On the road, at last

We were up and packing again before dawn.  It took 4 more hours to finish, but finally, at 10:30, we were on the road.

Lately, most of our days have been overcast and drizzly, but today it was all blue skies, white clouds, and sunshine.  Most auspicious.

About an hour out of town, the highway begins to follow the Matanuska River through the narrow winding valley that separates the Chugach from the Talkeetna Mountains.  Much to our delight, the autumn foliage there is at its peak.

Roadside view of Matanuska River valley

The autumn color of Alaskan forests, as is the case with most of the western forests I've seen, is yellow, and I confess I've always found them lacking, having spent my first 11 autumns surrounded by the reds and oranges of New England, but today I was truly wowed. The leaves seen against the bright blue sky looked like gold set on fire.

We hoped to get much farther, but due to our late start, we have only made it as far as Glennallen.  We are at an RV park that has only 10 sites and is not full.  We have water, electric, and sewer hook up but absolutely nothing else. Luckily, we have not been at this long enough to even know what's missing.

Day 1
Anchorage, Alaska - Glennallen, Alaska

Daily Mileage:  185

Total Mileage:  185

Packing

Our time estimate was just a little off.  We packed all day.  We did not get it all done.  Once again I am too tired to see straight.  The plan is to leave tomorrow.

Let's go shopping

Nancy and I were too excited to stay in bed past 5:30.  She thought we could get our last minute shopping done before picking up the RV and still have enough time afterwards to get it loaded for an early start in the morning.  The first item on our to-do list was to get a health certificate for Sadie (a requirement for getting her into Canada), so at 6:45, we were at the 24-hour vet clinic.  By the time we got the call to come get the RV, around 11:00, we had barely made a dent in our shopping list.  By the end of the day, we have been to 18 stores, some in multiple locations.

I am dead on my feet and we haven't begun to pack.  The plan now is to do that in the morning, hopefully in a couple of hours or so, and then hit the road.

Congratulations, you are now the proud owner of . . .

a 29 foot 2006 Gulf Stream Yellowstone motorhome.  After waiting semi-patiently all summer, the big moment finally arrived this morning.  This RV is both older and longer than we were looking for, but, happily, it is also quite a bit cheaper than anything else we have seen.  We went to pick it up this afternoon, only to find that we can't take delivery until sometime tomorrow.  The dealer hadn't realized until the last minute that it has seasonal license plates (good only from May to November) and it will take until sometime tomorrow to get regular plates put on.

Getting out of Dodge

The city of Anchorage started as a tent city around the main construction base for the Alaska Railroad.  It was incorporated in 1920 and ceased to exist in 1975 when it merged with the Borough (like Louisiana, Alaska has no counties) to become the Municipality of Anchorage. The Municipality is slightly larger than the state of Delaware, but because of the Chugach Mountains, only a tiny fraction of this landmass is habitable by anything other than moose and bears.

Anchorage (the city) sits at the western edge of the Chugach Mountains on a large tongue of gravel left behind eons ago by a retreating glacier.  It is shaped roughly like an arrow head with the base attached to the mountains and surrounded on the other two sides by the waters of Cook Inlet.  For obvious reasons, the most popular way to leave town nowadays is by air. To leave by road, Alaska Highway 1 is quite literally the only way to go.  Ironically, if you were hoping to end up someplace that is not Alaska, you have to start your journey by heading north.  Drive south instead and in about five hours you will run out of road and find yourself in the hamlet of Homer, which proudly proclaims itself to be a drinking village with a fishing problem.  

The Great Land

Alaska is a corruption of the native word Alyeska that means Great Land.  We have lived here since 1999, but people have called the Great Land home since the age of the Wooly Mammoths, and for all those millennia, as far as we know, there wasn't a single event, a single human drama, significant enough to qualify as History.  That all changed on July 16, 1741.  On that day, Alaska was discovered by white folks.  A bit like Columbus, Vitus Bering did not actually know what he had discovered, but it didn't take others long to figure it out.

The Russian fur traders who took possession of Alaska in the name of the Czar came by sea and never got very far from it.  They liked the islands off the coast of southeastern Alaska and made the trading post at Sitka their capital.

The next great wave of newcomers, the gold seekers, also came by sea.  Some found the shiny stuff close to the sea--Juneau was a mining town and gold put Nome on the map--but most moved inland, to the Yukon Territory of Canada or the interior of Alaska.   Fairbanks, on the banks of the Chena River and for decades Alaska's largest city, was started as a trading post for the miners.

It was not until the late 1940s and early 50s that folks arrived here by land, thanks to a road that had been built in a panic in 1942 in the wake of the attack on Pearl Harbor.  Known officially since 1943 as the Alaska Highway but commonly still called the Al-Can from its original name, Alaska-Canada Military Highway, it runs from Dawson Creek in British Columbia to Delta Junction in Alaska, a distance of 1390 miles, and was built in only 10 months.  Though improved over the next several years, it was still a very rough, unpaved road when it was finally opened to civilian traffic in 1948.  Despite that, a great many, perhaps even most of those drawn north to Alaska in the early post-war years, came by way of the Alcan in the family car stuffed to overflowing with their kids, their dog (the dog seemed to be a requirement), and all their worldly possessions.

In a few weeks, we will be driving the Al-Can, as well, as it is still the only land link to the Outside--the term Alaskans actually use to denote the rest of the world.  Fortunately for us, it is now completely paved and not nearly the adventure it once was.

Planning

All journeys involve three initial stages:  intention, commitment, and planning.  The first two are essential.  The third is a trap.  We have been told all our lives that to succeed we need to have a plan.  And not just a plan, but a Plan A and a Plan B and, perhaps, a Plan C just for good measure.  We fall for this because planning gives us the illusion of being in control and makes us feel good.

Not all planning is overkill, of course.  Some is necessary, though usually far less than we imagine, and I confess that we have as much trouble as anyone deciding where to draw the line.  In spite of that, we are trying our best to let the Universe deal with the details and just enjoy whatever happens.