PROLOGUE
Allow me to set the scene. Three years after my partner matriculated from Colorado to California to attend law school, she heard that famously mysterious call yet again: “Go West, young woman. Go West, and grow up with the country.”
For our purposes, it wasn’t Horatio Alger or Horace Greeley shepherding her on this new discovery, it was the Alaska judiciary, where she was hired as a law clerk for a one-year clerkship.
Amanda has graduated from law school, she has taken the State Bar of California, and she proudly accepted said clerkship. Three years after we moved our lives 1,000-plus miles from Colorado to California, we’ve tripled the ante: embarking on a 3,000-mile plus adventure up the northern coast of California, through Oregon and Washington, navigating nearly 2,000 miles of Canadian countryside, then back to the United States through southeastern Alaska and southwest into Anchorage. That adventure begins here.
The players: Aaron, driving his 2008 Ford Ranger; Amanda, driving her 2004 Subaru Outback; and Lou, our 8-year-old Blue Heeler riding shotgun in the Subaru. (Ballgame, our 15-year-old tiger-striped tabby, decided to skip the drive and flew first class to Anchorage, Alaska, on Monday, Aug. 13; she’s waiting for us at the finish line.)
This is our story.
THE 49th ADVENTURE
By Aaron Unterreiner
MONDAY, AUGUST 13-WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 15, 2018
It all started with a casual sideways glance. A series of unfortunate events soon followed, and Lemony-Snicket-lickety-split our collection of circumstances was pushed downhill, gathered steam, and snowballed into a formidable roadblock.
We were supposed to leave on a Monday; that schedule quickly disintegrated on a Sunday. The plan was simple, or so we thought: We take to Alaska what we can fit in our two cars; the rest we sell or donate. We cashed out over $1,000 from our garage and online sales, then gave ourselves a pat on the back for where we sat in the pack. But I had to work up until Sunday, and what once was a well-laid-out and certainly well-deserved three-day vacation to Tahoe with friends suddenly became burdensome for Amanda when her Anchorage employer bumped her start date from Aug. 31 to Aug. 27. That might not seem like much, but when you’re ending one life to start another more than 3,000-plus miles away after a week-and-a-half’s worth of road tripping, there are relationships to kill before you go – and killin’ relationships ain’t easy.
The first of which was our property manager. It’s an unemotional breakup, for sure, but it’s not without nuance. We were behind in cleaning and packing, so we pushed our severance with Dowling Properties to first thing Tuesday morning. We hired a cleaning service for our rental, which whittled our moving-day money but freed up time to focus our efforts on filling our freight.
We packed Amanda’s car. It was a small victory, but a victory nonetheless. But with every step forward on this Alaskan (mis)adventure, we took two steps backward. We decided we needed one more large storage container to pack our comforters and quilts. Ironically, it’s our comforters and quilts – things we rarely used or needed in the oppressive Central Valley heat – that set this wheel in motion; we were, after all, moving to the Last Frontier, where we would finally put this prized collection of my grandmothers’ hand-stitched quilts to good use. So, Amanda made a receptacle run. With her target successfully bull’s-eyed, she set off from Target to return home. One problem: Her car was locked and loaded, stuffed to the gills like a king salmon plumb packed on parr, pilchard, and plankton. She couldn’t see out of half her mirrors and more than 75 percent of her windows. She called me to collect the container, which I did, no problem, no big deal, only while she was waiting for me to arrive, she thought she saw me approaching out of the corner of her eye, so she cast a simple left-shouldered peek toward the parking lot that caused an acute muscle tweak and triggered a trickle-down effect that’s still causing her unbearable pain to this day.
Mind you, we still had packing to do – packing and loading and unpacking and unloading and packing and loading and unpacking and unloading and packing and loading, as it turns out. Amanda soldiered through the strain for a couple of days, but her pain in the neck became a pain in our ass when our failure to launch became failures to launch.
