After a lovely dinner with our friends, Tom and Linda, we went back to our RV to drink a little Tuaca. That stuff tastes great, but is dangerous! Count on a headache the next day for sure. The next night we had dinner at our RV and the halibut Lennard caught was simply delicious. Mostly it was the company. We will miss the stunning landscape of Homer.

With sad hearts we left Homer and stopped at Kenai on our way to Alaska. It is a historical town with lots of preserved old cabins and a lovely restaurant where we had an outside lunch. There is also an Old Russian Orthodox church in operation since 1841.

Then we had a brief stop back in Anchorage with Dennis and Sandy, and then off across the Glenn Highway to Glennallen for the night, before heading to Chicken, Alaska for the Fourth of July. Lennard taped heavy plastic to the front of the RV to protect it from the gravel we knew we would incur. Along the Glen Highway we stopped to see the Mantanuska Glacier which is 27 miles long and at its widest 4 miles wide. It is beautiful

Chicken is the stop prior to the Top of the World Highway, and it is the highway I had steadfastly declined to go on and had relented the night of the Tuaca debacle, due to Tom’s urging. Chicken is also where the miners did a lot of gold mining.

We arrived in time to hear the music and went to bed early, only to be awakened at 11PM by the cannon outside the bar. They shoot it off when they get a pair of underwear to use as powder. Silly tradition, but effective in waking up the whole RV Park in the middle of the night.

The Top of the World Highway is about a 125 mile stretch of mostly gravel, narrow road with pot holes, bumps, wash board, no shoulders or guard rails, and thousand foot drops. Fun…no. I was terrified most of the way, but Lennard stayed calm in spite of my muttering about “the end is coming”! We crossed the border into Canada at Poker Creek, the highest border crossing in North America to add to the ambiance of the trip. We survived it and I was happy.

When you get to Dawson City, you have to take a ferry across the wide, Yukon River. It is fairly small and we just fit in our lane with the tow car. That was fun too. By the time we got to the other side, I had completely disintegrated into a small, sniveling ball.

Our Gypsy had eaten some Foxtail and was coughing like she could not get her breath, so we found the RMCP office and asked for a vet. They told us about John, the local vet, and he was kind enough to see her at his house and gave us some antibiotics. The next day she was better, but we still have to keep an eye on her. I’ll get back to this tomorrow and tell you about Dawson City.