On the Road 8 – With Donner
PART I –This Land is Your Land, this Land is My Land
My long 117-day, 13,541-mile (not counting air travel) journey that just ended, On The Road 8 (OTR8),
was planned to retrace in large part all seven of my previous road trips with
my dogs Sonntag, Leben and Erde, and to take Donner and me northeast to the end
of the road in Labrador, west across all of Canada, north to the Arctic in
Canada and Alaska, and home again by way of the Alaska Highway, Inside Passage, the
west coast to San Francesco, and across that 10 states that cut through all of middle
America, pitching our tent every day in some of the most magnificent campsites
on this planet, adding a few previously untraveled highways, byways and
campsites along the way. The magnet to pull us to Alaska were my hope to visit
the site just above the 68th parallel in Alaska where I scattered
Sonntag’s and his sister Kessie’s ashes in 2001, and the three coveted permits I
had to drive the magnificent Denali Park Road in mid-September. A few pesky
issues at home delayed the start of the trip, signally that our ambitious plans
would have to be scaled back some and saved for another day so we could to
arrive in Fairbanks, Alaska, no later than September 11. On August 9th,
we finally got underway.
As has become my custom on these trips, our first campsite
was in New York State, at the foot
of the very mountain that once was home to my old Boy Scout
camp, now a nature preserve, where my passion for camping was ignited. From
there we travelled northeast through New England, ending up in Maine, where we
celebrated the 100th anniversary of the National Park System at Seawall
Camp in Acadia National Park. Entering
Canada in New Brunswick, because of the time constraint, I decided to save my rerun
of the 774-mile (1164 miles with the Quebec leg added) Trans-Labrador Highway
for a future trip, and so headed north into Quebec.
Just as we were about to enter Quebec, the Defender chocked.
Thanks to the help of a good Samaritan named Dennis, I worked through my
options, and after a tow of 50 miles to the St. Lawrence River, we bivouacked
for 10 days on the river until I was assured and confident that all was in
order with the Defender for us to move on. If you read my blog entries for
those days, you will see how serious I was about that decision. I had to regain my confidence in the Defender
before I headed north. I, wrongly, as it turns out, reasoned that on all my
seven prior road trips, only once did we have a layover due to a Defender
malfunction (In Newfoundland in 2001), and so the odds of having more than one layover
on this trip were small. Relieved that I
had gotten my one layover for this trip out of the way, we moved on, albeit
cautiously, 350 miles north to the little town of Chibougamau.
My original plans called for us from there to travel the
253-mile unpaved Route du
Nord to James Bay, but, again, time was of the essence, so after a 40-mile
trial run on that road, and a vow to return to finish it, I turned the Defender
around and started the 2150-mile drive across Canada to Alberta and the Canadian
Rockies, starting each day’s drive with Pete Seeger’s This Land is Your Land, with Canadian landmarks substituted for the
American ones out of respect for the equally magnificent Canadian lands. When I
play that song now at home, my whole spirit is lifted up, and I am immediately
transported back to the thousands of miles of road I traveled listening to that
wonderful song, witnessing Seeger’s words right before my eyes. (Incidentally,
when I was growing up, I could see Pete Seeger’s plot of land from my bedroom
window across the Hudson River.)
Needing to bolster my confidence in the Defender’s readiness
to go north before I reached the point of no return, I diverted our route 200
miles from Edmonton to Calgary to have the Defender serviced and checked out by
a Land Rover dealer there. My confidence
restored, energized every day by Johnny Horton’s spirited “North to Alaska,” we headed north, passing through the absolutely
splendid Banff and Jasper parks, driving Canada’s infamous Highway of Tears,
and at the North to Alaska sign in Kitwanga, BC, turning north to Alaska on the lonely but
wonderful 450-mile Cassiar
Highway, which ends on the Alaska-Canada (Alcan) Highway in the Yukon.
On the Alcan, I had another decision to make: drive directly
to Dawson City or take the 362-mile, rarely traveled, rough, dirt road
roundabout route, the Campbell Highway.
I opted for the latter and was rewarded with a rich landscape of nature at its
finest. Over the two-day drive, we encountered no more than a half dozen vehicles
in either direction. Solitude in as purest a form it can get.
