We’re Goin’ North, the Rush is On

I’m sitting in the Fairhaven district of Bellingham, Washington, waiting to board the Alaska Marine Highway System’s ferry, the M/V Malaspina. I’ll be taking the ferry through the Inside Passage to Haines, where I’ll rejoin the terrestrial highway system and drive through a couple of hundred miles of the Yukon, circumnavigating Kluane and Wrangell-St. Elias national parks (Canadian and American, respectively) and mountain ranges, to return to Anchorage a few days hence. Simply put: the thought of retracing my steps through the entirety of British Columbia and the Yukon after having come south just four months ago was too terrible to contemplate. I’ll leave the majority of the driving — three days’ worth, this time of year — to someone else.

It’s a return, to Alaska of course, but also a return to a route taken long ago. Almost 19 years ago, to be exact. In May 1992, I was in this same town in my VW camper van with my dog, Spooner, and we were off on what was then a great adventure: a couple of months of cruising through the Great Land, living in our bus. It was a tremendous, truly life-altering trip in 1992, and coming down the hill toward the ferry terminal today got me wistful for those long-gone and vastly different days (and not just because I still wish Spooner were around to join me on these trips). Despite what this particular trip to Alaska will entail — how long I’ll be there, what my employment situation will be, how much work I’ll get done on my house, etc. — there’s always a sense of comfort when returning to Alaska. Not a return home, exactly — I’ll always be a New Englander — but a return to my second home but an equal first love. To say I’m looking forward to the journey would be an understatement.

And it’s been an interesting trip so far. I’ve watched spring emerge in places and yet seen winter still firmly in command. Orchards are blooming in California’s Central Valley, and flocks of ducks and geese are massing in Oregon’s Willamette Valley, prepping for their journey north. And yet, inland, in the Sierra Nevada mountains and beyond, in the Great Basin, in Utah’s high mountains, winter is still very much in control. But the fact remains: it’s only February but spring is indeed on the way. The vernal equinox is just 31 days away.

Last night’s full moon, which I enjoyed from around Eugene, Oregon, northward, seemed a portent of the times to come: bright, vibrant, glowing. I’m looking forward to the coming days.

(iPhone photo of the full moon rising over the mountains east of the Willamette Valley from the side of I-5 near Eugene, Oregon.)

Dateline: Shelby, Montana

Fort St. John, B.C. to Shelby, Montana
846 miles, 13.5 hours

That’s right: Shelby, Montana. Out here on the high line, where an impossibly bright full moon is lighting up the plains as bright as daytime. The moon is so bright that it takes a couple of seconds for your eyes to adjust when you look straight up at it after you’ve been staring ahead into the dark night while driving for so long.

Instead of turning right at Grand Prairie, Alberta, and heading back up into the Rockies and Jasper, I went left and out to the freeway, down through Calgary and across the border back into the United States. Not much to report: driving south on Highway 2 in Alberta is pretty much identical to driving south on I-25 in Colorado: Rocky Mountains to your right, northern plains as far as the eye can see…and cancerous subdivisions exploding out across the prairie around the cities. Other than the full moon, it was a pretty straightforward drive (no photos to share as a result).

Waking up in Fort St. John this morning, it was apparent: the wilderness part of the drive was over. With that in mind, the transportation aspect of the trip I mentioned yesterday came to the fore…and the miles just started rolling by. And with that, reports from the road come to a close.

Dateline: Fort St. John, British Columbia

Whitehorse to Fort St. John, BC
852 miles

Up and on the road in the pre-dawn darkness this morning…dark even though it was already 7am. Daylight is gettin’ scarce above 60 degrees and there are still two months to go until the solstice. Lock away those firearms, folks!

In the past two days I’ve driven most of the Alaska Highway (that main stretch, the run south of Watson Lake, Yukon, for the first time since July 1992). And after fifteen hundred miles I’ve come to a conclusion: the Alaska Highway is no longer a wilderness road. It is now a fully modern road that just happens to be in the wilderness.

As an example: I was able to cover 852 miles from Whitehorse to just short of the end of the highway itself in a day — and that included an hour’s interlude at Liard Hot Springs and a 15-minute construction delay. While I may or may not have exceeded the speed limit today, I got my doors blown off by a few people who were absolutely rollin’. And we all could have gone faster — the road is, for the most part, that solid. Fact: from Destruction Bay on Kluane Lake to where the road enters the Rockies just east of Liard Hot Springs, the Alaska Highway is bomber: well-built, solid, wide, safe. Sure, conditions — snow, ice, fog, wildlife nearby, etc. — can conspire to slow a drive down, but the windy, twisty, half-dirt, steep roadway of old — the one I remember from 1992 — is gone. Yes, from Destruction Bay west to the Alaska border there are frost heaves that will jar the fillings loose from your teeth. And yes, from Liard up and over the Rockies, it’s a windy, twisty drive that demands your attention. But other than those stretches, it’s a set-the-cruise-control-and-go drive with spectacular vistas.

And that’s what I did. This was not a journey — I’m not looking for any life-altering epiphanies this week. It’s not even a vacation or a photo expedition. This is a trip, plain and simple. As in: transportation. Moving from one place to another. And to that end, speed — while enjoying those spectacular vistas — is the name of the game.

Speaking of photos: I’d like to apologize for mine. Between my trusty, old little digital — which is about to give up the ghost — and me not bothering to slow down or do anything else to optimize a shot, the photos I’ve included here are just quick glimpses of what I’m seeing. And while I’d love to come back and get those eye-popping shots someday, there’s really only one lens that does justice to the vistas one can see from the Alaska Highway in places like the Yukon: the human eye. Nothing mechanical can adequately convey the sizes and distances here. It’s truly mind-blowing.

And since the road isn’t such a big deal anymore, you should make the trip someday.

PS: Liard Hot Springs…the pool all to myself…ahhhhh!
PPS: BIG jump in the critter count today: bison, caribou, moose (of course), stone sheep, a red fox…and the all-too-brief highlight of the trip: a wolf. Jet-black, bigger than Spooner but more lithe…gorgeous. Of course, when I spun around to get a closer look, he evaporated into the trees.

Morning in the Yukon
Yawn…just another roadside vista in northern BC
Bison beside the road, northern BC
Liard Hot Springs
Ahhhhh!
Sheep foraging along Muncho Lake, BC
Caribou, near Muncho Lake, BC