Alaska Bound

Day 1, April 17, 2004:

My trip with Jay from Spartanburg, South Carolina to Fairbanks, Alaska pulling a 20- foot trailer had been on my mind for several months.  I woke up at 6:00 am.  Jay called about 7:00 while I was eating the pancakes that Linka had made for our Spartanburg exit.  I finished packing and Jay arrived a little after 8:00.  I had been in Texas/Mexico the past three days and Jay had not tested the towing of the trailer.  When he pulled into the cul-de-sac I could tell we had some work to do because there was either too much weight on the nose of the 20-foot trailer or the 4 wheeler he had in the back of the truck was weighing down the truck.  First we removed the 4 wheeler and left it in my garage.  Still too much nose weight, so the repacking began.  We unloaded about a third of the trailer and moved all of the heavier pieces to the rear and the lighter pieces forward.  That helped, but after turning the hitch receiver over the trailer leveled out. 

We left about 11:00 after filling up at Ingles where I got 3 cents per gallon off with my Ingles gift card at $1.619 per gallon, probably the cheapest we will buy on the whole trip. 

We climbed the Saluda grade and near the top we slowed to 30 mph and went into first gear.  From what I had read, the climbs on the Alaska Highway were not terrible, however, I was somewhat concerned.  We stopped at the Saluda exit to let the transmission rest a few minutes.  We checked the trailer lug nuts, as was suggested by the trailer manufacturer.  The hubs were cool, but the tires were a little warm.  Hope that’s not a bad sign. 

As we were about to leave, a van and a truck pulling trailers stopped.  I noticed Mud Creek Baptist Church, Hendersonville, NC Disaster Relief on the back of one of the trailers.  They thought we may have had some trouble and needed help.  We mentioned that we had just started on our trek to Alaska.  The bearded one with long hair and a ponytail, Michael Nelson, said they were going to Alaska in a few weeks on a construction mission project.  They had been before and referenced a Christian Athabascan Indian named Remiel Brooks in one of the churches they had visited in Healy, Alaska.  He is also an Iditarod competitor and has come in second a couple of times and came in 8^th this year.  Michael gave Jay his deacon business card so that Jay could contact him if he thought Remiel could help him in his new job.

At 3:30 we stopped at a Cracker Barrel at Crystal Lake.  Jay had been given two $25 gift cards for Cracker Barrel.  Linka said that she didn’t want us to eat all fast food so we had vegetables, I had chicken strips and Jay had meatloaf.  Linka had packed lots of necessities for us, all kinds of snacks, sausage balls, cranberry bread, etc.  The etc. included band-aids, waterless hand cleaner, some mercurochrome that her father had given us in a first aid kit in the 1970’s, and even a 16 ounce bottle of hydrogen peroxide.  I don’t remember using that much peroxide in 10 years.  Our first fill up was 20 gallons for 187 miles or 9.3 mpg.  The weather was warm so we ran with the windows down.  We decided that Tennessee roads were maybe the worst southern roads.  Kentucky had the best in the south, and with our pulling the trailer, we knew it if the roads had bumps.  We finally decided we needed some music and played a couple of Michael Reno Harrell CDs.

We picked up a coupon at an Indiana rest stop for the Red Carpet Inn at Greenwood, just outside Indianapolis, but it had an expiration date of 4/10/04.  We stopped at a White Castle there at 8:45 to get a snack and called a couple of motels but prices were high.  We went to the Red Carpet Inn and they honored the expired coupon.  Beds were lumpy, but the motel was ok.  512 miles for day 1.

Day 2:

We noticed “Fantasuites” on the doors as we had come into the motel, but didn’t realize what they were until the next morning going to breakfast, which was just coffee (not even O.J.) and pastries – donuts, uglies, pecan twirls, etc.  The Fantasuites were theme rooms (suites), with space ship, northern lights, Egyptian tomb, jungle room themes, and there was even an old white Cadillac convertible in the middle of one room.

