Funky Chicken

Top of the World Highway and Chicken, AK – July 27 to July 30

The trip from Dawson City, YT to Chicken, AK includes a 108 mile stretch of highway – known as the Top of the World Highway – that takes about 5-6 hours to drive. It is truly one of the most exhilarating drives we’ve ever taken. It starts with a car ferry across the Yukon River that connects to narrow, winding, unpaved road with no guard rails and drop offs of about 1,000 feet and ends with steep hairpin turns that would be challenging even without a 30 foot trailer behind you! For much of the drive it’s difficult to appreciate the scenery when your eyes are glued to the road. 

But we did manage to see a moose, snow on the side of the road, the funkiest border crossing we’ve ever seen and more incredible mountain ranges.

And at the end of the journey we arrived in beautiful downtown Chicken, AK!

Local lore has it that town was named Chicken because there were many ptarmigans in the area and early prospectors wanted to name it Ptarmigan, but couldn’t agree on the spelling, so defaulted to Chicken. The town is a hoot – it consists of 2 campgrounds, a gift shop, liquor store, saloon and cafe.

Oh, yes, and the Post Office, where you can find out whatever you want to know about the area from Robin, the Postmaster, who provides a rubber chicken as a prop for tourists’ photo ops. She also has a beautiful garden with what I call an Alaskan planter, which is an old Croc with petunias planted in it!

The biggest event in town is when someone agrees to have their skivvies blown out of a cannon in front of the saloon and have the remains hung from the ceiling of the saloon. We did not partake of that activity!!