Forty miles from Dawson City, another decision had to be
made: drive directly to Dawson City on the Yukon River or take a side trip up
and down the 417- mile dirt and gravel Dempster Highway to
Inuvik, Northwest Territories, a road I traveled with Leben and Erde back in
2001. I decided to carry on to Dawson City, not only for time reasons, but
because the new 70-mile extension of the road from Inuvik to the Arctic Ocean
would not be completed until 2017, an excuse to return in the future.
Arriving late in Dawson City on September 9th, I checked
my email for the first time in a week and found a message from Stefanie, a
24-year old German medical student touring Canada whom I had met on the Jasper highway,
asking if she could join me for the Denali part of my trip. Since she was the first (and only) person to take
me up on my offer for someone to join me for the Denali drive, I agreed, and
also invited her to join me for the 414-mile dirt and gravel Dalton Highway part of
the trip to the Arctic, warning her that it would be risky, cold and dirty.
After a pleasant night camped right on banks of the Yukon
River across from quaint, historic Dawson City of Klondike
fame, Donner and I jumped onto the superb 79-mile dirt and gravel Top of the World
Highway that connects the Yukon with Alaska, keeping my eyes peeled the
entire ride for the wheel that in 2013 fell off of Sonntag’s wheelchair as it
was lashed to the roof rack ladder on the rear of my Defender, with no success.
From there, after another 105 miles over some rather challenging roads, we hopped
onto the Alcan for
the final 212-mile drive to Fairbanks where, two days after I invited Stefanie to
join me, I picked her up at the airport at midnight, and she in effect dove
from reading my blog on her computer screen into a two-week adventure she will
recall for the rest of her life, as I will.
PART II – North to Alaska
The Dalton Highway. This was my fourth trip up and
down the Dalton, also known as “the Pipeline Haul Road,” a dirt and gravel road
that snakes 414 miles alongside the 48-inch oil pipeline
that at one time carried 25% of the US oil production For me, there are three
parts to the road, which starts 80 miles north of Fairbanks and ends in
Deadhorse at Prudhoe Bay,. The first part road runs 244 miles from its start to
Atigun Pass and is bordered on the west by the splendid Brooks Range and rarely-visited
Gates of the Arctic National Park and Preserve (where I spent a month
backpacking and rafting in 1996), passing through such landmarks as the Arctic
Circle, Coldfoot and Wiseman along the way. The second part is the treacherous
4739-foot Atigun Pass itself, which was featured on two seasons of the History
Channel’s Ice Road Truckers. The
third part, the North Slope, runs 170 miles from the north side of Atigun Pass
to Deadhorse and is bordered on the east by the magnificent but
politically-embattled Arctic National Wildlife Reserve (“ANWR”). My goal was to
reach the site about 50 miles north of Atigun Pass where on August 21, 2001, I
scattered my beloved Sonntag’s and Kessie’s ashes, the same site of the
National Geographic photo of Sonntag and me heading into our tent at night in
the middle of a snowstorm exactly one year before. (68.32.59.71 N/ 149.29.17.63
W). For better or worse, the weather during our three days on the Dalton may
not have been the best for sightseeing, but it was for drama. Fog, overcast,
snow, cold and mud were the words that best described what we encountered, but
that was just fine with me because I had experienced the Dalton before in
better weather, and now I had the opportunity to see its bleaker twin. I shared the rough driving with Stefanie, who
was the only non-mechanic ever to drive the Defender, not out of need, but for
her as an equal travel partner to experience the Dalton as an actor instead of
an observer. We pitched our tent two nights right on the snowy Arctic Circle
itself. On the second day, when we reached the very peak of Atigun Pass, the
wintery weather conditions during foul, and despite having made it to parallel
68, just a few miles short my goal after almost 7000 miles of travel, we jointly
decided that it was too risky to continue and so turned the Defender around to
head back down the pass. What happened
next I described in some detail on this blog. Suffice it is to say here that
the first couple of hundred feet or so heading back down the most treacherous
part of the pass were somewhat problematic, but the Defender did what it was
supposed to do and the three of us made it to safety without any incident of personal
consequence. When we reached our camp in
Fairbanks at the end of the third day, only Stefanie will be able to describe my
elation over what we had just accomplished or her own appreciation for being
part of a once-in-a-lifetime adventure.
Denali National Park. This was my fourth time in
Denali. The first time was in 1992 when I backpacked in the park, during which at
one point I was about 16 miles away from the hapless Chris McCandless (Into the Wild) who was in his last days.
