Alaska to Wisconsin, 2015: The first part

On September 13, 2015, after a journey of over 3,000 miles in 22 days, we pulled into Severance, Colorado, where we based our bus preparations (i.e. learning to drive it) before heading to Wisconsin. Our drive had been largely lackadaisical, and although we put in a few 500 mile days along the way, most of our legs being five or six hours of driving between campgrounds, AirBnBs, and friends' homes. We witnessed the aftermath of several horrifying accidents, saw a wide range of rare and unusual creatures, and even passed through what would become the scene of an armed standoff between self-proclaimed Patriots and law enforcement from local, state, and federal agencies only a few months later. But we'll get to all of that in due time. 

We started the trip with a 3:30 am check-in at the Alaska Marine Highway terminal in Auke Bay (Juneau), Alaska. 

Our trusty steed, Frank (aka Francine), a 2004 Ford Explorer, waits in the lead of lane 2.

I've always been partial to the Alaska ferry system, and enjoy the deep rumble of engines resonating through the steel vessels. Although the M/V Columbia, the largest vessel in the fleet, has abundant diversions (less abundant now that the bars have been closed on all the ferries), the LeConte is rather bare-bones, with a cafeteria, observation lounge, and a tiny solarium composing the main attractions on board. Regardless of the vessel, my home turf is always the solarium, where overhead lamps can turn chilly maritime air into a near-sauna, and where no view goes un-noticed - unless you're too busy looking one way to see a view in another direction.

Our vessel, the tiny M/V LeConte, hums at Dock 3 of the Alaska Marine Highway System's Auke Bay Terminal.

Northern Lynn Canal, the arm of the Pacific that connects the communities of Skagway, Haines, and Juneau, is a glacial fjord which only gets more awe-inspiring the further north you go, and Skagway, our destination, is at its northern end. With that said, the view from the back deck (and thus, the solarium) as we pulled out of Auke Bay wasn't too shabby.

Auke Bay, with the Mendenhall Glacier in the distance.

Sadly for photography, but as expected in Southeast Alaska, our voyage north was rather cloudy and gray. Waterfalls cascaded from hidden valleys and hanging glaciers tucked into the clouds and shrouding mist above us. Skagway was similarly wreathed - indeed, inundated - with the moist air which makes moss grow on any reasonably stationary object in the temperate rain forests of the Tongass (where we were) and Chugach (much further west and north) National Forests.

As we climbed up the White Pass towards Canada, we paused for a photo of Frank, with Skagway's water supply line in the background above the White Pass and Yukon Railroad's tracks.

We had stopped at the Skagway Brewing Company for lunch, partly because we weren't sure when our next good meal not cooked on a fire or camp stove would be, and partly to let the other ferry traffic clear Canadian customs before we got there. (Well, those reasons and because their Boom Town Brown and Spruce Tip Blonde Ale are both fantastic, and I hate to pass through Skagway without making sure that the newest batches are up to my expectations. I'm not usually into blonde ales, but the spruce tips really round this ale out into a phenomenally well-balanced, drinkable beer.)  Customs is always nerve-wracking enough when traveling in a fully-loaded (and I mean to-the-gills loaded with EVERYTHING we will need for the next two months, plus my ski gear, two bikes, a dog, etc.) car, and being there when it's busy is just asking for headaches. 

When we reached Canadian customs, it almost felt like one of those hot, dusty afternoons in a sleepy town that you see in old westerns. If there had been tumbleweeds, they would have been the only things moving other than clouds racing across the sky and gnarled trees whipped by the steady wind. We stopped at the obligatory "stop here until signaled forward" sign, and waited for the officer on duty to come out and wave us forward. He wore the dark blue para-military uniform you'd expect, replete with badges, flags, epaulets, heavy black boots, and close-cropped hair, but his smile was warm and his eyes signaled a delight at life missing from the demeanor of all too many border guards. 

Now I have to back up and explain that we had decided, against the advice of many well-wishing friends and family members, to carry bear spray with us on this trip. "Bear spray", if you're not familiar with it, is essentially industrial-strength (really, grizzly bear strength) mace. The can is around 12 oz instead of the usual 4 oz can of mace for self-defense against people, and as long as you're not firing it into the wind, it will shoot a fairly heavy stream of pepper spray 20 feet or more. Although quite common in Alaska, bear spray is illegal in Canada. And everyone we talked to reminded us of this. But we were going to be camping, in a tent, with a dog, in varying degrees of bear country, for the next month. We were damn well going to bring bear spray, and if the Canadians asked, they could take it - but otherwise, it was coming with us.

The customs officer opened with the standard question of "just the two of you traveling today?" to which we replied that we also had a dog in the vehicle. He was rather incredulous that we could have fit a dog into a vehicle with so much other stuff in it, but he eventually caught a glimpse of Kobi peeking out of his throne between the seats and moved on to the other questions. How long will you be in Canada? Where are you going? You'll be camping the whole way? You're taking the Cassiar Highway? Then, the "do-you-haves": Alcohol. Tobacco. Firearms. Bear spray. "Do you have any bear spray?"

"Yes, we do."

