The ALCAN

It’s just not easy to describe how odd it is to actually be in someplace like eastern Africa for the first time. Easier to describe is how we got here. We drove. A lot. And we flew. A lot. In our day and age, traveling halfway around the globe involves a lot of sitting.

As much as we wanted the trip to be an organized blitzkrieg, since we were traveling with 4 children under 10 and a dog, there’s hardly any surprise that we ended up with something more like a cattle run. Effective, yes, organized and flawless, no, and that was clear from the beginning. 2 hours after we were supposed to leave, I realize there is no way to finagle all of our luggage into the Bourban. Frantic mode time, which is a step down from panic mode.

Call Sears. Ask if they have a car top carrier. Explain to the girl on the phone what a car top carrier is (seriously? Yes, it’s that big plastic thing that goes on top of a car. Go work in a shoe store), buy and install in parking lot of Sears by yourself. Somewhere in the vicinity of four hours late, we’re finally all packed and ready to go.

We took a risk traveling the ALCAN (Alaska-Canada Highway) in late March, with the ever-present danger of getting hit with a spring snowstorm. I had my snow chains just in case, although later on the Bourban proved itself a pretty good master of poor road conditions. Divine Intervention was on our side, though, and we had clear skies all the way through Canada. In fact, the driving was the best in the furthest north of the Yukon Territories and deteriorated as we got closer to the lower 48. That is, with the exception of the 25 miles or so of Canada directly after the Alaskan border. I guess the Canadians don’t bother to maintain the road out of Canada.

In the Yukon, the roads were paved all the way through, which is a change from two years ago, and we passed cars maybe once every 15 minutes; empty enough to avoid any potholes, but crowded enough that I wasn’t terrified of breaking down and no one coming by to help. Just to clarify for those imagining us driving through snow-covered dirt lanes from Alaska, we were in a raised, paved highway with hardly a snowflake on it, although there were very large snow banks on the side. The drive through the northern part of the Rockies in British Columbia wasn’t my favorite, but we made it a point to let the big trucks go by us, kept a steady, slow pace and made it just fine. Again, no snow on the road, but the sloping ground and bright sun were working together to keep the roads wet. Luckily, no avalanches, although some parts of the road were next to mountain sides looking just ready to unleash their snow in a spring avalance. If I ever did the drive again in March, it would be earlier when things were a bit more frozen.

From Fort Nelson on south, we were in “civilization,” and had to deal with a bunch of Canadian workers in big trucks pissed off that I was only doing 5 kilometers over the speed limit. It’s amazing how perception skews everything; 2 years ago, I thought Fort Nelson, located pretty far north in British Columbia, was a big town in the middle of nowhere. On the way back, looking at the random farms, power lines and driveways, it felt crowded every mile south of Fort Nelson. Nothing like living in a village of only 40 people off the road system for 2 years to change your perspective.