The second time was in 2000, when Sonntag and I spent three days in Teklanika
campground on our way back from the Arctic. The third time was in 2013 when I
was fortunate to have secured two permits to drive the entire 90-mile Denali
road after the season ended. Before this
trip, thanks to a couple of dozen family members and friends, I was able to
secure passes to drive that road again over three days. Stefanie and I left
Fairbanks the morning after we returned from the Dalton and arrived at Denali
just in time to set up camp at Teklanika that night and prepare for the first
of our three drives thru that luscious landscape that is home to the tallest
mountain in North America and her attendant mountains, and flora and fauna that
is nothing less than breathtaking. Driving the 90-mile dirt road is a challenge
in many places even for experienced drives, but everyone who drives it is
rewarded with an experience that will stay with them forever. Of the three days we drove the road, one day
was as perfect as it gets, one day was just the opposite with snow, and the
other day half of each, confirming my decision to try for secure enough permits
to justify, if not reward, the 8000-mile or so drive there and back from my
home in DC. It would be futile for me to try to describe what we saw because driving the Denali road
seizes not only your visual sense, but all your senses, and emotions as well.
Driving up to ten hours each day was never boring, riveted as our eyes were to
the road and all that its lush borders offered, and it offered a lot, constantly
on the lookout for grizzlies, wolves, moose, caribou, mountain goats, Dall
sheep, and the many other species for whom this is home. Whether we saw those
animals or not was not important; what was important was knowing that they were
there, and that if we saw them, it was in their own homes, doing what their
natural instincts directed them to do. Stefanie’s reaction to all of what she
experienced was nothing short of elation; my experience was twice that because
I not only experienced what she did, but also the joy of sharing this drama
with someone who might never have had the chance otherwise. As for Donner,
well, he took in all the new smells at every stop, smells that probably
exceeded by a wide margin anything he ever experienced or even imagined.
During the Dalton and Denali outings, Stefanie and I talked when we were not silenced by what we were experiencing. During our talks,
one of the things we learned that we had in common was how much we enjoyed the
aria, Nessun Dorma, from
Puccini’s last opera, Turandot, especially Calif’s determined vow in his
final words, Vincero (I will win), so
we adopted that as the music framing our joint experience and played it over
and over again to heighten what we were experiencing. It fit the drama quite
well, and what awaited me down the road as well. Just listen to that aria and
imagine natural beauty of equal magnitude all around you. It was
intoxicating.
PART III – The Long Journey Home
The biggest problem
with driving your own vehicle on a road trip that takes you 7000 miles from
your home is that you have to get yourself and your vehicle back home.
This is the story of that return for this trip.
The Alcan
Diary
After Denali,
we drove the 265 miles to Anchorage for Stefanie to catch her plane. While
there, I learned that my September 25th ferry to Bellingham, Washington,
had broken down and the next ferry would be on September 29th to Prince
Rupert, Canada, and from there I would have catch another ferry to Vancouver
Island, so I delayed my departure a few more days to prolong my goodbyes to my
travel partner of two weeks. On Saturday, September 24th, I set out
for the 317-mile drive to the Alcan via the Glenn and Richardson Highways,
camping for the night at the deserted Eagle Trail camp. The next morning, it
took about 30 turns to fire up the Defender, but I attributed that to the below
freezing temperature and nothing more. Whatever
the real reason, I figured, in less than 500 miles I would be boarding the ferry
and then be in reach of garages where the Defender could be checked out again.
On the Alcan
from Tok (AK) to Beaver Creek (YT), just after entering Canada, the Defender
ran into a deep frost heave, made worse by a huge pothole lurking at its bottom.
I never recalled the Defender taking such a large hit, but everything seemed to
be okay, so I drove on. My campsite goal
for the night was Destruction Bay, about 122 miles from Beaver Creek, although
I did not know if any of the Yukon camps there were still open or, if they
were, whether they would permit tent camping. Back in 2013, when I tried to
camp there, I was told that no tent camping was permitted within 50 miles on
either side of Destruction Bay because of the huge presence of grizzly bears.
At around 5:00 p.m., with sunset approaching fast, I decided to look for an
open campground before I entered the 50-mile grizzly zone, but found none, so I
decided to move on. If there were no open campgrounds in Destruction Bay or
tenting was not permitted again, I would do what I did in 2013, move on until I
get out of the 50-mile zone on the other side of Destruction Bay and bivouac somewhere
for the night.
