Mr Larrington's Automatic Diary: Day 11: Tok AK

Here, as promised, is a graphic demonstration of the wikness of the Cleft In The Rock B&B in Tok. And I'd like to see Blackberry Wood's Viviane Oblivion try to swallow that saw...

Thursday night's abode

Breakfast was good too. Reindeer sausage. One piece left after everyone else had gone, but Colby the dog got it before I could, chiz. Lack of sausage notwithstanding, I delayed departure as long as possible because some kind of route-planning tomfoolery meant only 120 km today. There must have been a reason for this, but I cannot for the life of me remember what it was, as Anchorage to Chicken would have been no problem.

This gave me lots of time to faff about at the roadside taking pictures of inconsequential things, such as these mountains which didn't have SNO on them on the way up:

and the general scenery to be found on the Taylor Highway, which is to be found 12 miles back down the Alaska Highway towards Canada.

Chicken is 66 miles up the Taylor and unlike most of the rest of Alaska, has a dearth of tracks leading off into the trees, at the end of which you just know are to be found the abodes of Trump-voting gun nuts in camouflage. The Taylor is supposed to be paved all the way here, but contains plenty of so-called "gravel breaks" where they've taken the asphalt away because Damage. If it had been raining convincingly these would have replenished the diminishing stocks of Mudde on the flanks of That Shitbox Dodge, but it was mostly just cold and windy.

Passing time at the roadside, I learned that That Shitbox Dodge actually does have a spare wheel, albeit of the poxy spacesaver variety, and that to reach it you have to assemble some sort of Tool and loosen a nut hidden under the mat in one of the storage holes in the centre console, thereby allowing it to fall into the Mudde. This discovery means I will have fewer qualms about not tackling the mostly-gravel road from here to the border, where I will not cross back into Canada, fail to cross the Mighty Yukon on the ferry at Dawson City and not take the Klondike Highway down to Whitehorse, because that would be Naughty.

And so to Chicken, which hav a very interesting history if you are interested in hist. which few boys are. The story has it that the gold miners who were first on the scene wanted to call it "Ptarmigan" but they couldn't spell it. Today the place consists of a handful of places catering to the tourist trade (and a few remaining miners) and lots of post-industrial gubbins, such as the Pedro Dredge

This was originally sited not far from Fairbanks, but was then dismantled and lugged up here. At some point in its chequered past, a madman bought it for one dollar on condition that he moved it. Which he did - not on his own, obv - in one piece. It weighs over 450 tonnes.

Everywhere else is infested with chicken-themed Stuffs, as you can probably imagine.