Fantasy Caravan Day 24 - Chicken to Tok, Alaska

On Monday, we traveled from Chicken to Tok (pronounced like toke -- long oh sound). From what we've been told, no one knows the origin of the name, though Wikipedia has some possible sources: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tok,_Alaska#Etymology

We continued along the Taylor Highway... we had been cautioned that there were frost heaves in the first half of the trip, and indeed, there were. I don't know if this video will give you some idea of what it was like driving Gracie over the "dips" in the road...

 Carl said that he prefers hot fudge with his double dips!

This road sign seemed like it was a bit obvious, but there was no way that we were going 35MPH! More like 10-20MPH.

I had seen these signs on entering or leaving "Federal Subsistence Hunt Area" on our drive since we've been in Alaska.

Information from https://www.doi.gov/subsistence/federal-subsistence-management-program:

The Federal Subsistence Management Program is a multi-agency effort to provide the opportunity for a subsistence way of life by rural Alaskans on Federal public lands and waters while maintaining healthy populations of fish and wildlife. Subsistence fishing and hunting provide a large share of the food consumed in rural Alaska. The state's rural residents harvest about 18,000 tons of wild foods each year - an average of 295 pounds per person. Fish makes up about 56 percent of this harvest statewide. Nowhere else in the United States is there such a heavy reliance upon wild foods.

This dependence on wild resources is cultural, social and economic. Alaska's indigenous inhabitants have relied upon the traditional harvest of wild foods for thousands of years and have passed this way of life, its culture, and values down through generations. Subsistence has also become important to many non-Native Alaskans, particularly in rural Alaska.

Every once in a while (nowhere near as often as the frost heaves occurred), there would be a "BUMP" sign letting us know about it... and often, those seemed to be the least violent ones!

We stopped at a pullout where there were information signs. The Taylor Highway is the one we've been traveling since crossing into Alaska, and would be on it until we re-reached the Alaska Highway on our way to Tok.

We've been traveling in the Fortymile River Region as we've traveled in Alaska to this point.

This may be the only way we get a picture of a moose... they are evidently pretty hard to find.

We haven't seen any caribou either... maybe there's still time to be able to see both!

We have one night in Tok before heading on to Fairbanks.