We gassed up again at about 8:15 CST and headed out.  It was a nice sunny day, good Indiana roads as we went by Indianapolis, then flat farmlands to Chicago.  Jay had never seen Chicago, so we thought since it was Sunday it would be okay to take the loop by downtown.  We saw the twin towers, but with construction and a Cubs game that afternoon, it took us about an hour to go 25 miles.  We missed our first turn, but our Streets and Trips software led us out on some good roads through the suburbs.  Chicago suburbs had an abundance of two things, Harleys and garden centers, open on Sunday.  Chicago is known as the windy city, but the strong winds extend into northern Illinois and southern Wisconsin.  Crosswinds blew us around, but the head winds slowed us down to 50-55 mph and even moved our mirrors back so much that we had to adjust them.  Lupper (our lunch/supper combination) was at Cracker Barrel again.

We ate the first of Linka’s sausage balls today.  They were warm from setting on the transmission hump behind the front seat.  Jay had driven the first day and a half, and I thought he might have wanted to drive all the way, but after the winds continued, he was ready to give up the driver seat.  The truck with the trailer was not bad driving.  On normal hills and flat driving you could run 60-65 mph very easy if there was no headwind.  The only thing that I dreaded was the potential of having to stop suddenly.  We stopped at a truck stop before we got to the MN line to see if we could find any coupons, but there was none.  A thunderstorm was blowing in and it was about 8:15 so we decided to check on the Super 8 motel at that exit.  With construction, we made a wrong turn and wound up on the entrance ramp going south.  By the time we got to the next exit, 4 miles back, it had begun to rain, and it was dark.  There was a motel there with just a “MOTEL” sign out front, possibly a Bates Motel, but we decided to stop and call it a day at 8:30.  It was really Woodville Motel in Woodville, WI.  After we checked in, the thunderstorm got worse with high winds and blowing rain.  We noticed that the vent in the top of the trailer was blowing open about an inch or so.  When the rain slowed, Jay climbed across the top of the furniture and closed the vent securely.  562 miles for day 2.

Day 3:

Up and on the road at 7:30, overcast and cool, in the 40’s.  Ate breakfast at a Cracker Barrel in St. Paul, MN and finished spending the gift cards.  The waitress said that she assumed we wanted grits.  We asked her how she knew.  She didn’t comment.  I drove from St. Paul across MN past Fargo, ND until about 3:00 at Jamestown, ND.  We saw buffalo and also deer in the fenced fields.  We saw lots of ducks.  They were even swimming in the puddles in the ditches along side the interstate.  We decided that everyone who lives around there has hit a deer at least once.  There were deer carcasses about every 10 miles. 

We had so many snacks that we knew we couldn’t eat them all.  The cranberry bread had also set on the transmission hump and had dried out a little.  We carved off the edge and the center was still moist.  We ate a wide variety of snacks.  We got ice at the first few motels and put in the canvas cooler each day for our drinks.

After Jay started driving, we were on ND State Highway 52, a 2-lane road with a 65 mph speed limit, very good roads, too.  We arrived in Minot, ND about 6:15.  It looked like about 1-2 more hours to the Canadian border.  Jay wanted to get the oil changed so we decided to do that and stay in Minot overnight.  After 45 minutes of searching, we found a station that was open after 6:00.  We met a man in the waiting area who was originally from Jacksonville, NC (Camp Lejeune) and had lived in Minot since he got out of the service.  We got a free car wash code with the oil change and gave it to him as we left.  Got directions to the motels in the area and stopped at a Mexican restaurant nearby.  The food was a little different from our Spartanburg norm.  The tacos were huge and my chalupa was round, but that’s all that was similar the ones with which I am familiar.  We checked 3 motels by phone.  Jay found out that most motels give discounts to government employees.  We decided on a Fairfield Inn who gave us a discount because Jay was with the University of Alaska.

We hit the curb zigzagging to park at the back of the motel.  It bent the rim enough that we didn’t feel comfortable leaving it on.  We decided to change to the spare and get another wheel and tire at the next RV center we passed.  Good room.  Jay and I tried out the hot tub and pool.  563 miles for day 3.

