Another Time on the ALCAN, Part 4

Monday, September 28 - 289 Miles Today. The checkout time at most RV parks is usually 11AM - more rarely at noon. We usually get our money’s worth by leaving at near the posted limit, but made an exception by leaving just after 10AM from the Mile “0” RV Park in Dawson Creek.

I can’t help but think of Dawson Creek as being the start of the civilized grid. The signs begin here. We headed toward Edmonton passing fenced fields, tracing power lines from pole to pole, and feeling the sensation of being reconnected. The town of Grande Prairie is the largest. It has an attractive college with beautifully designed campus buildings (smooth curves, no sharp corners), a Costco, etc - all the attributes of a modern town. It is unrecognizable from forty years ago. We left Grande Prairie on a dual highway with traffic getting ever heavier the further south we went.

The radio predicted winds of up to 50 MPH so we decided to stop in Whitecourt instead of driving onto Edmonton. Stayed at Sagitawh RV Park on the outskirts. Made a fire, roasted hotdogs and checked the email. Moonshine made friends with the donkey resident of the Park. There were also two pigs, a goat, a couple sheep, a llama, chickens and geese - all living peacefully in the same area.
Tuesday, September 29 - 104 Miles Today. Dual highway till just outside of Edmonton. We stopped at the Glowing Embers RV Park at the very western edge Edmonton as it was only a few miles from the Edmonton Mall. We had been stopping there since 1987, right after it opened as the largest in the world. Mary thought she might want to go shopping, and we have always gone to the Water Park. It has a pool that generates waves and numerous waterslides. Mary had a lot of fun in the wave pool the last time we went, but could not get inspired this time. She slid down one of the more gentle slides, I did a couple of the extremes. We decided the Mall no longer has the magnetic attraction for us that it once possessed.

Another Time on the ALCAN, Part 3

Saturday, September 26 - 204 Miles Today. We are very conscious that many Road Houses are closed, some not to open again, so I am reluctant to let the gas tank go much below the half way mark. We stopped at the Northern Rockies Lodge to gas. The place is a high-end hunting and fishing lodge on the shores of Muncho Lake. Well healed tourists are flown in by small float-planes for a week or two, and then carried out the same way - no dusty long road for them. There is a large lodge made of logs and a sprinkling of picturesque chalets along the shore. Gas cost $6 a gallon, the most expensive along the highway, but we had stopped at a couple other places only to discover they had no gasoline, so I wasn’t about to pass the opportunity.
We rolled into Fort Nelson at four in the afternoon looking for a place to stay. We had camped on the west end of town in 2006, but didn’t care much for it, so we thought to try one described in the Milepost that lay five miles on the other side. It was closed, maybe for a year or two, so we turned back to town. Found an RV Park in town hidden behind the Blueberry Motel. It was a fenced, open, graveled lot that we had failed to notice on earlier trips, but it had good Wi-Fi, so we were happy.
Once we unhitched and set up the trailer it was time for dinner. On other trips we had dined at Dixie lee’s, a small, popular place with the locals, so it seemed a logical choice. Dixie Lee’s specialized in deep fried chicken and fish. We noticed there were no customers when we went in, and it was dinner time. Only one other couple came in while we were there - weary travelers from Oklahoma on their way to Alaska . I ordered three pieces of chicken woth fires. I got a small leg, a small wing, and a small thigh - over cooked and dry. The place had probably been sold - new owners, new personnel. Don’t need to go there any more.
Sunday, September 27 - 283 Miles Today. We left Fort Nelson just after 11PM, and arrived in Dawson Creek about 5PM. I spent another paranoid day of driving while watching the gas gauge go toward the half way mark. We stopped at three places in the Pink Mountain area even though I probably had enough gas to get to Fort. St Johns - I wanted insurance. The Buckinghorse River Roadhouse had a sign on the pump, “Sorry no Gas”, so we went across the road to what looked like a large road crew camp. There was a restaurant with gas pumps out front and an RV sitting at them - nobody around. We waited several minutes and then went on into the Provincial Campground for a break. The campground has a large parking area with camp sites along its river side. We have camped there several times and always enjoy stopping. The RV was still there as we left the campground so we drove on again. The gas gauge was slipping under the quarter-tank mark when we were finally able to get gas.
GO TO: Part 4

Another Time on the ALCAN, Part 2

Thursday, September 24 - 218 Miles Today. The highway was nice and smooth between Haines Junction and Whitehorse - sped along at a constant 55MPH - no bumps. We arrived in Whitehorse about 3:00pm today, our third on the road. The town lies on the Yukon River, well below the passing highway to the south. There are gas stations, garages, restaurants, hotels, and RV parks scattered along the ALCAN as it parallels the river and city. We descended into town on the main exit, planning to exchange some currency, hoping to grab a bite to eat and checking our email at the Visitor‘s Center - no luck on that one. Stayed at the Caribou RV Resort a few miles south of town. Wi-Fi at the Caribou gave out a weak signal and was slow, but we eventally prevailed.