No sooner had
I reached the 50-mile point to Destruction Bay, when I felt the Defender
starting to slow down while ascending a long, gradual hill, and could not get
any acceleration from it. I dismissed it as nothing more than the limitations
of my 3.9-liter engine and drove on. Then the engine sputtered three or four
times. Uh oh, a problem. Then I got acceleration
back. Close call, but what was that? Several minutes later, the same thing
happened again. Hmm, I don’t need this,
not now, not here. What’s going on? Then everything was alright. Whew. Close call again. I glanced at my GPS and saw that I was 38
miles from Destruction Bay, where I knew there was a gas station and motel, so
I decided to not accelerate any more than I had to, hope that I saw the last of
the problem, and maybe I could make it to Destruction Bay. Then it happened a
third time. My immediate suspicion was that maybe when I had filled up the gas
tank at Beaver Creek, 84 miles back, I had forgotten to replace the gas cap, a
contingency I was prepared for with two extra gas caps, so I pulled onto the
Alcan’s narrow shoulder (with steep drop-offs beyond that) to check that. I had
replaced it. Hmmm, what else could it be? When I got back into the Defender, it had
stalled. I tried unsuccessfully to restart it several times. $#%^*, I have a problem.
The first
thing I did was to jot down the geographical coordinates of my location: N 61°36.0200
W 139°29.4685. From what little I remembered of the area from my several prior
Alcan trips, I was 38 miles from a gas station and motel at Destruction Bay,
108 miles to little more at Haines Junction, 263 miles to about as much in
Haines, Alaska, where my ferry would be waiting in a few days, and 210 miles to
Whitehorse, the capital of the Yukon, where I only guessed that there would be
a few more services. I am prepared for
this, and there is a solution, were my next thoughts before I exited the
Defender. I set out my three reflective triangles on the empty highway, and
pulled out my satellite phone, which I rented for exactly this kind of thing. After two unsuccessful attempts to reach AAA,
I finally got one representative on the phone, but she was so uncooperative
that I hung up and called again. This
time I was insistent: After giving the representative my AAA number, I gave him
my geographical coordinates, telling him I did not have much time to talk, but
to send a tow truck. After he told me that AAA did not service that area of the
Yukon, I congratulated him on AAA’s now servicing the Yukon and ended the call.
(To his and AAA’s great credit, a truck did arrive four hours later from 100
miles away, but I sent it away for reasons I explained on my blog.)
There is no
way the I can summarize what took place over the next two days before the
Defender was towed the 210 miles to Whitehorse, and then over the following five
weeks as Donner and I camped in two different campgrounds in Whitehorse, and
then in the unheated storage room of a motel, in snowy weather that reached as low as 13° at
night, waiting for the Defender’s problem to be diagnosed and repaired, so I refer interested readers to the ALCAN
Diary on this blog starting
here. I will save my many
thoughts about that saga for a future writing so that others may learn from my
experience. Suffice it is to say here that I was prepared for this kind of
thing happening, knew my priorities, and refused to give up hope for the Defender,
which had served me well for 23 years.
Five weeks later,
Donner and I were on our way to catch the October 31 ferry to Bellingham, Washington.
The Inside Passage
There are two ways to get back to the lower 48 from Alaska,
drive back (e.g., 2264 miles from Anchorage to Seattle) or drive to Skagway
(812 miles) or Haines (756), and take the ferry to Bellingham, Washington, over
the Inside Passage. There was no way in the world that I was going to drive to
Seattle over the long, empty Alcan and equally problematic highways after that with
diminishing daylight hours and in conditions that had already turned wintery by
mdi-October, so we took the once-weekly ferry. Although I really did not want
to subject Donner to almost five days on the ferry confined to the Defender on
the car deck, except for perhaps three walks a day in the five ports we would
be visiting or on the car deck, I had no
choice. Before I got on the ferry, I
blogged that I hoped I did not have to go through a repeat of what I had been
through in 2001 and 2013 when the purser came over the load speaker and
announced, “Would the owner of the German shepherd dogs please report to the
car deck, your dogs are loose.” But that is exactly what happened, twice. Poor
Donner got so spooked by the solitude and loud ferry engine noises that he
twice crashed through the rear panel of my canvass roof and the metal gate
mounted over it, the second time somehow unhooking the leash I restrained him
with. Fortunately, he was not hurt during
the drop from his narrow escape hatch to the cement floor of the car deck
almost five-feet below.
