What a long, strange trip it has been (going to college) Part 1
Everything started on a sunny and warm morning in Palmer, Alaska. Ben and I pulled out of the Fred Meyer parking lot in the gold 1998 Saturn sedan: fully loaded complete with a brand new Thule (pronounced too-lee) roof rack and a full tank of gas. We turned north onto the Glen Highway and started the great adventure.
I seem to recall that I took the first driving shift as I left behind one stage of my life and embarked on a new one. For anybody who has seen me driving with my brother in the passenger's seat, the scene is somewhat similar to the relationship between Walter and The Dude in the movie The Big Lebowski. While I completely freak out and start screaming over the slightest disturbance to my open road cruising, Ben will calmly try to get me to settle down. Now the stretch of road between Palmer and Glenallen—my planned shift—is not the greatest place for somebody with road rage to drive in the summer time. The first 60 miles consists of winding mountain roads with no places to pass and, in the summer, motorhomes.
Through the following four days I came to despise motorhomes; they became the bane of my existence. I would lay in the tent all night wide awake because I couldn't stop thinking about how much I loathed motorhomes. Bill Bryson said it best when he speculated on ways to make people feel sorry for bringing a building on vacation.
The motorhome trouble started almost immediately. About twenty miles from our house we hit two unpleasant things: smoke from forest fires in the interior and slow moving traffic. I was probably the tenth car in the line behind this blissfully oblivious fossil who had indeed decided to take a building on vacation. One would think any rational person who saw ten people lined up behind him would pull over out of courtesy, but motorhome drivers are clearly not rational people. As the miles dragged on, I started spewing frenzied, nonsensical rants, and a vein in my forehead was bulging. Nobody had ever been the subject of such a colorful and vehement string of adjectives as I used to describe this painfully unaware old man, who was forcing our car and twenty others to go thirty miles per hour on the highway (like I said, I have anger problems when I'm driving. I could try to justify my conduct, but the description is probably funnier without a rationale).
Then, just when I thought I could take no more, fate slung some mud in my face to test that assertion. We hit road construction. But that wasn't the worst part, no. We hit road construction just after a motorhome convoy. So not only did we have to wait to be let through, once we were past the construction we were stuck behind a line of motorhomes that stretched as far as the eye could see. Luckily, by that time we were onto the plateau and there were places to pass. I don't think I had that vehicle going under 70 until we rolled into Glenallen under the midday sun.
The experience of being in Glenallen was slightly tainted. Remember back two paragraphs when I said there were two unpleasant things we ran into? Well as we drove over the plateau, leaving the motorhomes in our dust, the smoke progressively got thicker. Coming down the hill that should have provided an impressive view of the Wrangell Mountains, we could see nothing due to the thick smoke. Now that is usually the best part of the first day's drive, so we were more than a little disappointed. To give some perspective, even though this is probably complete bullshit, I recall hearing somewhere that Mount Sanford is the biggest chunk of rock on Earth, or North America, or something. The point is that the mountains that we should have been able to see are big.
As we drove past Glenallen (not before getting gouged 2.50 a gallon for gas) the smoke got even thicker on the Tok cut-off. In fact, the smoke got progressively thicker until we arrived in Tok. Standing at the Chevron waiting for the Saturn to fill up with gas I even got a little depressed, remembering the sage advice from a neighbor before we left: to take our time and explore the Yukon, because we may not have another chance to leisurely complete the drive. Well standing in Tok with an orange sun blazing down from high in the sky and smoke so thick I could hardly see across the street didn't quite jive with the idea of the trip I'd formed in my head. Oh, well, the only thing we could do was press on.
Ninety miles past Tok we stopped at the Tetlin Wildlife Preserve, and from there it was on to Canada. Miles per hour signs were replaced by kilometers per hour signs and the road changed from relatively consistent pavement to long stretches of gravel from the perpetual road construction in that area. The smoke in Yukon Territory appeared to be thinning a little bit, and as we drove I would look off into the distance and try to see which valleys had the least smoke, and then hope the road was going there.
After a late afternoon and early evening of complete disappointment in that department, we hit Lake Kluane and suddenly there was hope. The smoke appeared to be thinning, and as a direct result we had a beautiful view of the stunningly greenish colored waters of the lake and the chocolate colored Sheep Mountain at the East end of the lake. Then miraculously, coming down the hill from Lake Kluane into Haines Junction the smoke cleared. Six-hundred miles after leaving Palmer and 580 miles after first entering the smoke, we left it behind into the crystal clear air around Haines Junction. Since 600 miles is plenty of distance to drive in one day, we stopped at the campground there and set up our tent.
Ben and I have memories of many campgrounds along the way, and lots of memories from this particular campground. On a previous trip down the highway our family had stayed there and as a 12 year old I gave it the nickname Mosquito Bay, which it will be referred to as henceforth. Our family was in serious danger of slapping ourselves to death after a night at the Mosquito Bay Campground. While loading the car in the morning so many mosquitoes got in that I used a Milepost (a huge travel guide to driving the highway to/from Alaska) to kill them in mass numbers. After the carnage, I refused to clear off one window because I wanted to keep it as a trophy to the havoc I had wreaked on the army of mosquitoes. There were at least 30 little carcasses plastered to the window.
The other characteristic of Mosquito Bay that stood out was the bold squirrel, who was bold enough to jump onto the picnic table and try to eat our food while we were standing there. Luckily I had brought along a mini Super Soaker squirt gun, and used my squirrel gun to apply a little aversion therapy for getting too close to the camp. That squirrel talked big, but when it came to getting sprayed with water, he backed down immediately.
So given our previous experience with Mosquito Bay Campground, this promised to be an annoying evening, but surprisingly, the annoyances came in another form.
We hadn't eaten dinner yet, so I started a fire while Ben was more or less in charge of everything else. The night before we left Uncle John had been up and we had a giant rib feast, after which Grandma Arly was kind enough to wrap some of the leftover ribs in foil for us to use on our trip. I threw the ribs on the fire and put our can of Van Camps beans on the grill above the fire. After enough time to heat up the ribs I removed them and unwrapped the layer of foil. There was another layer of foil beneath it. Hmm, I thought, I guess Grandma really wrapped these good. So I took off the second layer of foil and noticed something strange: the ribs were glistening. Now this doesn't make sense--I shouldn't be able to see my reflection in pork ribs, and then it hit me. The ribs had been wrapped in a layer of saran wrap, which was now melted into the ribs. Oh well, luckily we had more, and the second time we removed the saran wrap before cooking.
But the culinary troubles were not over. No, all our planning still didn't prevent a Patrick McManus style camping mistake. We brought cans of beans, but neglected to bring a can opener; and when you make a Patrick McManus style camping mistake, you need a Patrick McManus style camping solution. In this case, that solution was sitting there for about ten minutes while Ben tried to hack the can open with a dull knife. It was a success (somewhat) and we feasted on beans and pork ribs, then went for an after dinner walk down to the lake in the near-midnight twilight.
Stay tuned, this is a massive work in progress.
© 2004, Michael Logsdon