Wow.
What an amazing state folks. Midnight here now (4 hours behind Ottawa time) and
the sun is still above the horizon... I am in Fairbanks, Alaska (temperature was
27C today...NO humidity)... And HARDLY ANY BUGS. Did you realize Manitoba (my
home province for the first 23 years of my life) has about ten times as many
bugs as Alaska and Winnipeg is colder in winter than Fairbanks?? Canadians still
have the Americans beat!
Anyways, getting here was a different story...
My wife scared the shit out of me a couple of mornings ago. She doesn't like
sleeping in daylight so she brought herself a sleeping mask. Well, I forgot she
had it on. Imagine waking up one morning only to see a housefly magnified 100
times in front of your face spewing forth drool that I feared would melt me into
an inrecognizable puddle of mush... BUG EYES FROM THE OUTER REACHES OF HELL...
That was my experience...
So we took the Top of the World Highway into Alaska. It was indeed that... After
crossing the Yukon River in a ferry (Federal Government is too busy wasting
money to pay for a bridge) we slowly climbed until we were in tundra territory.
I slammed the car door at a rest stop and ran foolishly to the tundra. After a
few steps I realized I was sinking. Yes, my dear readers...three feet of soft
ground followed by PERMAFROST (by definition ground that never thaws or the look
my wife gives me by now constantly calling her Bug Eyes) Anyways, the treeline
was below us and the smokeline was everywhere. The area was inundated with
forest fires set by some brainless kid trying to fry a wasp with his mother's
hairspray and a lighter.
We reached the U.S./Canadian border and were greeted by a sign that read
"Welcome to the Highest Border Crossing in North America." This is probably the
worst posting for any customs officer. There were only two there, an American
and a Canadian. They would have to endure lousy weather, angry motorists and
each other. The American eventually greeted us by laughed sinisterly as we asked
him how the road on the American side was. We didn't see the Canadian on the
other side but noticed a self-help book on a chair entitled, "how to live in
Canada without access to a Tim Horton's."
The American side of the Top of the World Highway would render any males
impotent if the vehicle they were travelling in did not have properly
functioning shocks. A sign advertised the major metropolis of Chicken, Alaska to
be only 43 miles away. IT TOOK US TWO AND A HALF HOURS TO GET THERE! The
shoulders were soft and crumbling, the guardrails were non-existent, the gravel
was loose, the visibility was smoky and dusty, and worst of all, there wasn't a
McDonald's in sight. All the bugs in Alaska decided to meet the aquaintance of
our windshield and porcupines easily outran us. BUT THE WORST WAS YET TO COME...
So we arrived in Chicken, battered and bruised but still fully functional. A
one-eyed, two-toothed, 3-fingered mechanic shuffled over to us and asked if we
made it okay. To his disappointment, my father happily boasted that we did.
Little did he know...
Chicken by the way is the funniest part of Alaska. They have shirts with a baby
chick on them that say "I got laid in Chicken" Their University is called Gluck
U and the sports teams that come out of it are called "The Peckers." The locals
(gold-seekers of course) survived 100 years ago on ptarmigan meat but since they
couldn't spell that, they named the place Chicken. Chicken has 2 gift shops, a
boarded up schoolhouse, a liquor store, a cafeteria and the coolest bar you will
ever see. The ceiling of the bar was decorated with women's underwear and really
dirty trucker caps. My mother was appalled and ran back to the truck. We
couldn't get her out again until we left a trail of gift shop trinkets for her
to follow.
So the locals in Chicken assured us that the rest of the highway was paved.
However, the paving job resembled the feeling you get on an antique roller
coaster or the finest moguls found in the Rockies. My mother panicked and my
father cursed. And he had reason to...
22 miles from our destination of the day (Tok...) we stopped at a rest stop to
admire more burnt trees. My father noticed that one side of the trailer wheel
wells actually hung over the wheel. Yes, ladies and gentlemen...we did not
survive the Top of the World Highway intact. A spring broke.... The up and down
motion of the damned PAVED portion of the highway strained the spring so badly
that it snapped.
