Civil War Geocoin #3 Ironclads

We spent the day climbing Mt Decoli, and had a lot of fun doing it. One of the advantages of being this far north is that you have unlimited hiking light this time of year. One of the disadvantages is that there's no mechanism short of exhaustion to get you off the mountain!

We found the renagades cache while traveling from Snag Junction Campground to Congdon Creek Campground. Yukon Territory is beautiful, but southwestern Yukon Territory has a special allure. The geology is spectacular -- snow and ice encrusted, craggy peaks on one side of the road, and ancient, weathered mountains on the other. The road itself has its own special excitement -- I'm amazed those large and heavy RVs don't need more chassis and suspension repair, with the way the tourists drive. And, there's no wonder nearly all the locals have chipped and cracked windshields. The temperature was down a bit, and there were intermittent showers. Something was keeping the mosquitos in check, which was great!

We camped at the U.S. Bureau of Land Management's West Fork Campground. The mosquitos were light, and the scenery is terrific. I'm not into fishing, but I suspect the fly fishing in the West Fork is nice.

The Moose Meat cache is located quite a ways above the road leading from Chicken to the junction with the Alaska Highway. Hiking up the hill on a jeep road leads to several areas where folks have camped, presumably while hunting in the area. The area in which is the cache is located is covered by tundra, which is interesting to walk on. It's like trying to gently walk across a foot-thick foam rubber carpet.

We overnighted in Eagle, Alaska. The road to Eagle is 1 1/2 lane gravel and dirt. The road is not recommended for RVs, though fuel trucks and Holland America buses make the trip routinely.

We camped at the BLM campground, which is very nice. We had a lot of mosquito friends, but that's summer in the north. Eagle is a very historic area; the local historical society has done a great job at working with the U.S. Government to maintain historic Fort Egbert, which is located not far from the campground.

On our way south, we encountered a moose cow and her calf. they wouldn't head up the road, and couldn't get off the road because there the terrain was too steep. I ended up backing down this 1 1/2 lane dirt road about a quarter of a mile, with this moose cow running after me. We eventually got to a point in the road where she was able to climb the bank with her calf, and we eased by them.

keewee's cache is located just off the highway, on the hill above "historic" Chicken, Alaska. Chicken was a mining town that has turned into a tourist stop for the tour buses that are either running people to Eagle for Yukon River cruises or taking people across the Top of the World Highway to and from Dawson City. The story goes that Chicken earned its name because its residents couldn't spell the word "ptarmigan".

We finished up our sightseeing around Dawson City, then headed across the Yukon River by ferry and started down the Top of the World Highway to Alaska. The Top of the World Highway is a bit more bone-jarring that some of the other packed gravel / dirt roads in Yukon Territory. My memory of it is better than reality; that may be because we were on it earlier in the season. Traveling west, we crossed into Alaska at the most northerly land entry point in the United States.