Tuesday came and went, and we remained in Davis, California. The day started well enough. We finished our cleaning duties and followed through with our final walkthrough with Dowling Properties and handed over our keys. We packed my truck. Another victory. We drove to the 5th and Gas Mart and fueled up in anticipation of our first day’s drive … and my tailgate failed to make friends with any curb it met along the way. Instead of Interstate 80, we drove directly to Vickers Automotive for an impromptu load consultation. The conversation went as expected: A few more bumps in the road would create a much bigger bump in the road; if we didn’t unload a significant amount of weight soon, my rear leaf spring was going to pop and give me a real life stroke. We called Dowling Properties, asked for our keys back, blew up the air mattress, then set to work unloading and unpacking.
Like I said, some relationships are hard to kill. I must say, I didn’t expect saying goodbye to our landlord would be one of those relationships; I did, however, fully expect tears in parting ways with our library of books and movies. We separated our books into keeps and cuts the first go-round way back when, then forced ourselves to do it again with the keeps pile. This third effort was simply heartbreaking. These cuts ran deep. We peeled six boxes from the truck bed, made some punishing, gut-wrenching decisions, then made yet another sizable donation to the SPCA thrift store, dropping them at the back entrance and making fools of ourselves as we screamed “GO! GO ON! GET OUTTA HERE!” A fair and fitting tribute to Jack London, I thought, considering our literary sacrifice and our road ahead, but I’m afraid our artful fancy was taken for artless fodder and all but lost on the locals.
Despite our noble sacrifice, the truck’s load remained too heavy. Nestled amid our failures to launch, we turned the page on Plan A and investigated Plan B: Rent a U-Haul. And wouldn’t you know it, there wasn’t a single U-Haul provider in Northern California that had a single trailer available for rent. Not Davis. Not Dixon. Not Sacramento. Not Vacaville. Not Woodland. OK, so … Plan C: Rent a storage unit. Not ideal, considering we have no idea if we’ll even return to Davis, but we’re running out of options here, and sure enough, Bob’s your uncle, there wasn’t a single storage unit in Davis that had a 5×5 unit available for rent. If we were to find the smallest (read: cheapest) storage unit of our choosing, the next best thing (read: closest) would have to be Woodland, about 30 miles north of Davis and about 2,970 miles closer to Anchorage.
Wednesday: finally, a victory, a 5×5 storage unit in Woodland, California. We secured our third consecutive unplanned and I dare say unwanted breakfast burrito from the Davis Food Co-op, gave away our keys for the second time to Dowling Properties, then proceeded at a painfully slow pace to STOW-IT Self Storage under the careful, watchful eye of the sweltering California sun. After enduring an entirely unnecessary hour-long dissertation on the dos and don’ts of the facility from the friendly receptionist, we shed our unnecessary weight from the two vehicles and stuffed Unit 699B with our have-nots, then re-rigged our cars with the haves; I bumped my head on the bow of the canoe a dozen times, burned my hands on the scalding hot, all-black truck box a handful of times, and accidentally ripped the key fob off of my keychain. Amanda, rendered immobile from injury, could only sit and watch the rodeo clown as I tried to wrangle my Ranger.
THURSDAY, AUGUST 16-FRIDAY, AUGUST 17, 2018
The Carr Fire burned 229,651 acres in Northern California. It killed five civilians and three firefighters. It destroyed more than 1,500 structures and over 1,000 homes. It cost nearly $2 billion in damages. When it was finally 100 percent contained on Aug. 30, 2018, just one week after we drove through its smoldering wreckage, it devilishly ranked itself in the top 10 in most destructive and largest in state history.
We choked on its smoke and ash through Whiskeytown, Shasta, and Trinity national forests, then choked down a midnight gas station sandwich on Wednesday night in – oddly enough – a little town called Weed, California. We could feel the burn. On Thursday, we woke up and did it again, until we escaped California into Oregon and on to Washington. On Friday, we reached the Canadian border. We parked at the visitors center and exchanged some American monies for some Canadian loonies and toonies. Looney Toons, the official sponsor of this Alaskan (mis)adventure: I locked my keys in my truck.