So we carefully rumbled into Tok (pronouned Toke...which rhymes with Poke or if
you prefer Smoke) Anyway, we found a "GOOD SAM" RV mechanic. Any campground or
RV Dealer/Repair recommended by "GOOD SAM" is supposed to be the best. This
dealer did not disappoint. The mechanic ignored the Ferrari that he was working
on (and co-incidently the 22-year old supermodel owner he was diagnosing) and
excitedly hurried to our trailer. Three hours later we were happily at our
campground. Apparantly this place gets a great deal of business from the Top of
the f#$^%'n World Highway. I'm sure they strategically place small landmines
throughout the highway to throw even the hardiest RV off course and over a
ravine.
I forgot to mention that we visited Bonanza Creek in Dawson City. This was the
location where gold was first discovered and started the Klondike Rush. This was
also the location where my mother enthusiasically looked for gold herself and
decided to put 47 lbs. of rocks in her purse to bring back for her grandchild. I
pity anyone who tries to grab her purse...
We ate in a restaurant that evening (only the 2nd time so far on the whole trip)
and I purposely ordered the Alaskan Burger. Imagine the most horrific
cholesterol commercial on T.V. and you'll know what this burger is about. I
couldn't fit my mouth around the damn thing and most of it ended up spilling on
my lap. I managed to catch a thin strand of onion with my mouth to the pure
delight of my wife. My mom ordered dainty little chicken nuggets and Mary
ordered some healthy kind of chicken. My father decided to skip dinner and watch
the mechanic fix our RV for over 3 hours instead. He would have starved to death
had my mother not brought him a sandwich
A leisurely drive the next day brought us to Fairbanks where it was over 30C
(warmer than Ottawa and Winnipeg!) We couldn't level the tailer so my father
opted to kick the jack instead. After a brief vist to the hospital to reattach
his toe, we use my mom's rock purse to level the trailer.
We were greeted at my campground by the most enthusiastic employee I've ever
met. We were taught the history of Fairbanks and informed of the attractions we
could not miss. We were also told the trajectory range of the inground sprinkler
systems and the average thickness of the bark of nearby popular trees. What we
didn't need to know was how a chipmunk drowned in an Ohio's couple's sewer hose
just last week or that the owner of the campground contracted genital herpes
when he was just nineteen.
So Fairbanks had only 3/4 of an hour of complete darkness last night. Although
the sun set around midnight and rose again at 4:30, the twilight never seemed to
fade. Since the average age of most RV campgrounds is around 105, most residents
were cheerfully up by 5:00 a.m. One gentleman walked his stupid weiner dogs and
their constant yipping changed the tone of my dreams from pleasant to hostile. I
remember waking up imagining crushing their cute little heads in a factory
strengh vise. Another elderly gentleman decided to comment on someone else's
truck and managed to sustain a decibal level similar to the float planes taking
off in the nearby pond.
So we toured Fairbanks that day. A brief visit to a section of the Alaskan
pipeline was one of the highlights. My father actually suggested to Mary that
she straddle the pipeline. I felt she was better off just stroking it. My father
enjoys reading every word on those information signs that accompany any learning
environment. If he were in a museum it would take him days to actually leave it.
Anyway, he has read all about the Alaskan pipeline now and proceeded to quiz us
on the finer points of it until dinnertime. The rest of Fairbanks was about as
interesting as watching my mother count pills. Thankfully a bug decided to crawl
up Mary's leg to create some excitement. Her ensuing cry of panic caused us to
nearly crash into another section of the pipeline therefore ensuring that the
flow of oil would be temporarily disrupted from Prudhoe Bay to Valdez. This in
turn would be blamed on terrorism and the air force base near Fairbanks would be
called into action. All because Mary has a little bug phobia...
So Mary and I have decided to leave my father and his museums as well as my
mother and her hair curlers behind for 27 hours. We have planned the sidetrip of
a lifetime. We will be departing to Barrow, Alaska from here in Fairbanks
tomorrow morning at 7:59 ADT (four hours behind Ottawa) Our flight on Alaskan
airlines lasts about 1 and a half hours. Barrow is one of the most northerly
inhabited places on Earth. It is the highest point in the U.S.A. We will be just
north of 71 degrees lattitude. While there, we will see how the people live in
such a cold, desolate place. The forecast tomorrow is for fog in the morning,
otherwise mainly sunny with a high of 5C. We will be staying overnight at the
Top of the World Hotel (I hope it isn't like the highway with the same name) and
then flying back on Friday.
Wish us luck! I'm sure I have a really long E-mail about that experience (as if
this one wasn't long enough!)
Thanks for reading!
Steve Pankiewicz
