Another Time on The ALCAN - 1. Gakona Lodge & Kluane Lake

Tuesday, September 22 - The first snow blanketed the Chugach Mountains 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: Part 2

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.

GO TO: Part 1

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 2,400 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.

GO TO: Leaving for the "Outside"

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.

A Forty-niner Travels to California - Part 2

The caravan turned south into Wyoming and the next stop was Yellowstone, Old Faithful, panhandling bears and a night of camping out. We had a tent but had not considered bringing enough blankets - after all it was summer. I remember shivering in the cold all night. Mom spent an uncomfortable time in the Pontiac and I didn’t think anyone else had a pleasant campout. I didn’t see the tent the rest of the trip.

The Rocky Mountains came next. I was excited when we first spied them on the western horizon, but they seemed to go on forever. The road slowly climbed up one slope, inching its way around the side of one mountain, only to reveal another. I kept thinking there could not possibly be another mountain, but there was another, and another, and yet another. I started to get frustrated. They were never going to end. Once, traffic stopped us on a slope and a big truck in front started to roll back onto us. I don’t think it went very far but Mom was screaming for Dad to do something. Whitey, who was right behind, called out to Dad that his Studebaker could hold both cars - something about his clutch , and that we should roll on back - but the truck stopped and we were saved from participating in that experiment.

Somewhere about that time we rolled into Reno, Nevada. It seemed that every commercial establishment had at least one slot machine. I remember being in a small café, sitting at the counter, and Don had a dime that was burning a hole in his pocket so he asked Grandma Frank if she would put it in the slot machine. He hit the jack pot, four bars, but nothing came out. We thought the proprietor would give him the winning amount, but all he did was give Don his dime back. Whitey and Idabell sat at the counter and ribbed the guy the rest of the time we were in the joint. They were talking to each other, like they were carrying on a private conversation, but their voices were loud enough that the guy could hear every word, and they were not all that kind.

We entered northern California not long after leaving Reno. I vaguely remember Donner Pass as the drive over it was our most likely route. We crossed a few more mountains and found ourselves in the Sacramental Valley. Dad’s brother, George had moved to California in the early thirties and was living in Oroville. Marysville lay about 30 miles south and I understand he moved there some years later. George and his wife Violet had two sons and two daughters, all with red hair and older than Don and I. Since they were older, their toys were more sophisticated than ours, so we had no one to play with. I remember playing in the yard and marveling at the giant spiders that dwarfed the Indiana specimens that I had seen. Mom wanted to pan for gold so Uncle George took us to the nearby river. She knelt by the river sluicing away, but quickly learned that panning is hard work. Uncle George kindly credited her with finding a little “color”, and since she had stuck it rich on the first try she didn’t feel it necessary to toil over another pan.

GO TO: Part 3

A Forty-niner Travels to California - Part 1

Our first big motor trip was in 1949. I was nine years old and it was to be the big event in my life for a long time afterward. I marked events as being either before or after the California trip. Dad was the secretary and manager of the Moose Lodge in Kokomo. He had taken the job three years before, and was to remain in that position for more than thirty years. I literally grew up in the Moose. The Lodge had its annual convention in Chicago every other year. That was because Moose Heart, the orphanage the organization supported, lay just a few miles south of Chicago. In 1949 the convention was held in San Francisco, so Dad and Mom planned a cross-country motor trip. I don’t remember how long we were gone - it seemed like the whole summer, but brother Don said it was only two or three weeks. I still have difficulty in comprehending how we were able to squeeze so many experiences into such a sparse amount of time.

I was too young to track our route, but I know we left Kokomo in a two car caravan heading west. We would have passed through Illinois, but whether we swung north through Wisconsin and Minnesota or on west into Iowa has been lost to me. I remember the first night on the trip. We stopped that evening and rented a cabin. It was flat country and a railroad track passed near the cabins. Don and I stood outside that evening watching a steam engine pull a freight train across the prairie. It was a warm summer end-of-day, and the sun was going down behind the train - a moving silhouette against a darkening blue sky. The Locomotive sang a forlorn tune as a ribbon of smoke trailed behind its stack. Two hobos sat on top of one of the last boxcars, their legs dangling over the side. That looked like so much fun. They seemed so free and carefree as they sat up there watching the land roll by, and then they were gone. That night I noticed the sheets and blankets smelled different. They weren’t like the ones we had at home. Eventually though, we started across South Dakota. Whitey and Idabel Cook accompanied use in their new Studebaker convertible. I'm not certain of their last name any longer, but Cook seems right. They were a married couple, affiliated with the Moose, and accompanied us all the way to California. We passed through the Bad Lands, where they charged as much for a glass of water as they did for a Coke, the Black Hills that didn‘t really seem black; Mount Rushmore to view the larger than life faces of four past Presidents; on to a place called Custer’s Last Stand; and finally to Dinosaur Park to gawk at life sized statues of ancient beasts cast in cement. I look at a map and notice that all those points of interest lay near Rapid City, South Dakota, so I guess we probably stuffed them all into a couple days of power-point sight-seeing. GO TO: Part 2