June 23rd, 2012: From Chicken to Tok

June 23^rd, 2012: From Chicken to Tok

It seemed like every section of the road was the same. First would be a steep descent, marked with a sign of a truck using lower gear sign, followed by a bad frost heave or a wavy section of gravel that threatened to bounce the whole rig into the air. Finally, this was followed by a long and steep uphill climb. These all forced me to shift constantly to low and making the engine and transmission heat up.

It was much harder on my rig then the Top of the World Highway, and this was supposed to be the good part of the Taylor Highway? Once we bounced so hard that we had things rain down from our pantry and our back high storage, and that rarely happens.

Meanwhile, as I was silently hating the drive, Renita would be taking image after image of the beauty. About halfway to Tok we first noticed the Alaskan Range to the west, and could it be Denali? The mountains were so high and so covered with snow that they seemed like clouds, but that’s what really tall mountains do.

As if to celebrate the vision, the road eased and the drive took less of a toll on me as I was able to relax and actually enjoy the view. We stopped at quite a few of the turnouts and glassed for animals and birds. Once we stopped when we saw a falcon hunting and another vehicle stopped wondering what we were looking at. They left when they didn’t see a moose or a bear, after all it was just a bird.

Its underside was really white with black tipped wings and we couldn’t see any of the markings of a peregrin. Prairie Falcons aren’t found here and so that left one bird, a gyrfalcon. It was the last falcon to make our life bird list and now we have seen all the falcons found in North America.

As I sit here typing my mind is forgetting the rough road and instead remembering the mountains and the gyrfalcon. Either one would have made the drive worthwhile. We reached Tok after a three hour drive that was only seventy miles, but we reached it safely. It was a good day.  Clear skies