The trip from Dawson City to Tok, Alaska is approximately 185 miles. It took us over seven hours to make that distance. We first took the ferry across the Yukon River at Dawson City. Luck was on our side. The ferry had just arrived and only one other vehicle was waiting. We had heard horror stories that if there were caravans in Dawson the wait for the ferry could take hours. The ferry can only handle two or three large recreational vehicles. Once on the other side of the river the "fun" began. The Top of the World Highway is a gravel road for over 100 miles and rides mountain ridges for its entire length. Road conditions in the Yukon were fairly good but deteriorated rapidly when we crossed into Alaska. Once we got past Chicken, Alaska and the Taylor Highway, the road was paved and in good shape.

The Top of the World Highway is supposed to be beautiful. Unfortunately, much of it was obscured by smoke from forest fires. We also saw evidence of last year's forest fires which closed the Taylor Highway for awhile. All you can see is burned out forest for miles... a very sad sight. The other difficulty with taking pictures on this highway is that there are few places to pull off the road and there are no shoulders. As a result, we have few pictures to show for this leg of our journey.
Yukon Ferry loading a recreational vehicle smaller than ours
Last view of the Yukon shortly after leaving Dawson City
The wait at the US Border. The crossing is only open from 8am to 8 pm Alaska time. We arrived at 7:30am
Smoke obscuring the mountain view. This picture was taken at the border crossing, elevation 4127 ft. The smoke was worse at lower elevations.
Gold dredge Jack Wade.
This was used to separate the gold from gravel.
 The legend of the town's name is that the gold miners in the area had survived on ptarmigan and wanted to name the town after the bird. Unfortunately, they couldn't agree on how to spell the name so they decided on Chicken since ptarmigan looked and tasted like a chicken.