Because of my concern for Donner, I could not enjoy any of
the amenities of the ferry, if there even were any, including the Inside
Passage itself. But one thing I did enjoy was 24 hours of conversation with a
36-year captain of an Alaskan fishing boat, Dustin Jones, whose trove of sea
stories was as abundant as were his obvious love of his craft and descriptions
of the tough life on the sea.
The ferry was supposed to arrive in Bellingham at 8:00 a.m.
Friday morning, just in time for me to keep an appointment at had that morning
in Seattle at a Land Rover specialist to give the Defender a complete checkup
before my long ride home across the lower 48, but because the captain held the
ferry up at a Canadian port for almost five hours so one of its crew members
could see a doctor for a medical condition, I could not keep that appointment
and still another trip-delaying setback
hit us on this trip. But I did manage to stop by the specialist’s shop late in
the day and returned on Monday for the checkup, for which he gave the Defender
the green light. Emboldened by the Defender’s positive checkup, my new
4.6-liter engine, and my penchant for not giving up, I had to make another
decision: do I continue with the original trip down the west coast to Yosemite
National Park, and then head home by way of the Nevada high desert camps, or cut
diagonally across the US and make it home in seven days?
Take Me Home, Country Roads
Before my journeys begin, I map out the general outline of
the routes I hope to take, but sometimes I do not make final decisions on some
routes until the last minute, and I do mean the last minute, like at the
highway intersection requiring me to turn left or right. And so it was with the
return trip from Seattle. I literally made my decision at I-5 when I had to either
go north to I-90 or south to loop onto highway 101 to drive the glorious west
coast highway to San Francisco. Confident
in the Defender, and eager to complete my planned trip, I turned south, met up
with the coastal road soon after, and spent the next six days and nights
getting back into the stride of and basking in being on the road, pitching our
tent in some old campgrounds and some new ones along the way. In Fort Bragg, I ran
into another road camper, Sarah Smith, a 21-year old bush pilot from Ontario,
and and for the following week we joined up, sometimes by design, sometimes by
chance, at different camps along the similar paths we were taking, comparing
notes of our respective lives on the road and talking about much more.
The reward for my decision to go south came at Yosemite, a
park I always dreamed to visit, but never imagined I would because of its
remoteness. We spent three days taking in a lot of what Yosemite had to offer,
including the gorgeous drive diagonally across the park en route to Nevada, which road I understand closed because of snow until
May just hours after we got on it, saving me more than a day’s travel.
In western California, and then in Nevada, the scenery
changed dramatically, as did my preferred musical selection. This time, the
song that would start each day’s drive would be John Denver’s Country
Roads, a song, by the way, that was conceived and played for the first time
at a night club (Cellar Door) just blocks from where I lived at the time and
where I live now. We had reached high desert land, characterized by wide open
desert valleys framed in the distance, sometimes on all four sides, by mountains
that were usually reached by straight empty roads stretching for miles as ar as
the eyes could see. Even the most jaundiced traveler could not help but
envision stagecoaches, the Pony Express, the U.S. Calvary and even some Indian
tribes hustling across this dramatic landscape.
The first night I pitched the tent in exquisite, remote and completely
empty Berlin Ichthyosaur State Park, fulfilling a promise I made to myself two
years before to camp there someday, and I was not dissatisfied that I did. But on
the following morning, for the first time since I left Whitehorse, I was nervous
about firing up the Defender, thinking it high not start, but it did. Still, an
hour later, on the road again, I opted to not drive the 56-mile dirt and gravel
and minimally maintained shortcut to route 50, and took the longer, 150-mile
paved road instead, still unnerved by a feeling about the Defender and what it might
take to convince a tow truck driver to drive the 200 miles from Ely, Nevada, to
fetch me on that shorter problematic road if something happened. For the first
time on any of my long trips, I had reined in my tolerance for risk.
My target campsite for the second night in the Nevada desert
was a park I had not visited before, the Great Basin National Park on Nevada’s
border with Utah. I pulled into the camp
long after the sun had set and only after a focused search for the camp that
involved my getting out of the Defender several times using my flashlight. The
camp was isolated, completely devoid of any light except for the stars and a
full moon, blanketed with snow and ice, and empty. The cold was so bitter (it reached 11 degrees
that night) and the snow and ice so formidable that I decided to sleep in the
cramped rear of the Defender, although in the morning I regretted making that
tradeoff.