Day 4:

Motel continental breakfast, fill up and on the road about 7:30.  It was actually 95 miles to the border.  We filled up with gas again at Portal, ND at the border so that we could make it to Regina.  Canadian customs was not bad.  Signage was pictures of a car to the left and a truck to the right.  We were afraid if we went left we might get into a position where the trailer might not go through, so we went with the truck sign.  Wrong…  The lady was nice about it though.  She just said the next time we come through to use the other entrance.  She asked us about firearms, alcohol, animals, etc.  We had to pull over and take our yellow card inside.  An even nicer lady asked us questions about where were going, how long we expected to be in Canada, etc.  She asked Jay about his new job and said that she assumed that we were related.  She asked if we had ever lived anywhere other than South Carolina and how much money we had.  She returned our passports and yellow card and sent us to the vehicle clearance counter.  Another lady took the yellow card and said, “You fellows are on your way”…

Canada roads and scenery looked just like ND, except not as many deer carcasses or ducks.  Some of the roads were 2-lane, but mostly 4-lane, and not as wide as interstate roads.  We missed a turn in Regina (pronounced with a long i), but stopped by a bank and exchanged some money.  We ended up on the other side of town at the landfill.  We didn’t have to backtrack all the way because we found a linking highway in the middle of town.  When we gassed up leaving Regina, we pulled into a gas bay that was full service.  We decided to move to a self-service bay for 2 cents per liter.  Canada has more full service stations than the U.S., and most of them are full service only and charge the same as self-service down the road. 

We saw what we thought was a coyote in a field along side the road.  It might have been a wolf, but we are pretty sure it wasn’t a dog.  Through Saskatoon toward the Alberta border it turned in to flat big sky type country.  It seemed that the sky went on almost forever.  When we stopped for gas about 7:00 the lady said it was about 3 hours to Edmonton and we started considering making it there.  We stopped at Lloydminister at the Alberta border, parked in Wendy’s parking lot and went to Subway.  Jay used his U.S. gift certificates.  They’d never seen them, but took them anyway.  We decided to go to Edmonton.  Approaching Edmonton a little after 10:00 Jay called his friend Dean and asked him to get on the interned at get us a room in Edmonton.  Dean got us a room at a Comfort Inn and gave us directions to get there.  We missed the exit but were able to find it without too much trouble, unless you consider our first argument trouble.  After arguing for a while we realized that we were arguing about two different turns of which one was no left turn and the other was left turn allowed.  The Comfort Inn was the best accommodations yet and was downtown.  Edmonton was a large city and reminded me of Atlanta 15-20 years ago.  We arrived at the motel at 11:15 CDT, but it was really 10:15 because time had changed at the border to MDT.  We were pretty tired so we crashed after 640 miles for day 4.

Day 5:

We slept a little later, walked to the post office where Jay sent Emma Kate and Anna a card.  We went by a bank to convert more money.  Gas is using lots of money at 77.9 to 97.9 per liter.

Jay was navigating when we missed the turn in Regina.  I paid him back leaving Edmonton.  About 30 minutes later we were back on track.  We stopped in a very small town for gas outside Edmonton called Onoway.  Jay had his money folded in his pocket and fumbled to get the correct denomination.  The young lady asked where we were from and where we were going.  She gave us each a small clip billfold to “keep our bills in so we don’t lose them.”  It was an advertisement for “Onoway Food and Gas.”  We had started to see some small patches of snow in northern ND, but after Whitecourt there were even larger patches. 

We crossed the border into British Columbia and then stopped at the Dawson Creek Alaskan Highway Information Center.  We took pictures at the Mile 0 sign.  In the information center we got some brochures.  The lady at the counter said that the oil and gas people were filling up motels along the way and asked how far we would go today.  We said probably Pink Mountain so she called to make sure there was a room and gave me the phone.  I gave my name and he said he’s save us a room.  I asked if he needed a credit card number and he said no.  When the lady at the information center found out Jay was moving to Fairbanks she said that she knew he’d be sending her cold weather this winter.  She said their weather always comes from Fairbanks.  She said it was so cold a few years back that the paint on her house turned into huge blisters and peeled off.

Several moose carcasses were along the road.  There were two large deer eating next to the woods along side the road.  Two large owls were sitting on fence posts about a mile apart.  This is the first day Jay and I got a bit weary during the day.  This traveling was unlike any other trips I have taken.  I don’t know if we had our adrenalin going or what.  It seemed that we knew that we weren’t just going to get there, but we would have to endure many days.  We just traveled.  Today we had more head winds and we had a few hills as steep as Saluda grade but not as long. 