Friday, September 25 - 394 Miles Today - our maximum mileage considering Moonshine gets cranky and commences a constant flow of whinny barking after the onset of early evening. Watson Lake was to be our destination, but the "SignPost Village" was having a tough time economically. We have noticed this trend all along the Alcan. Many roadhouses and gas stations are closed, either early in the season or permanently. The financial mess going on in the world has reached the Far North. Even the restaurant we planned to dine at was closed - so we moved on to Laird Hot Springs, another ninety miles. The land is undergoing the fall color change and yellows dominate - sometimes providing a green and yellow checkerboard design. We passed a herd of Buffalo that grazes along the highway between Watson Lake and Laird. They are dispersed in groups of 20 to 30 along the highway. We passed three or four groups and a couple of lone bulls. Moonshine sat quietly during this passage as she studied the strange, large headed beasts.
Mary is like a cat that cannot find a corner in a round barn in which to pee, so we circled the campground at Laird two times before picking the most perfect site. The campground had more campers than we had expected, but there were plenty of sites available near the end of the loop. It seems that most campers take the first available, so the sites fill in that order.
We parked and walked Moonshine over to the boardwalk, a half mile total, and were returning to get our bathing gear when we met Armand, the camp host. He was a jovial guy, in his sixties, friendly and talkative. It was close to the end of the season so he was giving everyone a deal, half price - $10 for the night. He said he didn’t like to go to Watson Lake any more, area is too depressed, and when he did, he got his supplies and booze and took off back to Laird without lingering.
Moonshine stayed n the trailer while Mary and I walked out the boardwalk to the spring. By then it was very dark so each of us carried a flashlight. Mary had been looking forward to the springs, but she found them too hot to get into, and the sulfur smell was stronger than we remembered, so she stayed on the boardwalk while I took a fifteen minute dip. We had left our cloths at the far end of the facility. No one was near, and it was pitch black, so I decided I would just, quickly, slip off my wet swimsuit, dry off quickly, and then, quickly, put on the dry sweat pants I had brought. I was no sooner nude when a trail of flashlights appeared from the boardwalk, entering the pool area. I was dancing around trying to get my shorts on. Mary was trying to hide my naked body from the sight of the eight or ten new arrivals, mostly children, while I, with a foot stuck in the wrong leg, was doing a jig on the other. I finally managed to slip the shorts on backward and hurriedly don the sweatpants.
To complete the comedy, Mary tripped and fell in the boardwalk. She was carrying the big lantern, but not paying attention to where she was aiming it, so the light shaft would flash up to the tree tops and then slice downward across our path lighting the vegetation at the side, never falling on the boardwalk, so Mary missed the bad place where she tripped.
GO TO: Part 3

September, 2009 - On The ALCAN Again

Tuesday, September 22 - The first snow blanketed the mountain tops as we rolled out of Anchorage at 2:30pm. There wasn’t much chance of making the 328 miles to Tok Junction by evening - our planned destination. We drove through light rain and then a heavy snow fall as we passed the Matanuska Glacier about 85 miles out. Nothing stuck, the ground was too warm. Glennallen was our default stopping place, but we didn’t find anything we liked and moved on, finally stopping at the Gakona Lodge, an old historic roadhouse that served horseback travelers more than a hundred years ago. We were able to park in front for free, and we got the bonus of WI-FI. I got our small generator out and started it up. We warmed up some lasagna and played on the Internet the rest of the night.

Wednesday, September 23 - On the road by 9:30am. Some travelers are up and gone shortly after daybreak, but that has never been our practice - 9:30am is timely for us. Ran through another heavy snowstorm before reaching Tok, but the early falling flakes soon melted. Stopped in Tok for gas and a few groceries. Crossed the border 90 miles later. The Canadian Immigration seized Mary’s pepper spray. We neglected to mention the two bear spray canisters carried in our back packs or they would, no doubt, have taken them too. The hundred and forty miles from the Canadian border to Kluane Lake is the worse. You cannot drive more than a mile on good, smooth pavement, before you come to a red flagged "frost heave" where the road is buckled and distorted - very jarring if you cross it at more than thirty MPH, and it can scramble the contents in the travel trailer. Camped at Burwash Landing on Kluane Lake (thirty miles long). Parked the trailer so the rear window looked out onto the lake.

GO TO: Part2

Leaving For the "Outside"!

Monday, September 21, 2009. Rain today, and there was more prep to be done...so it's another day before we leave for the "Outside". That term,"Outside", is an idiom in the Alaskan vernacular referring to anywhere outside of the state. I expect it derives from the isolation felt by early settlers. Living up here, fifty years ago, and even today, creates the impression that one is existing within a cocoon - the rest of the world, remote and far away.

