You may have noticed that I have been very sporadic with my posts and that they look different sometimes. That is because we have been having sporadic internet and cell coverage since we have been farther north. I was behind before, so that made for inconsistency, but even though we have stayed where there was internet service, the carrier is so slow that it can’t handle as much information as the blog requires to be posted. We can barely get the e-mail sometimes. There is no cell service in Chicken and the free internet that I was looking forward to so I could do some posting to the blog, just isn’t working that well. I am looking forward to getting into the more populated areas so that, hopefully, I can update the blog. The other thing is that I am using Windows Live Writer to work offline and it has a slightly different way it displays things from if I work directly with Blogger. I think I am getting it figured out so that I can write my blog offline then upload it as a draft to blogger, check it out, and publish it. Now if I can just get a faster internet connection, there may be some more posts for you to read. They may come out of order with some back dated to when they actually occurred, but I hope to get them done eventually. Now for today’s post.
Today has been very cloudy and the rain has been variable in intensity. We had some things to do now that we are back in the USA. For instance, we needed to rearrange our money – put away the loonies and twonies ($1 and $2 coins) and other Canadian money and get out our American money). We had to make sure all of our time pieces had been set back another hour to Alaska time. There were some things that got jostled around that needed to be put back, repaired or cleaned up. We had mail to be mailed in the US. The rain let up enough to let us go sightseeing here in Chicken, in between storms, so let me show you around.
Chicken is not a town, village, or city. It is a community. When we came down the hill, yesterday, this is what we saw. First was the sign then, at the bottom of the hill, was all of this mining equipment with more signs.
So today we went out to see what there was in Chicken. The way the name came about was that the early miners had wanted to name it Ptarmigan, which is a bird that they had found to be prevalent in the area and that they thought was quite tasty. Unfortunately, no one knew how to spell it so they settled for Chicken. If you are into chicken décor, this is the place for you. There is chicken themed everything here. In fact, right here on the grounds of this campground, there is the mascot for the town. Also, the mile post in the photos has some very creative destinations. You can enlarge the picture to read some of them. Bumble, the bee, said, “That’s one BIG chicken.”
Here is “Beautiful Downtown Chicken” .
This is the “Chicken Poop” (out house) next to the shops in downtown Chicken.. The second photo is of another restaurant located near another campground. I think the chicken signs are cute.
Chicken even has an airport.
Here is the Post Office, from a distance and close up. One lady, the postmaster, is there every M-F. She is one of the very few people who live here year round. The main road is closed in winter, so most people in Chicken are seasonal and leave before they are snowed in.
This is the sign for the campground that we are staying in. It is a real gold camp and, for $10, people can pan for gold for 4 hours, using pay dirt that has been dug from the property. We did not do it, but we saw that some folks were having luck.
You can see them panning in the troughs below the dredge.
The Pedro Gold Dredge No. 4, that was used to dredge the Chicken Creek from 1959 to 1967, can be seen from our trailer, just above the tail lights of the truck. It had been dredging the Pedro River near Fairbanks, AK before that. Now it is on the National Register of Historic Places.
Now you have had a tour of Chicken, AK.
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