Even though it was earlier than we normally stopped we were ready to stop at the Pink Mountain Motor Inn, which was in the middle of nowhere.  As we got out of the truck we began to see some snow flurries and wondered what the night had in store for us.  A Korean guy ran the Motor Inn.  The reason he held our room is because he didn’t have but one or two other customers that night.  It was quite rustic looking with no phone in the room, no shampoo, only 4 TV stations and the TBS station had Atlanta commercials.  We had lost our cell phone signal just outside Dawson Creek and still had none.  Jay bought a phone card to see if he could make some calls.  Jay and I both had hamburgers and tried their fries with gravy, which was good.  The Asian waitress, of course, asked where we were from and where we were going.  She was from Korea and had been there a month and was planning to stay a few more months and then travel.  She had lived in MN before moving to Pink Mountain.  Both of us fell asleep watching TV about 10:30 MDT.  We had made 621 mile on day 5.

Day 6:

We were up a little after 6:00, omelets for breakfast, gas at the service station/liquor store/post office across the road (the only other establishment at Pink Mountain).  We didn’t need ice each morning now.  The soft drinks and water were in the open truck bed and the weather outside was cool enough, however, the gravel dust along with the aluminum cans rubbing together rubbed lots of the paint off the cans.

There was less wind, but more hills.  I was filming the snow-covered Rockies when Jay yelled “Caribou!”  I swung the camera around and got a going away glimpse of the caribou.  We stayed behind a large RV for a long time, I think we were drafting.  We saw two caribou in the distance on the left side of the road walking at a normal pace.  They crossed the road in front of the RV which had to almost stop.  I was able to turn the video camera on and got a quick shot of these after they had crossed the road.

We got into the Canadian Rockies and had several pretty good climbs and descents then we skirted the rivers in the valleys.  There were not as many vehicles passing us, so we just took it easy at 40-55 mph.  We saw another deer, then another caribou just standing on the side of the road looking at us.  At Fort Nelson, Jay had to stop abruptly for a vehicle that was turning left.  We saw a bank and Jay changed some more money.  I felt of the hubs and they were much warmer than any other time.  It concerned us a little so we stopped at an Ace Hardware and bought a grease gun and gave each a shot of grease.  After we were on the road again we realized that usually all the hubs do not have a problem at once and the heat probably came from Jay having to apply the brakes abruptly as we entered Fort Nelson.  At the Toad River gas stop the hubs were cool again.  That was a relief.  The store/restaurant had baseball type caps on the ceiling with the bills pointed down.  It was full of them.  While I was in the restroom, Jay overheard a young man say that he was going to Alaska to help in the spring firefighting.  As we were leaving, someone asked if we knew German.  A German man was trying to ask questions and no one could understand him.

A goat was eating the salt off the edge of the road, and he barely looked at us as we went by him.  We hit our first small gravel section about 18 miles before Laird River.  It was a section less than ½ mile.  We stopped at Laird River Hot Springs, got our bathing suits and towels and walked about ¼ mile down a walkway through the marsh to the hot springs.  We ducked into the changing room, and then waded into the springs.  The water is more than 120 degrees when it comes out of the ground and had a sulphur smell but it was a very refreshing hot soak.  Jay and I were amused at the mid 40’s aged woman attired in only a thin pink T-shirt and white panties.  Jay called her the sag woman.  After we got dressed, we walked another few hundred yards to what they called the beta springs pool.  It was larger, but no one was in it.  As we walked out, an older couple was going in and asked us if the water was still hot.

On the road again we encountered a herd of about 25 buffalo on the right side of the road.  Some were lying down, others were grazing.  Then there were 5-6 on the left side and a couple of miles later there was a lone buffalo.  At Watson Lake we found a motel, more expensive, but a good room, with internet access so that Jay could check his e-mail.  The restaurant was closed and we checked the menu in the bar, but decided to see if the restaurant in the motel a country block down the road was any better.  They had home made pizza on special.  We got a large meat eaters pizza.  Several of the people who were at the hot springs came in. RVers and travelers like to talk.  The sag woman and her husband sat at the table beside us.  They usually summer in Butte, MT and winter in Phoenix, AZ.  She’s an architect and they will spend the summer in Anchorage this year.  He’s an environmental engineer not working in order to support his wife’s work.  The couple who asked us if the springs were still hot, probably in their 60’s, were going home south of Anchorage.  She said she had visited those springs for the first time in 1978.  After finding out what Jay was going to be doing in Fairbanks, the husband said there were difficulties with those kinds of jobs.