The next morning, after my customary morning walk with
Donner, I got into the Defender to fire it up, but it would not start. At first
I thought it was a dead battery because I noticed that Donner had accidentally
hit the button for the driver’s seat heater during the night, which also explained
why it was not so cold in the Defender that night. I tried my battery jumper box,
but with no success. I then called 911 to ask for the rangers to come by with
their jumper cables, but also to check on my safety, but was told they would
not be on duty for several more hours. I called for AAA to send a tow truck
from Ely, 100 miles away, and they dispatched one. But two hours later I learned
that the truck had to turn back because the driver’s wife’s store in Ely had
been robbed during the night and the driver had to return to help her get things
in order. Another truck was dispatched and arrived five hours after the saga
started, and the driver confirmed that it was not my battery but something
else, so he towed us to Ely.
I spent the afternoon in Ely circling the Defender as the mechanic
methodically went thru his diagnostic checks. Finally, shortly before 5:00
p.m., he confidently declared that it was the ignition coil - make that my new ignition coil - but would probably not
be able to get one until Monday, three days later. As good luck after bad luck would
have it, I had an extra coil in my supply box and after it was installed, the
Defender was up and running again. That night, for the first time on all my
road trips, I “bivouacked” in a nearby motel so I could be near the garage if
the Defender did not start in the morning.
It did start, and we were on our way. Our goal for the day: Salina, Utah, 222 miles
distant, where we would jump onto the very road that would take us 2100 miles
home, I-70, and then Green River, 109 miles beyond that. “Country road, take me home, to the place
where I belong…I get the feeling that I should have been home yesterday,” I
sang along with John for most of the ride that day.
In Salina, I made one stop, right at the entrance to I-70. I
got out of the Defender, snapped the below picture, and then sent it to my blog
with the following posting:
Day 103, Nov 19, Saturday, 2:45 as it is
happening
I figure that on this great, maybe epic, journey, i traveled
more than 250 highways and biways. As soon as i send this posting, i
will get on the start of I-70, my last highway, which will take me to almost
my front door, still 2130 miles away, in few days.
I miss all those roads i traveled already.
|
As devoted readers of my blog now know, there was to be no
I-70 that day for the Defender, or any day after that for that matter, and certainly
no ‘I will be home in a few days.’ The Defender did not start when I got back
into it. Nor did it start the following week after the local mechanic installed
a new fuel pump, which he diagnosed as the problem. As with the Alcan saga, and with it my stay
in Whitehorse, and the St Lawrence saga before it, and the Ely saga after both,
I will save the lessons of the Salina saga for a future writing, referring impatient
new readers to this blog to read my Salina postings of the days that follolwed,
starting
here (with the above posting).
Suffice it is to say here that even if the mechanic had gotten the Defender
up and running again, I would not have driven it back to DC, not with diminishing
daylight hours, the more difficult roads ahead of us, very unpredictable and likely
problematic weather, and my need to restore my confidence in it once again.
Instead, after two weeks in Salina, I decided to ship it back by an enclosed auto
transport trailer sometime after December 8th. As for Donner and me, we flew back to DC from
Salt Lake City on December 4, 117 days after our journey started, a journey
that was not without its own problems, as I wrote on my blog that night (click
here).
Before I commit my reflections about this rather
interesting journey to writing, let me repeat what I wrote on day 103, that I
miss all those roads I traveled already. But let me add here that I also miss all the campsites
we pitched our tent in, all the people we met, especially the many who offered
us help along the way, all the dogs we (both Donner and I) met, especially the beautiful
Summer in Whitehorse, who died shortly after we left, the solitude, the nature,
and all the challenges and adventure we experienced, even though I do not take
these trips for either. I will also soon miss writing this blog each
night, giving me the chance to collect my thoughts about the day's events and
share this incredible adventure with those who are not as fortunate as I am to
take one like it, let alone eight like it, for that matter..
PART IV - REFLECTIONS
For want of any better word, I am calling this section Reflections,
although at times it will probably be something more than that, e.g., answers
to questions people asked me. I tried to
keep all but the trip’s happenings out of the above summary, and so this is the
opportunity for me to record, for my own purposes, my thoughts about this trip
that I want to remember. Since the below will really be only raw material for
use in some other format at some future time, there will be no order to the
below thoughts except as they come to mind as I write them. For this
reason, any numbers I assign may or may
not signify their importance to me.
1. Donner. Clearly, one of
the purposes for this trip was to treat that magnificent companion of mine,
Donner, to the same road trip that three of his predecessors had the opportunity
to take, before it is too late. Since
Donner is restricted to his leash at home outside, I cannot tell you enough the
joy I got from seeing this creature enjoy the freedom of the open space,
probably for the first time in his life.