Before we left Davis, I threw my spare set of keys in a snowboard boot. Before we left Davis, that boot walked itself from the cargo carrier to the truck cab to a crate in the truck bed, but it did – at least – make the trip. So, I located the appropriate crate, de-rigged, found the boot, fetched the keys, unlocked the truck, re-rigged, and off we went. Only, if you remember, dear readers, I accidentally ripped the key fob off of my keychain two days ago at STOW-IT Self Storage. The key fob ended up in my pocket. I locked my keys in my truck, yes, but the key fob – even two days later at the Canadian border – remained in my pocket. … One step forward, two steps back.
SATURDAY, AUGUST 18-SUNDAY, AUGUST 19, 2018
We drove out of the California frying pan into the Canadian fire. Right about when I was hitting my head on the pointy tip of my canoe tied down to the top of my truck rack and scalding my hands on the truck box from climbing up and down on my rig securing my thingamajigs, the British Columbia government declared a provincewide state of emergency in response to the ongoing wildfires. As I write this today, the B.C. wildfires, since April 1, 2018, number more than 2,000 total and have claimed more than 1 million acres. At this moment, more than 500 fires remain active in the province; it’s officially the worst wildfire season recorded in B.C. history.
We saw nothing but raw scenic beauty on the Sea to Sky Highway from Vancouver to Whistler. Once we reached Pemberton – that day’s final destination – we had no choice, however, but to continue north toward Lillooet for there were no beds to be had anywhere. No motels. No hotels. No Airbnbs. No campsites. We drove through the night until we chanced upon an empty campsite under the ominous shadows of Mount Brew. The mountain was warning us: The storm was brewing. We woke to a heavy fog enveloping our tent, slowly spreading its tentacles across the damp wooded flora. We folded camp and left as quickly as we came, and the nature of our fog soon revealed its true identity; we drove through that day’s shroud of smoke to Prince George, only to find the big city greeted us no different than the small town. Prince George was housing fire-displaced evacuees, so while Amanda and I parked and planned our next steps in no doubt the seediest part of town and inevitably failed to find a room, rental, hut, or hovel anywhere, we managed to kill the Subaru’s battery in the process. … Three steps backward.
MONDAY, AUGUST 20-TUESDAY, AUGUST 21, 2018
The next two days we navigated through smoke and ash falling from the sky in an apocalyptic haze. From Bear Lake to Chetwynd, around Hudson’s Hope Loop, camping on the Sikanni Chief River, to Fort Nelson, then northwest to Liard River Hotsprings Provincial Park, it was the most scenic drive we’d never get to see. We’d see pockets of blue sky and sunshine and the breathtaking tease of creeks on creeks, rivers on top of rivers, and lakes stacked over lakes. Despite endless bodies of water around every bend, we were never far from the fires; the toxic smoke hemmed in our vehicles, stunting our views, rendering the beautiful countryside ubiquitous out our side windows but a silhouette, leaving us only with the road ahead. We wore it like a sweater for hundreds of miles.
We braked for a black bear in the Liard River Hotsprings parking lot and traded smoke for steam for a spell. Another victory, right? Sounds relaxing, doesn’t it? Soaking in idyllic hot springs after six days, 40 hours, and nearly 2,000 miles of driving? All that, indeed, and let’s not forget about Amanda’s precarious neck situation. Prepare to two-step. Unfortunately, the bear prancing through the park was an evil omen of things to come.
