Destination Circle: Day 14

May 27, 2016

When I through Whitehorse last night in the rain, I noticed a Starbucks a couple of blocks from the Best Western, another surprise as there have been no free-standing Starbucks in the towns I've traveled through recently, and I certainly didn't expect to find one in Whitehorse.

So I worked there for an hour in the morning on the computer. Just outside the entrance, a ravaged Native was asking people for money. No one offered him anything as far as I could tell. I got a $5 Canadian bill ready to hand to him when I left, but he had moved on by then. The farther north I go in Canada, I see and hear more evidence and acknowledgement of First Nation peoples. Their concerns and redress for past wrongs is currently in the collective consciousness if judged by commentary on the CBC. Many place names are First Nation and several new museums and exhibits depict their history AND their present status.

Yukon Territory - west of Whitehorse

Then I drove 600 miles to Fairbanks on the Alaska (ALCAN) highway. I didn't intend to go that far, but it was fine, especially as the sun isn't setting until nearly midnight. It was a memorable day, driving all those miles with a billion trees and minimal signs of human intrusion on the land. 

I stopped a couple of times: at a First Nation Cultural Center in Haines Junction (Da Ku, meaning Our House) and then at Buckshot Betty's Roadhouse, a cozy place with a wood stove, a bakery, decent food, a friendly waitress, Canadian memorabilia for sale like T-shirts, sweatshirts and books about the North, and knickknacks near the register tempting those waiting to pay...items like “Wine Gum” which I never did figure out. The wrapper had the illustration of a piece of gum being pierced by a corkscrew.

Moose and calf - near Tok, Alaska

The Kluane National Park and Preserve west of Whitehorse matched the beauty of Banff and Jaspar National Parks and is also notable for massive ice fields behind the visible peaks. The traffic was minimal, and my day was mostly spent in the Canadian bush and wilderness, adjacent to mountains, driving over muskeg and bogs, past lakes and ponds and through spruce and alder, willows and aspen. Twice, I saw black bear along the roadside, and late in the day, a mother moose and her very young calf. I carefully showed down and stopped in the middle of the road to take photos. Such was the scarcity of traffic.

At one point, the highway became gravel...for miles. I wondered if I had missed a sign for this, but eventually came upon road construction crews with pilot cars and long waits x2, and then more  long stretches of gravel interrupted by an occasional brief segment of pavement...for at least 40 miles. Frost heave requires constant maintenance of this route. I waited for one pilot car near a lake with several pair of American Wigeons but, again, I haven't seen many birds this far north.

All day, I passed through brief rain showers, the sky dramatic and constantly changing with deep grey clouds moving in a bright blue expanse. The white trunks of the aspens (Maria's tree) are as lovely as the anything in this land.

Just after going through customs AGAIN, I stopped for gas which was $3.65/gallon, so I drove on, hoping it would be cheaper closer to Fairbanks, and it was in Tok (pronounced Toke). Ginny once dated a boy from Tok when we lived in Montana, a polite, gentle, shy kid who really liked her, but she wasn't that interested.

I came onto the 700,000 acre Tetlin National Wildlife Refuge but the Visitor Center was closed. It had a sod roof and a spacious deck overlooking marshy open habitat. The infamous Alaskan mosquitoes were hanging in the air waiting for me and I had miles to go....so didn't even think about hiking or checking out any of the backcountry of this refuge.

I don't know why I didn't get tired as I usually do after driving for 10 hours, but I felt mellow. I ate junk food (a bag of wedge-shaped orange slices and salt and vinegar potato skins), which normally would make me tired or bloated in addition to regretting my lack of discipline an hour after consumption but even that didn't happen. I was in the groove.....

Along the Alaska Highway

Fairbanks was a wild place in the early days of the oil pipeline, and my motel was across the street from a forlorn, now deserted, faded red building with “SHOW GIRLS” painted on the front. The book I “borrowed” from the motel in Williston talked about the Fairbanks of that era with “hookers on every street corner and guys with money falling out of their pockets.” The motel was a bit shabby and the curse of night noise continued to plague me with a very loud refrigerator. I unplugged that and kept looking at the clock and then outside. At 11 p.m., it was still very light. It's like the onset of evening is prolonged, as though the sun just stops a few hours.