Watching him chase and retrieve the “toys” thrown for him in the wide-open
spaces of empty campgrounds, running off-leash, and just basking in the
splendor of Nature, things he never could have imagined in his wildest dreams
in those Los Angeles back yards for his first four years tethered by a chain,
at times brought tears to my eyes. If I
ever take another journey like this, it will be to repeat those same feelings I
had, and to give him that experience again and again and again.
2. “Absolutely fantastic.” In this final posting, above, and on
my blog itself, I struggled to find the right adjectives to describe the roads,
the campsites, the sunrises and sunsets, the views, the flora and fauna, and
the experiences themselves, and I did see a lot of them: magnificent,
wonderful, fantastic, beautiful, splendid, sumptuous,
grand, impressive, imposing, superb, spectacular, resplendent, opulent, luxurious,
rich, fine, gorgeous, glorious, dazzling, elegant, majestic, lush, and even delicious were just
a few of those I used, often prefixed with an adverb, (e.g. absolutely. I don’t
know why I felt I had to do that, but I did.
What I should have done, other than omit those words, was to invent just
one word of my own and apply that word equally to just about everything I saw
and experienced. In Denali, for instance, it made no difference whether I was
seeing Denali herself in all her splendor or some lesser mountain or even a
ubiquitous plant, everything, without regard to its size, shape, color or
species, was of equal beauty simply because it was there and I was alive and
there to experience it. Even those things I experienced that most people would
label ugly or boring, e.g. the long drive over the prairies, had inherent
beauty in themselves, in the case of the prairie, because of the hard labor
that those who work those lands exert and the purpose of that work. And as for
the negative words I used to describe things like the weather or the roads,
those words were just the staring points for something positive, and all of
them eventually morphed into something positive, most often in terms of the
value they added to something or my own reaction to dealing with them.
3. Nightmares or
challenges? During the 117 days, as readers of my blog know well, there
were many challenges thrown my way, many with the Defender. Not once did I consider those challenges
nightmares or even crises. If I sometimes referred to them as problems, it was only
because I was reviving old labelling habits. Indeed, they were challenges, and
only challenges, and that’s how I treated them.
This was not my way of trying to white-wash what I was experiencing or paint
a rosy picture, trying to cover up the real seriousness of the incident. On the
contrary, this is the way I think about these things because it is a lot easier
for me to deal with an unwanted or unexpected incident when I think of it in
detached terms. Had I viewed the ALCAN
saga as a nightmare, for instance, instead of as a challenge, its outcome would
not have been the same. Of course, if at any time, Donner’s or my safety was violated,
I might have looked differently upon the incident, but to the extent that I
labelled the incident as simply challenges, I diverted the outcome away from
those that affected our safety and wellbeing.
The big question is, why weren’t some of the incidents we experienced
nightmares when for many people they would have been? The only answer I can think of is that I was
prepared for each one of them logistically, mentally and financially.
4. How was my vacation?
Some people innocently referred to this journey as a vacation. It was not a vacation. I do not take vacations
because of my personal situation. Nor was it meant to be an adventure as I have
had my fill of adventures over my lifetime and do not need any more. Now was it
or meant to be fun, even those parts of the trip watching Donner enjoy himself.
I gave up looking for fun in life long ago for reasons those who know me well
know. Well, what was it then? Why do I
take these 14,000-mile road camping trips across the continent, trips that are
surely unprecedented? I already talked about one reason above (see Donner). At
one time, I wrote down why I thought I make these trips and stopped writing
reasons after, I think, reason 39. ( I will try to find and reconstruct that,
its and publish it here in the future.) But if there is one reason that stands
out in my mind right now more than any other, it is to get out of my comfort zone. I say this not just to take a vacation from that comfort zone for a
few months, but to change the way I deal with it when I get back home. One of
these days, I might appreciate getting out of my comfort zone so much that I
just night not return to it, for very long anyway. Perhaps that’s what I am really hoping for.
That almost happened on this trip, maybe still will.