We camped a stone’s throw from the hot springs, and with the misfortunes we felt had been unfairly dumped on us during the course of our travels, we counted our blessings to have secured a campsite at all. Liard River Hotsprings features over 50 campsites and a lodge – all booked. After double-checking the lodge – we didn’t even reach the counter before we heard the receptionist tell a different set of weary travelers, “no vacancies” – we backed out of the lot and fell in line with another vehicle whose course happened to be set for Mould Creek Campground less than a half-mile up the road. They literally booked the last cabin available right out from under our noses; Amanda, Lou, myself, and Amanda’s pain in her neck would have to settle in and smell the acrid smoke for another night of stale-air camping. That much we could handle, if not ideal given our current situation; it was the scene we woke up to, however, that haunts us still.
When a bear is forced out of its territory, say, for example, by a wildfire, it sets a new course for a new home, new land, a new source of food. Sometimes that pursuit lands in urban areas, sniffing out garbage cans for scraps. When a bear is desperate from dehydration and malnutrition, well, nature takes its course.
The Lutz Creek Fire was discovered Aug. 4, 2018. It was caused by lightning. Ground Zero is near Lower Post, B.C., where the Upper Liard River flows from the Yukon Territory into the Northern Rockies and south toward Liard River and Liard River Hotsprings Provincial Park. It’s blazed a path of 188,047 acres, and it’s zero percent contained. There are hundreds of bears being chased from their homes because of the Lutz Creek Fire, hundreds of bears hunting for their next meals in strange and unfamiliar places.
Mould Creek Campground is no more than a quarter-mile gravel road carved out of the forest. It has two cabins, two trailers, and no more than 10 campsites just off the Alaska Highway. Other than its famous next-door neighbor, Liard River Hotsprings Provincial Park, which owns a nearly five-square-mile spread and is teeming with tourists, it is surrounded by wilderness. The closest cities in either direction are Watson Lake, three hours northwest on Highway 97 (Yukon Highway 1) in southern Yukon Territory, and Fort Nelson, four hours southeast on Highway 97 in northern British Columbia Territory. Mould Creek Campground, in other words, isn’t exactly a strange and unfamiliar place for a bear, but it isn’t ideal, either; the proprietor – and the proprietor’s dog – made it abundantly clear that this morning’s guest wasn’t welcome.
I was in the campground’s community trailer washing our morning dishes when I heard the manager’s pint-sized Frenchie unleash a vicious profanity-laced attack of invectives on some sorry victim. I wasn’t surprised; I just endured the same manner of greeting moments before. I took notice, however, when I heard my dog join the French Bulldog’s unholy choir. I quickly returned to our campsite to find the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus – a 10-pound dog was assaulting a young 250-pound black bear, and the dog was winning. Frenchie treed the bear in no time, and while the bear climbed to immediate safety, it also climbed into imminent danger. The manager, who bolted from the other trailer, approached us at a dead sprint.
“Are you guys OK if I shoot this bear?”
Now that’s a loaded question. For starters, good sir, “no.” Here’s what we know: The bear approached camp from the north woods. Amanda was packing up camp when Lou alerted her to the bear’s presence. The bear was in the campsite across the gravel drive from ours, about 30 feet away. Lou, no stranger to large animals from her railroading days through the San Juan Mountains in Southwest Colorado, calmly placed herself between Amanda and the bear, sitting and watching at a comfortably strategic distance from our gravel driveway. If the bear turned its attention toward Amanda or our camp, our Blue Heeler was ready to heel her cattle elsewhere. The bear, however, was not aggressive and did not appear to be a threat, just a bear in the woods is all.
Enter Frenchie and the frenetic fanatic.
“Are you guys OK if I shoot this bear?”
