July 17 - Alaska!

The "Top of the World Highway" is well named. Running between Dawson City, Yukon and Chicken, Alaska, the road runs along the ridgeline of the mountains for 108 miles. You're above the neighboring terrain, often with steep dropoffs, no guardrails, and soft shoulders. The views are magnificent for the passenger. The driver is mostly staring at the loose gravel, especially during the many steep downhills, sharp turns, and when there might be an oncoming vehicle. I was driving, Peach was often very much wishing she was!

We came to the border two thirds of the way to Chicken, and were expecting to have to fill out paperwork or get inspected or something. As we pulled up and handed our passports to the agent standing by our window, the agent inside the building, who had seen our license plates and naturally assumed we were Packer fans, yelled out, "How about them Cowboys!" Peach and I gave him a sparky retort, and both agents laughed. At that point, I knew we were golden. The agent handed back our passports and said, "Have a good day!"

We stopped a mile  later to take the standard picture at the Welcome to Alaska sign. We loved Canada, but it felt good to be back in the States.

Finally in Alaska

This is rugged country up here with tough people. You don't find a lot of frills. The place we stayed last night was a good example. We boondocked in another parking lot, but this time it was beside an eclectic saloon along the Top of the World Highway; the Chicken Saloon. The little town of Chicken was named by prospectors who kept seeing ptarmigans flying around. They wanted to name the town after these birds but didn't know how to spell "ptarmigan," so they called it "Chicken."  There's not much here other than the Chicken Saloon, but the saloon is enough. Small, old, crammed with artifacts, the saloon has a distinctive look as you enter its dimly lit space. A small bar on the left with barstools, a few loose stairs on the right, and about five thousand burned women's underpants hanging from the ceiling. Chicken Saloon is known far and wide as the "Home of the Panty Cannon." Women have their underwear cut off with a scissors (must be by somebody else) and the bartender stuffs it into a small cannon packed with gunpowder and fires it off. The remnants are retrieved by the now commando owner, and stapled to the ceiling. I wore my old "Feeling Lucky Today" Irish boxers for just this occasion. I think I bought them in high school for prom or something and haven't worn them since. They weren't lucky then and weren't lucky this time. The bartender refused to use them because I'm a guy. At Chicken, gender fluidity is not recognized! So we found a loophole and I removed my lucky boxers (discretely, of course) and gave them to Peach. She put them on, I cut them off, and in front of a crowd the day after drinking whiskey from a glass with a dead toe in it, Peach had "her" underwear blown out of a cannon! The burned, shredded, lucky boxers are now hanging from the ceiling at the Chicken Creek Saloon. In the process we befriended other panty cannon lovers, Dennis and Peggy; flea market owners from Crane, Missouri. We spent several hours on the saloon front porch trying to convince newly arriving women to give up their panties. None of them agreed. Most of them thought we were creepers. They didn't understand the thrill of the spectacle they were missing. Heading up to Fairbanks this morning, to Chena Hot Springs. We look forward to a good shower, and a hot soak in the springs, hopefully with no explosions, and no dead man's toes.

The cannon at the moment it went off with the lucky undies.

Peach hanging the undies remnant from the ceiling 

With our new friends, 71 year old Dennis, traveling 3 months with his daughter, Peggy