Jay was able to get on the internet to get his mail and I checked the weather.  Weather.com said that Watson Lake would have rain tonight changing to snow through mid-day tomorrow.  Whitehorse, about 400 miles away was a rain/snow mix tomorrow.  Wow, we had about a dozen TV channels, but still no cell service.  We stayed up a little later than usual.  We had traveled 473 miles on day 6.

Day 7:                          

Up at 6:30, I checked the weather while Jay showered.  It was supposed to be rainy there and snowing in Whitehorse.  After breakfast we filled up at Sign Post Tire Co. across the street from where people put their signs, license tags, etc. on posts and some buildings in the Sign Post Forest at Watson Lake.  Jay had read about the sign post forest and wanted to post his KREECHR tag, so we got a couple of nails from the gas station.  As we left I asked if the station attendant knew what the weather was toward Whitehorse.  His response was, “It’s what you get, there are two mountain ranges between us and you really don’t know”.  That wasn’t what I wanted to hear, but I guess it was the truth.  We stopped across the street and Jay nailed his KREECHR sign to a building while I filmed him.  Jay said some of his buddies would probably come by on their way to see him and he wanted to leave the tag for them to see and that if he ever drove through again he would probably take back.  We took a few pictures and left.

It was overcast, but about 50 miles out the sun came out.  Maybe we won’t hit snow??  Nobody passed us until 65 miles out.  We had only met 4 cars and one big truck.  Were people staying off the roads for a reason?  Traffic slowly started to pick up on the road.  We stopped at Haines Junction for gas in the afternoon, and ate leftover pizza and drank Beacon tea on a picnic table in the RV camping lot which was not yet open.  At this altitude the snow was covering most everything on the sides of the road.  About a mile past Haines Junction a small pickup had run into the 3 foot snow on the left side of the road, lost control and turned onto its side.  There were already two cars stopped so we eased on through.

We had originally planned to spend the night at Destruction Bay but had already decided to go further.  I’m glad we did because nothing was open.  Destruction Bay is a big bay on a lake where the wind had destroyed a large campsite during the original construction of the highway.  There were a couple of miles of construction with a 35 mph speed limit.  Then there were a couple of 6-7 mile stretches of gravel roads.  Then the pavement became almost like a roller coaster from the frost heaves.  It was slow going.  We had gotten gas at a place called Jake’s Corner and the attendant there said the truckers said the roads were about the best they had ever been.  I’m glad because it was very slow going with the frost heaves for miles and miles.  We just slowed down to 40-45 mph and finally came to Beaver Creek.  We stayed at Ida’s Motel and ate at Buckshot Betty’s which was recommended by the gas attendant at Kluane.  We ate fried chicken, slaw, salad, and fries.  There was a trucker going to Whitehorse and fisherman going to Anchorage there and both liked to talk.

The sun didn’t go down until after 10:30 PDT.  The roads were rough today, but at least it turned out to be a sunny day.  Another 542 miles in the bank for day 7.

Day 8:

We didn’t push to get up too early because we had less than 350 miles to go to Fairbanks.  Still no cell phone service.  We decided to wait until Tok to eat breakfast at Fast Eddies.  Kristy had been chatting with some of her Friends of Fairbanks on the internet and they had suggested Fast Eddies.  We stopped at the Yukon/Alaska line.  We took some pictures, stood on the line.  A 20-30 yard cleared boundary line is maintained through the forest.  My video camera batteries died as soon as I turned it on, so we didn’t get any film of our crossing into Alaska.

The U.S. Customs into Alaska was easy.  He asked about our purpose for entering Alaska.  Jay said he was moving to Fairbanks.  His question was “What brought that about?”  The roads were much better after Beaver Creek.  The frost heaves were less severe and less frequent.  We had a great breakfast at Fast Eddies.  We had omelets with biscuits and gravy.  Jay got Kristy a Fast Eddies T-shirt.  I got my first souvenirs at the next gas stop, an Alaska cap and Alaska Highway T-shirt.  Only a couple of hundred miles to go. 

Poor bird – our only road kill, a grouse type large bird was slowly walking across the road.  Jay slowed, blew the horn, but he acted as if he never knew we were coming.  We didn’t hear him hit so the trailer must have gotten him.  Jay saw it scattered behind us.  He said he hoped that wasn’t the Alaska state bird.