Little was known about the interior Alaska by the Western world until the 1890's Klondike Gold Rush. The photo of minors forming a long line ascending the mountain barrier is haunting. Now we have a road that connects us, and airliners arrive and depart by the hour. Much of that sense of isolation is therefore illusionary - but not entirely. That barrier still exists in the Alaskan psych. Two thousand miles of the drive is mainly through a buffer - a no-man's-land of wilderness.

Another Time on the ALCAN

Well, here we go again. My wife, Mary, our dog, Moonshine, and I are heading down the Alaskan Highway one more time. We are going to be snowbirds searching for warm, sunny days. After more than forty years (winters) in Alaska, it will be nice to do something other than shovel snow for six months.

I find Alaska to be limiting in these, my vintage years - especially during long winters. Anchorage is a nice city - as cities go - with lots of activities for a town of its size. There is more big name entertainment coming up here than in most towns comparible (population: quarter-million), and there is a an unlimited choice of winter sports.

But most of Alaska freezes up during the winter. Towns like Seward, and Homer, places on the ocean, are bustling durng long summer days, but they sleep through the winter, along with hibernating bears. But I've done all the Alaskan adventures, and now I am ready for another type of experience - something warmer.

Its about a 2,600 mile drive before you reach the US border again, and if you wait to leave here til after the first of October you may run into snow - which stays into April. If you're driving a fifty-five foot long rig (truck and travel trailer), then its not prudent to wait any longer than that. So, we are heading out tomorrow (Monday September 21, 2009) ...or maybe Tuesday.

Ironically, you have to go 328 miles north before you can head south. Tok is at the Junction of the Glenn and Alaskan Highways. It is our distination on the first day. We hope to make Whitehorse on the second, and Laird Hit Springs on the third. After that its mostly speculation as to where we will stop for the nighjt. I will try to post our progress, but am uncertain how much time I will get to write and where we might find Internet access - its all tenative.

A Forty-niner Travels to California - Part 3

From Uncle George’s we headed west for a fast look at the giant Red Wood trees in Sequoia National Park and then south across the Golden Gate. The convention in San Francisco probably lasted no more that a weekend. We must have stayed in a hotel there. Other than the first night out and the cold night in Yellow Stone I have absolutely no memory of where we stayed. Some streets of San Francisco were so steep you could see nothing past the long hood of our Pontiac. Stopping at some intersections was like rolling up to the edge of a cliff - looking into an abyss. Mom was near hysterics a couple times. The only other memory of San Francisco is of us sitting at a park bench overlooking the bay. A well dressed, matronly type woman came walking by, stopped in front of us to look around, and passed gas in a very audible way. She then went on her way without revealing any awareness of her anal expletive. Mom and Grandma Frank broke up laughing, and concluded that the lady must have been deaf.

Yosemite National Park was the next one we visited. My main memory there is that I came close to dying. That is the way I remember the event as it was occurring - I was going to die. There was a pool below the great falls and large boulders lay scattered about in the vicinity. We were climbing around on them and I came to one that was a height that I could easily climb. I got to the top, swung my legs over and started to slide. I realized it was a lot further down on that side than it had been on the approach, but I was not able to stop. It was terrifying for several seconds, but I did not scream or yell out. I silently slid down the smooth surface of that rock, stopping without to much of a jarring crash when my shoes contacted another sizable rock at the bottom.

Dad’s sister Annis lived in Los Angeles. She had migrated to California in the mid-thirties. Dad said that Annis loved the movies, read movie magazines when she was a teenager, and was so captivated that she moved to L.A. to be close to the glamour of Hollywood. Annis, her husband Frank Nickolas, and their three year-old daughter, Sarah Jane, lived on top of a high hill overlooking the city. I remember the street up the hill was narrow, with cactus growing along each side. Sarah Jane was too young to enjoy our more sophisticated toys, so we had no one to play with except each other. Air pollution had already come to L.A. in 1949. My eyes stung all during our stay.

The return leg of our expedition was an arc through the southwest following Historic Route U.S, 66. We took a few side trips off it. One to gaze down into the Grand Canyon, Another to purchase a piece of petrified wood while in The Petrified Forest, and marvel at the Painted Desert. (We used the rock for years as one of our two door jams in the house. The other was a coconut my Uncle Joe brought back from the Philippines after WWII, its outer husk polished shinny.)

We drove through the grass filled prairies of Oklahoma stopping only for a visit to pay respect to the memory of Will Rogers. I think it was through Oklahoma that I remember seeing derelict houses, but in truth, I noticed them all through the trip. It seemed like there were a lot of abandoned places, and many looked to be in good shape. Most stood alone in forlorn country with tall grass clogging their yards. There was a lonely sadness about them. I wondered why anyone would want to just get up and leave such perfectly good homes. I did not know enough history when I was nine. I did not know how much the last twenty years had transformed America - the Great Depression, The War, and I did not know we were entering an era that would transform it even more.

The trip probably ended in August. I had more than a dozen new States to add to my brag list, and hundreds of memories to cherish the rest of my life. It sowed a seed of wonder and wander that yet compels me to want to look at what’s around the next bend in the road.