Best Chicken Dinner Ever

With apologies to Colonel Sanders of KFC fame the best chicken I ever saw was the town of that name up the Klondike loop out of Tetlin Jct. near Tok, Alaska. Chicken, AK is not so much a town as an excuse for a break in the wilderness before getting to Dawson City via the Top of the World Highway. The distance to Dawson City is only about 160 miles but it's the road conditions that determine the time it takes to get somewhere and word is to allow about 7 hours to make the journey.

Chicken boasts a summer population of maybe 25 and a winter count of 3 to 5 who make it through the long nights and cold temps when the road closes in the fall. Ski equipped planes can reach them bringing in the U.S. mail and other supplies two days a week but other than that they are on their own to enjoy the Aurora  Borealis all by themselves. The town's name came about because the early gold miners couldn't spell the original name of Ptarmigan. Ptarmigan are also referred to up here as chicken, thus the name. The Willow Ptarmigan is officially the Alaska State Bird and apparently filled many a hungry miner's cook pot.

Yes, that is a Moose strolling by... good moose.

We stayed at the Chicken Gold Camp which is a bustling place during the short summer season. It can host 30-50 RV'S as well as accommodating tenters. There are also nice looking rustic cabins available for the cream puffs out there. The clerk at the counter was from Kentucky, and the owner spends his winters in the wilds of Tuscon, AZ.

There is still active gold mining going on and some cater to the discriminating tourist who wants to spend the day recreating the life of a '49er during the gold rush. We chatted with some folks who actually came out with some impressive vials of gold and unlike our gold panning in Fairbanks the gold was truly earned the hard way by washing down a slope with high pressure water, shoveling the rocks into rockers, and then panning for the elusive flakes and nuggets.

The road out of Chicken to Dawson is pretty challenging according to those coming in that way so the plan is to leave early and take it slow.

The inevitable gift shops have all sorts of items playing on the town's name. There are shirts with chick's breaking out of shells proclaiming "I got laid in Chicken, AK" as well as 'University of

Chicken' sweatshirts proclaiming a "Grade A education with the team nickname - the Packers- emblazoned on the back. You get the idea...

One of the ladies we met, Cheryl, was from Pennsylvania. She was in Chicken for the day having driven up from Tok where she had moved, bought land, built a house, and was now living, as so many are up here, off the grid. Her husband, more a fan of creature comforts, had elected to stay put back in PA which seemed OK with Cheryl.

Several blogs ago I had mentioned meeting Greg and Pablo the dog who were hoofing and pawing it from Prudhoe Bay to Austin, Texas. When we took the turn to Chicken off the Alaska Highway there they were still plodding their way south and east. Actually Pablo, perhaps the smarter of the two, was still contentedly riding in style in the trailer although I suspect he does periodically get out for a potty or num num break...