Things were great, and we took the Cassier Highway, it supposedly being a shorter way to Alcan. We would stop and swim in cold lakes with the dog, look at everything we could, and at Campgrounds we would hear about the bears that tore someone's tent apart. We tried to stay in the motels that appeared out of no where on the way. We have slept in the car, but it was not great. The motels were really pretty scrappy and old, and you could hear critters tearing around under the floor screeching either in pain or in lust. Tour buses would roar past us, or send up dust in front of us, and at one gas station we were warned about the buggies. Oh, yah, OK, and what were those, and we were told, 'oh, you know, them buggies!' We found out on the ALCAN as we were flying along, oblivious to much other than the gravel roads were pretty smooth for gravel, and then we hit a drop off, no warned of, and steep. We felt like we were flying, but we did land fairly smoothly with a clunk, and started slowing down for more reasons then self preservation. No, the car was OK, but the gravel was now deep dirt! The dirt is probably what kept us from breaking the car in two. And ahead of us were graders, huge graders, and what we found out were buggies. They are those enormous machines pulled behind other huge machines that scoop up dirt, fill their hopper, and take the dirt to other places and dump that dirt. There were no flaggers, and anything, and then we saw someone waving at us to come over this way. They pointed to a rocky tilting road scratched out of the side of the road that was our detour. No one was in the least surprised that we had done what we had done as no one cared! Well, that would explain the wrecks we would see off the road earlier in our trip.
So we did manage to get through Alaskan/Yukon resurfacing of roads in the Far North. And onto Alcan, on the border between the Yukon and Alaska out in the muskeg middle of no where short black fir tree North. We were put up in a spare apt. for my husband's training so we could move on up to Poker Creek for the summer. This is the northern most land post in the U. S. Whoopee! There were interesting things at Alcan to absorb, like where not to walk the dog, etc, the dump area where one year they tried to raise pigs so they could eat the Post's garbage, but in penning them in, they made nice meals for the local bears. There was water very close in the muskeg and firs. So the dog and I stayed close. My husband did training, working at the Post, learning just what goes on at the Crossing. And he met the people working there, and what was what. On guy wore his gun, and was told, so if it went off it would should him in the jewels. There was a little neat lady who ran the Post Office, which was a tiny shack out in front if the Post Bldg. She had a great story about trapping with her husband some time ago, and being told that the little ground squirrels would make a good project. Her husband didn't last long. She trapped them all summer and skinned them and prepared the tiny pelts. When they took their catch to the trader in the Fall she was asked what were these things, and when she told them, she was informed that she had been duped! They weren't worth a plugged nickel. I think people could and would go stir crazy in that place.
The people who came through were mostly locals, travelers, tour busses, German's on motorcycles with fishing rods, German tour busses called Papa Bears, and Baby Bears, and hippies, and a few people lost wandering back and forth between the border Posts, which in actuality were miles apart. My husband got acar with two young fellows in it that wove their way up to the stop sign, singing, and laughing. They were both high on pot, and oblivious to much at all, and still had enough to be confiscated. When told that they owed a fine, and if they didn't have it, their car would be confiscated in place of the money, and they were on their own in the wilderness, they magically found the money!
We soon moved up to the boundary Post at Poker Creek via Tok, AK in our Audi sedan that had received much punishment on the road, and would receive more. We loaded up on groceries at Tok, and turned North on another really scabby dirt road, and wondered. When we stopped for a pee break for dog and people, we found a pile of caribou legs, fairly newly removed, that added up to 13. The dog was fascinated. Further on our travels the road disappeared. It had looked like it was scrapped in an orderly fashion, and then it looked like it just ended. We stopped, thought, and decided to creep along on what was before us hoping we would find the other part of the road. Maybe in 5 miles, after passing a car that had been pushed off to the side of the dirt, we came to another area that resembled a road. Soon we came to Chicken, and could stop for something to eat, although it was really a bar that was open. We got a piece of pie, heard people talking about the local bears, which were blond grizzlies, it sounded like, and big. There was a gas station there, outhouses, and the reason it was called Chicken is because no one knew how to spell ptarmigan, or so we were told. It could have been that you were a chicken if you didn't go on from there. But we proceeded, hoping the road would stay a road.
No comments:
Post a Comment