Chicken, Alaska

The quality of the road deteriorated rapidly once we crossed into Alaska. Now this was the road we had heard so much about. It was rough and narrow with lots of curves and steep drop-offs. As Dad’s 5th wheel rounded one of the curves, the edge of the road gave way and his 5th wheel slid down the side, sideswiping a tree. Dad managed to get the trailer back up on the road but not without some damage. After he returned home, Dad would find out that he’d bent an axle in addition to the more obvious damage we noticed at the time.

We decided to pull over at the town of Chicken, 39 miles after crossing over into the U.S.

Mom grabbed this shot of The Boy enjoying a purple Otter Pop while he and I checked out Chicken. There was a couple panning for gold in the creek to our left.

You may be wondering why anyone would name their town “Chicken”. I did. In 1902, the gold miners who established this community were told they needed to settle on a name for it before a U.S. Post Office could be established here. They decided to name it “Ptarmigan” after the Alaska state bird. The plan went sideways after they discovered that no one in town knew how to spell ptarmigan. They decided Chicken was close enough.

Chicken was cool. While Darla made lunch, I grabbed my tripod and my favorite tilt-shift lens.

It turned out that the sign we’d seen coming into town, the one Mom photographed saying, “Town of Chicken Next Left,” had actually directed us into The Goldpanner, a business. It was cleverly done. I didn’t realize until much later that this collection of buildings was just part of Chicken.

As we sat enjoying our lunch we learned that a retired couple in their new diesel pusher had just driven off the highway and were now stuck. We would have passed them between Chicken and the border station. Apparently the driver of the big RV was trying to move over for someone coming from the opposite direction. He either drove off the edge of the road or it gave way. From the conversation we overheard it sounded like it would be awhile before help could get there.

After lunch, Lewis and I continued to wander around. He was quite pleased to come upon this old digger. This portrait of Lewis standing in its cab turned out to be one of my favorites images from the trip.

This old dredge, the Pedro Gold Dredge, was in the process of being restored. It would have been interesting to learn how it worked.

I again used my tilt-shift lens and a tripod to capture an image, this time in an effort to obtain infinite focus from foreground to background.

After leaving Chicken we drove through a vast area of Taiga, much of which had been burned to a crisp. I was really intrigued by the fireweed growing among the burnt forms of the black spruce trees. I pulled over to wander around awhile.

Taiga is a subarctic biome that is often characterized by forests of these skinny little trees. Their relatively small size is due to both the brutal climate and poor soil. In even colder regions the taiga turns into tundra, a more extreme biome in which no trees survive.

It was a unique experience walking among these trees, a little like walking on a giant sponge. I’d never experienced anything like it. Many of the trees were loose in the “ground” like so many pins in a pin cushion. Lewis did his best to dislodge a few of them – to the dismay of The Mom, who had just washed his clothes a day and a half earlier only to see them getting covered in black ash.

On the Road

Darla decided to take a few snaps while we headed to Delta Junction. She wanted to document The Boy’s balloons.

Every vacation seems to have its own theme and the summer of 2008 looked like it would be the summer of the balloon. At one point we probably had 50 balloons blown up in the back seat. They seemed to have a life expectancy of around two days. After that they would spontaneously pop, scaring the daylights out of all of us. We had to be careful not to open too many doors at one time or we would spend the following ten minutes chasing balloons across parking lots and down roads. On the plus side, we always appeared very festive as we exited our vehicle.

After spending the last few days watching everyone else take pictures, The Boy decided he wanted in on the action. This was his first shot of the trip. Not bad, Little Man.

Careful observers will note the iPod Touch mounted to the right of the dash. I point this out because this little device made driving nearly 8,000 miles almost easy. As you might expect, radio stations are few and far between on the Alaska Highway. When you get far enough north even satellite radio doesn’t come in. Having an iPod is like having a TiVo for your vehicle. In the months leading up to our departure I saved hundreds of podcasts from Car Talk to This American Life to 60 Minutes to This Week in Photography. Each morning I would load up the iPod with new episodes from my laptop leaving me good to go for the day.

We pulled over for the night at a rest area just outside of North Pole, Alaska. Knowing there was a chance we would not see Mt. McKinley (Denali) at all on this trip, we were pleasantly surprised to discover it dominating the horizon over one hundred miles away. It was huge.

Mom quickly grabbed her camera to get this shot. I was a little too casual. By the time I retrieved mine several minutes later, the mountain had become enveloped in clouds as a vast storm moved across the space between it and us.

It was 11:14pm and not even remotely dark when Mom took this picture. As I lay in bed an hour later, it was eerie to gaze out the camper’s hatch and watch clouds float by through a blue sky. This was the northernmost point of our trip. I had wondered if the lack of darkness would keep me awake at night. So far, so good – although I’m sure I would be telling a different story had I been staying in a tent.

Mt. McKinley was still enveloped in clouds when we awoke on this morning. We hoped this would change for the better by the time we arrived at Denali National Park later in the day.

While Dad and I prepared for departure, Mimi and The Boy were out photographing insects. Although Mimi took this shot, I suspect The Boy may have commissioned it.

North Pole, Alaska

Neither Dad nor I had included a stop at the North Pole on our itinerary. Yet, somehow, this is where we found ourselves…

Darla and Mimi grabbed their cameras. I left my camera in the camper. Bah humbug!

Whenever we travel, we always look for places to purchase Christmas ornaments. This seemed like a place that might have them...

I knew that reindeer were real but I thought that they all resided in the upper reaches of Scandinavia and Russia. I was surprised to learn that they are really just domesticated caribou.

The reindeer in this enclosure were eager to eat the handfuls of soft green grass visitors would offer them through the fence. Lewis wasn’t convinced that they could adequately distinguish between the grass and his hand, so he wasn’t entirely successful at feeding them. He did enjoy the close encounter though.

Santa and Mrs. Claus are on duty inside the Santa Claus House all summer so Lewis got to have his picture taken with them. The fact that we don’t make a big deal out of Santa in our house probably explains the exactly-why-am-I-sitting-on-this-guy’s-leg smile.

There was a token manger scene here as well. Lewis didn’t know what to make of this either.

Fairbanks, Alaska

We came across this stunning cross on a quick stop in Fairbanks. Metal crosses are common in Alaska but we saw none more beautiful than this one.

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