He paused for a moment, as if recalling our other answers. We were driving a route that, although paved in the last ten years, is still almost entirely wilderness, making the resource-extraction civic centers of Fort St. John and Fort Nelson along the Alaska-Canada Highway look positively metropolitan. A route where you fill up on gas every time you can, because if the next gas station is closed or out of gas, you may not make it to the next station after that. A route which, at its end, runs into the portion of the Yellowhead Highway known as the "Highway of Tears" because of the astounding number of hitch-hikers (predominantly women) who have gone missing along it in the last 40+ years. And that's when you know you're starting to get back to civilization. We were carrying food (there's nowhere to buy it along much of the route), and even if it was kept locked in the car, its scent could attract furry predators to the area of our camp.

He nodded. "Fair enough." And waved us across the border.

The Klondike Highway, which connects Skagway, AK with Whitehorse, Yukon Territory, passes through British Columbia briefly before entering the Yukon. The route winds between towering peaks through a rugged landscape of scraggly trees and rocky islands set in a maze of sinuous lakes. The lakes helped form a major route into the Yukon and interior Alaska during the gold rushes of those areas in the late 1800s, when prospectors would build boats on the Canadian side of the passes over the Coastal Range and take them all the way to the Yukon River and points beyond. Bove Island, in Tagish Lake, is an iconic view along the route.

Bove Island and Tagish Lake, Yukon Territory, Canada

We weren't in any particular hurry at this point in our journey, and only needed to get to Whitehorse, YT, 109 miles from Skagway the first day. We camped at the Hi Country RV Park, a facility I've stayed at many times in years past. Although my friend of many years, Rose, was no longer managing the campground, the new staff were friendly and welcoming, and glad to meet a return visitor. My favorite spots at the back edge of the campground were taken already, so we ended up closer to the road than I've usually stayed, but it was still wild enough that we had a fox come into camp and check us out that night. Kobi is generally pretty laissez-faire about other creatures, but something about the fox got him much more excited than I'd seen him in years. Growling with hackles up, straining at his lead, fixated on a being just out of our sight in the dark beyond the fire light. We finally saw it as it cut across a beam of light from the highway beyond: thick and full, unmistakable in its silhouette and crouching run. 

The next morning we broke camp for what would be the first of many times on this trip. We would eventually learn to pack the items we needed on a daily basis more efficiently, but this first re-packing was, simply put, a mess. We had finished "packing" the truck some time around one in the morning the night before, and instead of having things we would need on top of everything else, we had the things we had put in the truck last on top. So strange things which didn't fit anywhere else, but which we certainly didn't need while camping in the Yukon.

After unpacking half the truck and then more-or-less strategically re-packing it, we headed to Birch + Bear to meet Amanda, a Whitehorse friend of mine for a very late breakfast (lunch for Amanda). It was delicious. Undoubtedly the best food I've ever had in the Yukon, and close to the best food I've ever had in Canada. Heck, it was some of the best food we'd have in the next 5,000 miles, and we spent almost a week in the foodie-Mecca of Portland, Oregon among other places. Fresh vegetables, simple and yet exquisite sauces, whole grains...it was real food, and filled us up with a sense of warm optimism about our upcoming journey. We said goodbye (for now) to Amanda and thanked her for setting us off with bellies full of great food and hearts full of the knowledge that we'd find friends along the way, no matter how alone we might be for the miles between experiences shared with those we love.

After lunch, Jess and I took Kobi down to the banks of the Yukon River to stretch his legs before we hit the road again. We were surprised by a tiny, two-car historic "train" chugging past the very new building we had just eaten in; the century-plus between river travel, trains, and the new anchor of Whitehorse's riverfront redevelopment plan fused for one moment, and was gone around the bend before I could take a decent picture.

It's a caboose! No, it's an engine! It's a trolley! No, it's the whole train!

Our next stop, Boya Lake, back in British Columbia and 50 miles into the Cassiar Highway, would be our home for several days. Boya Lake is, simply put, absolutely beautiful. Glass-clear water, thunderstorms butting against distant mountains, loons calling in the distance. We hiked (really, walked, since Kobi is, at the age of 14, is not really into a "hiking" speed) around the lake, watched fish from the dock, talked to the camp hosts and fellow campers, received tours of enormous RVs, and celebrated my birthday from our campsite overlooking the lake. Although scavenging wood is prohibited within the campground, it is nearly surrounded by forest which burned a decade ago or more, and harvesting dead and downed wood from the burn is encouraged, so our campfires verged on bonfires as the night-time temperatures dropped to near freezing. 

Our dinners were "hobos", tinfoil-wrapped amalgamations of sausage, potatoes, onion, kale, butter, herbs, carrots, mushrooms, and other delicious things which Jess had prepared in Juneau for our trip; cooked on a bed of coals for an hour or more while we enjoyed the last of my home town Alaskan beer and the forlorn sound of loons on distant lakes, these metal-clad burritos would become a staple food for our trip, and continue to be campfire favorites even now that we have a roof over our heads and a real stove to cook on. (Obtaining local and/or organic ingredients, especially ethically-raised sausages lacking a laundry list of preservatives and questionable additives, has become our primary mission at grocery stores in small towns across North America.)

Kobi, setting the pace as usual.

Join us for the next leg of our trip, when we see what happens when a semi parks in an RV, how aerodynamic and agile cows are, and explore the logic of allowing charcoal fires in the middle of a drought-inspired burn ban.

Until then, happy adventures and safe travels, whatever road you find yourself on.

Cheers,
Ben