Shae and I enjoy fun and quirky roadside attractions, so seeing that there was a small village in Alaska called Chicken that we’d be driving through, we knew we had to make a stop.
Chicken is a 45 minute drive west of the US/Canada border and ~5 hours east of Fairbanks. The first stop we made when arriving was The Goldpanner, a small store with a gas station that has chicken sculptures outside and other chicken paraphernalia.
The Goldpanner had food and drink for sale, but seemed to be more of a souvenir store. Not to mention that they have flushing toilets – apparently the only place in Chicken, AK that has those!
Outside The Goldpanner is a bridge crossing over Chicken Creek. I’m not sure if it’s meant to be this way, but it seems to be a swinging bridge and so it was a weird experience rocking side to side as we walked over it.
The Goldpanner offers free gold panning; there was a small group who’d stopped to do that while we were there (you can see them on the left in this photo).
After having a quick picnic lunch at one of the tables outside The Goldpanner, we continued on to check out Chicken’s other attractions. One of those is the Pedro Gold Dredge. It started life in 1938 at Pedro Creek (about 25 minutes north of Fairbanks), before being moved to Chicken in 1959 where it operated for 8 years.
You can arrange to take a tour of the former gold dredge, but we just wandered around the outside.
In keeping with tbe village’s name, even some of the piping has been designed like a chicken!
Looking out over the Pedro Dredge is a giant chicken statue.
The statue is named Eggee and was constructed by high school students using old school lockers.
Next to Eggee is a signpost pointing to locations all around the world with chicken-themed names.
Our final stop was what I guess you could call a Chicken strip mall 😉 There’s the Chicken Mercantile Emporium, a liquor store, saloon bar and a cafe.
If you need to use the restroom and don’t want to have to drive back to the only flushing toilets in Chicken at The Goldpanner, there’s an outdoor restroom called the Chicken Poop! I didn’t look inside, but perhaps these are buckets of Chicken.
The emporium had a sign on the door with a few facts about the village:
Someone had recommended that we stop at the Chicken Creek Cafe to get a slice of pie, so we were disappointed to discover that it had closed by the time we arrived that afternoon. We decided to console ourselves with a drink at the bar instead.
What we hadn’t anticipated as we walked through the doors were all the hats and underwear adorning the ceiling that travelers have left over the years.
The bar wasn’t enormous, but there was space for a (chicken) stripper pole – presumably for those who want to show off their legs and breasts.
Seeing as we’d just entered Alaska, I figured I’d celebrate with a beer from an Alaskan brewery – 49th State Brewing. They have locations in both Anchorage and Healy; we went to the one in Healy a couple of days later, so more about that in a future post.
We got chatting to the guy behind the bar at the Chicken Creek Saloon and mentioned that we’d been hoping to get pie from the café. As it turned out, he seemed to be working the emporium, liquor store, saloon bar and café as they’re all connected and he was going back and forth. Although the café was closed, he happily got us a couple of slices of pie to enjoy which were delicious.
Once we’d finished our pie and drinks, it was time to hit the road to get to the wood stove we’d be sleeping in overnight (more about that in a future post too!)
On our way out of town, Shae spotted movement in the bushes. A moose appeared, crossing the road – our first wildlife sighting in Alaska.
We had a cracking good time in Chicken, AK, so if you’re driving along the Alaska Highway and ask yourself “Shell we stop there?” – you should!
[…] From there we continued on to the small and quirky town of Chicken where we stopped to look around and have a drink in their saloon bar. Find out more about Chicken, Alaska in this post. […]