Just the two of us

After spending the night in Chicken, we explored the area the next day to get a true feel for the gold Rush. We got a tour of Dredge #4, which really helped us understand how gold was extracted from the rivers. The dredge, used until the mid 50's was moved to Chicken and conserved in its original state. We got an entire explanation about how these river monsters would get the gold. Inspired by what we saw, we decided to go gold panning (Caroline) and fishing (Chad) in the river in the afternoon: neither of us had luck with what we were looking for.

Our last night as a group
Since it started raining, we decided to head out of town as there is not much to do in Chicken in the rain. We were better off riding and reached the town of Tok that night, where we camped in a motorcycle campground. This was going to be our last night all together before the Canadians would head back home and we would continue north towards Fairbanks. We had a lot of fun: celebrated our trip together in the warmth of the camping sauna, had a couple of beers and talked about our best stories. This was a great way to say goodbye before we would part ways.

Snowing in the North Pole?
The next morning we each went our separate way and we were back to riding as a couple. On our way to Fairbanks, we decided to take a break in a town called North Pole. About 50 miles before it, we started noticing the cloud. It looked like a storm cloud but was bordered in pink color and made the sun look red. Soon enough, noticing that the cloud started from the ground, we understood what it was: smoke from a forest fire. As we reached North Pole, it was snowing... ashes! There a currently many many fires burning Alaskan forest, about 250,000 acres are currently in fire and 1 million acres have already burnt since the start of the summer.

The policy is to not try to stop the fires as they are part of a natural cycle, as long as they don't threaten human habitat. As we have been traveling different roads here, we have often been into heavy smoke and sometimes ashes. This is definitively something we were not expecting or prepared for.

The mystery of the midget trees
Something else we had a hard time figuring out is why so many pine trees were so short, black and with limited branches. At first, we thought that the more north we were going, the shorter they were. We noticed quickly that our assumption was not true as sizes and shapes were changing along the roads. We finally solved the mystery: it is all due to permafrost and the sun. Alaska sits on permafrost, a fancy word for "permanently frozen soil". As the summer comes, some of this permafrost melts due to the sun, allowing the trees to grow deeper roots and grow taller. The sun mostly melts permafrost in south exposed hills or flats, and less in north exposed hills. This is what determines what can grow where: the midget trees are the only ones able to survive where the permafrost does not melt much as they don't grow deep roots. The other areas get bigger trees as the soil is only frozen deeper. Now that we get it, it is all the more fun to figure out the different trees we were seen.

Been so far up north, it is somewhat challenging for us to understand how nature works here. We are fortunate enough to explore this beautiful part of the world in the warmth of the summer and in constant daylight. However, we can barely grasp about how we could survive here in the cold and dark of the winter, and we wonder the same for the locals, the wildlife and plants!