What a long, strange trip it has been (going to college) Part 2
The next morning I was up at 6:30 since I had to pee really bad, and crawling out of my warm, comfy sleeping bag and exposing myself in the 35 degree air shocked my system enough I couldn't have gone back to sleep if I'd tried. All the noise I made awakened Ben and we quickly made breakfast and broke camp. After loading the car we decided to go down to the lake again before leaving and were horrified to see, as we turned the corner, an old person going for a naked swim in the lake in the early morning. The problem was that the person hadn't gotten in the water yet, so we basically saw an old naked person standing by the lake. We turned the corner to face the lake, saw that unpleasantness, and in perfect unison wheeled around and walked back to the car. Somehow, that seemed to put a damper on the mood of the morning.
From Haines Junction we drove about 90 miles to get to Whitehorse , the capital of the Yukon Territory . Thankfully, there was a Wal-Mart in Whitehorse where we could assuredly get all the stuff we forgot; and at the low prices that only come from paying slave wages to your manufacturing workers. Ben exchanged some American money for Canadian money at a bank there, we walked over to the Yukon River, and that about did it for the mighty town of Whitehorse . On to Watson Lake .
The original plan for the day was to motor in to Watson Lake in the afternoon, stake out a campsite, and play a round of golf at Greenway's Greens; but unfortunately, a monkey wrench was thrown into that plan when we started seeing smoke on the horizon shortly after leaving Whitehorse . No, no, no. This was all wrong. We left the smoke behind, didn't we? I felt strangely helpless as we drove further and further into the smoke. The sun went from yellow to orange while the hills around the road slowly became shrouded from view, until by the time we made it to Watson Lake the conditions were reminiscent of Tok the previous day. Since we could hardly see or breathe, we regretfully abandoned our plan to golf and pushed on down the Cassiar Highway . This trip was becoming the exact opposite of the sage wisdom.
I seem to recall that we drove about 200 miles down the Cassiar before deciding to camp for the night at Lake Kinaskan, the only well-maintained campground on the 450 mile highway (You'll remember the name forever if you just imagine John Madden saying, “Tough Actin' Kinaskan”). Amazingly enough, about 100 miles down the Cassiar we burst out of the smoke and were able to enjoy another night of clear, breathable air. Our night at Lake Kinaskan was fairly routine: we ate dinner, went for a walk and went to bed. In other words, not good for entertaining writing.
The next morning we were up by 7:30 and on our way. The day was also relatively routine, but the Cassiar Highway was not completely devoid of aberrations. The most shocking came during my first driving shift when we hit road construction. The only problem was, I didn't pass a flagger first. I was just driving along, enjoying the wide open road and the scenery when I suddenly found myself face to face with a roller. Obviously, my first reaction was to completely freak out; how could I miss a flagger?! I was on my own trying to weave through the machinery and jump the little gravel mound between lanes. Well, two graders later we got back on the open highway and there was no flagger at the other end. Apparently, on remote roads in British Columbia they assume that the casual driver has his stuff together enough to not disturb the construction.
Other than that brief bit of excitement the day was dull. The middle of British Columbia is not a place I would care to drive through again, as there were no distinguishing features or anything that would be entertaining to write about. We shacked up for the night in an EconoLodge in Quesnel right downwind from a pulp mill, thankful for showers, beds, and cable television.
The next day we would realize that a numbingly boring day of driving is more pleasant than a day of misery. The morning was actually rather pleasant, but events took an ominous turn in the early afternoon when we couldn't find a rest stop and had to pee standing just down an embankment from the freeway. Shortly after that rest stop we started climbing up a long hill.
Driving up hills in the fully loaded Saturn is not a pleasant feeling. There is a feeling of helplessness as the speedometer keeps dropping and your foot jams the pedal closer and closer to the floor. People driving cars that aren't underpowered start whizzing by and the poor old Saturn is left following the semis in the slow lane.
Driving up this particular hill in British Columbia fit that description exactly, and everything was made worse by the hill being unusually long. We drove up for miles and miles, until we finally reached the pass and a sign that read “1700 meters,” which translates to about 5,500 feet. So it was a tall pass. After coming down from the pass into the Okanagan country one thing become immediately obvious: it was hot.
Just coming from Alaska Ben and I were clearly not ready for this kind of heat. But hey, no problem, the Saturn's got air conditioning, right? Well, it does, but it also has a nasty habit of overheating when being driven all day in 100+ degree temperatures. Now I don't know for sure whether it was actually over 100 degrees, but I have vague memories of spending the afternoon wearing only a pair of shorts and sitting in a near comatose state with the window wide open, drenched with sweat.
To somewhat alleviate the heat, whenever the Saturn started performing well enough we would shut the windows and turn the AC on for five minutes—just long enough to cool the car down a couple degrees—but then quickly shut it off before the car got too hot. Most of the day passed in this fashion and, to quote Dave Barry, I swear I am not making this up: around 8 o'clock when the sun had sunk behind the hills we drove through a small town and a reader board thermometer said it was 97 degrees. Damn. That would explain why I could barely force myself to move during the heat of the day.
As the evening passed, the car slowly reached a pleasant temperature, and even though we had been driving for six hundred miles both of us were starting to smell the barn. We were in back in the U.S. and only an hour or two away from our grandparent's house in Ellensburg. I'd love to tell you that driving over the last pass from Wenatchee to Ellensburgwent without incident—the final 90 miles of a 2,000 mile trip—but unfortunately it was not meant to be easy.
While driving up one of the hills the Saturn started slowing down more than usual. I kept giving it more gas to seemingly no effect whatsoever and slowed down until I pulled over at a wide spot. This was bad. We tried to check the oil but the light from our flashlight was insubstantial and the oil was so hot it hardly stuck to the dipstick at all. We never got an accurate reading but figured the oil looked low and some fresh, cool oil couldn't hurt. About this time an older gentleman who said he was from Seattle stopped to ask if we needed any help. We politely told him the situation was under control and that we were pretty sure the car would run well with new oil. He was really nice and even followed us after we started driving again to make sure our car was indeed running well. Thankfully the car seemed better and made it into Ellensburg to our grandparent's house.
The major driving portion was over.
© 2005, Michael Logsdon