5. What will I remember
most about this trip? Probably the
whole trip, but if not, I will not know the answer to this until way in the
future when I can look back at what I remember. In the meantime, what I hope to
remember, not necessarily in this order, are: (a) The absolute joy I felt at
Donner’s experiencing real freedom for the first time in his life; (2) Summer;
(3) my fantastic constant travel partner of 12 days, Stefanie; (4) the fantastic
people I met along the way, especially those who were quick to help was when we
needed help or advice, starting with Denis in Quebec and ending with the
captain and chief steward on Delta’s flight 1469; the Dalton and Denali
experiences; (5) the several new roads traveled and campsites visited; (6) the
living proof I experienced that there really is a solution to every problem
worth solving; (7) the living proof I
experienced that the old Boy Scout motto, Be Prepared, really does have
substance; (8) how the Defender did what it was supposed to do, despite its
troubles along the way; (9) the living proof I experienced that having a Plan
really does pay off; (10) the focused, determined way I handled all the
challenges that were tossed my way; and (11) the many absolutely beautiful nights
we spent in total solitude in some camp sites.
6. Regrets? Looking back over the 117 days, I have only
one regret, or would do only one thing differently in the future : I should have taken a three-day ferry from
Alaska to Prince Rupert and then after a day off a one-day ferry to Port Hardy
on Vancouver Island instead of the five-day ferry to Seattle, not for my sake
but for Donner’s. It was a big mistake keeping him cooped up in the Defender on
the ferry’s loud car deck for five solid days. But I was going on Leben’s and
Erde’s experience in 2001, so what did I know? Next time.
7. Was there anything on
this trip that I was unprepared for? Nope. Even the layovers. Before the
trip started, I moved all my appointments back to the end of November and moved
more cash into my bank account specifically in case something went wrong with
the Defender.
8. How did the 59 days of
unexpected layovers adversely affect my attitude toward the trip? They did not. They were as much as part of
the experiences that could happen on these trips as the weather, the people
along the way, the roads, the camps, etc.
When someone drives his or her own vehicle 14000 miles on one trip, if they
do not expect these things to happen, they are deluding themselves. You do not want these things to happen, but
stuff happens wherever you are. More
than half the miles on the Defender were put in on these loag road trips,
albeith over only three percent of the time I had the vehicle, so I should
expect that more than half the sudden failures would occur on the road.
Moreover, I decided long ago that I would not replace parts on an expected useful
life basis but on an as needed or likely-failure basis and take my
chances. I probably saved a bundle by
doing that, but lost some of that during these layovers.
9. What was the most
profound experience on this trip? My
weeks in Whitehorse, for reasons I still need to think about, but probably
because it made me realize that I need to juggle some priorities when I return
home.
.
10. Do I regret my and
Stefanie’s decision to turn around just miles short of my goal of the site of
Sonntag’s and Kessie’s ashes north of Atigun pass on the Dalton Highway?
See answers to #6 and #10.
11. Did I accomplish everything
I set out to do on this trip? I had one only goal for this trip, to return
home safely with Donner. We made it home safely. Mission accomplished.
12. Will I ever take the
Defender on a long road trip again?
Ask me that question when I get it back.
13. Given what happened on
this trip, will I ever take a long road camping trip again, without or without
the Defender? Of course. Now that I
know there is a solution for every problem and that I know how to prepare for
these things and that there will be people around to help when needed, why wouldn’t
I?
14. Will I ever return to
Alaska and the Yukon? In due time,
yes.
15. Will I ever see my
Dalton and Denali travel partner Stefanie again? Is the Pope catholic?
16. Is the Pope catholic? Of course he is.
17. When the
Defender is up and running, if I decide to sell it, what will I be asking for
it? If you have to ask, you cannot afford it, but who said I am going to sell
it anyway? That vehicle has served me well for 23 years and it is part of my
personality. I would not feel safe or equipped in any other vehicle to do the
things I do with it. If they still made them I might consider getting a 110
(mine is a 90), but they stopped making them in 2015 (and stopped importing them
for the US market in 1997).
18. How many coveted OTR patches did I
give away on the trip? All but two of the 200 I ordered, but I gave those two
away to my genuine-cowboy row-mate Chris on the plane ride home and to a new neighbor
Haley, who doted over Donner the first day we got home. I even forgot to save
one for myself.
19. Did this trip with all its
challenges change me in any way? Probably, although I will defer to others to
tell you how. But it was much more than just the challenges that will have
contributed to those changes. The
intensity of the whole experience, heightened further by the meditative effect
of eight or more hours of thinking on the road each day, probably ignited some
catalyst within me that rewired some neural paths deep inside my brain in ways
that I cannot predict or control. I can
only hope they are for the better.