The answer remains, “No, we’re not.” Now, we’re in the middle of the Canadian wilderness, and this guy is trying to run a business, a business where he doesn’t want black bears eating his customers – that’s bad for business and just bad business, period. He claims this is the bear’s second visit to camp – both non-aggressive, he admits – and therefore must be eliminated, non-aggressive or not. Is that even legal? It’s not, neither in Canada nor the United States, unless the bear is acting aggressively and the shooter acts in self-defense, but we don’t know that at the time and, again, we’re in the middle of the Canadian wilderness – there is no cell service. In the end, whether he shoots the bear illegally or not, it’s going to be this proprietor’s word which lives and breathes here year-round versus these tourists’ word which is just passing through. He rolled his wild eyes in disgust when we told him no, so he begrudgingly said fine and waited at the base of the bear’s tree for us to leave. What could we have done? What should we have done? I sympathized with his situation, but Amanda and I – for what it’s worth as a couple of American passersby in the Canadian wild – didn’t think shooting a non-aggressive treed bear in the woods was the right thing to do. With no legal legs to stand on, we did what we thought was best: We drove down the road to the provincial park’s ranger station and talked to a professional. We were right; he was in the wrong. Yet, we quickly got the sense that our nearest park rangers wanted nothing to do with waving a red flag at their next-door neighbors. They passed the buck to the B.C. Conservation Officer Service, and while Amanda was kindly granted the ranger station’s satellite phone to connect with the government agency, the officer on the other end of the line wasn’t of much service, replying, “Where are you again?” A long way from home, apparently. “Oh, yeah, that’s really in the middle of nowhere.” We were in lawless country; our good Samaritan cries for help were falling on deaf ears as a whisper in the woods.
As we turned north on the Alaska Highway from the ranger’s station and passed Mould Creek Campground, we saw the manager backing his truck up the gravel drive toward our abandoned campsite. I can’t tell you what was going through Amanda’s mind, although I know she was gutted sick about it, wracking her brain on what-ifs and wishing in her heart of hearts that she could’ve, should’ve, would’ve done more, but I can tell you what was going through mine: All I could hear was the imagined gunshot echoing off the trees while the rest of the world went quiet, seeing the bear’s paws slowly letting go of his tree trunk, and the bone-chilling sound of the cub’s thud against the forest floor as he free-fell from 50 feet up. I can’t shake the sounds and images, and it makes me interminably sad.
One week prior, this stretch of Alaska Highway was closed because of smoke. Residents were fleeing Lower Post to escape the fire. One week later, we passed silently through the smoke, figuratively and literally in a haze, fleeing Mould Creek to escape our imaginations.
WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 22-FRIDAY, AUGUST 23, 2018
We camped later that night on the water’s edge of Marsh Lake, 45 minutes south of Whitehorse, Yukon, splitting a bottle of Napa Cellars Cabernet Sauvignon. I wished it was whiskey. Mercifully, surprisingly, we had the nearly 50-site campground all to ourselves. The fire danger in our rear-view mirrors, we then marched northwest through a pensive rain past Whitehorse to Haines Junction, up and around Kluane Lake and the aptly named Destruction Bay. The Alaska Highway limps into Alaska in staccato patches of paved road. While following the pilot car through an unpaved interval of construction littered with potholes the size of a Fjord Ranger, the Subaru Outback took a glacial hit. Amanda’s steering wheel spasmed violently in fits and starts. Without cell service or options, we took our cue from the Alaska Highway and limped into Beaver Creek, less than 30 miles from the Alaskan border.
Our story, for these intents and purposes, more or less comes to an end here, beaten and broken down at the doorstep of Buckshot Betty’s in Beaver Creek. There isn’t much to Beaver Creek. What once was a bustling thoroughfare ushering passengers across the border crossing now was a sleepy little town with a gas station, a rehabbed church of some renown, a few motels, and a visitor’s center. Buckshot Betty’s is the main attraction, offering a restaurant, a full-service bar, and rooms for rent. But for our money, Far West Pilot Car Services was the big ticket. Believe it or not, Beaver Creek had an auto mechanic, and we were now at the mercy of Far West Holdings, LLC to get us up and running again toward the Last Frontier. Given our luck of late, we weren’t optimistic; all we could do was take a lap around Beaver Creek, grab a bite and a beer at Betty’s, and plan our eulogies for Amanda’s 35th Anniversary Edition 2004 Subaru Outback.
We met Carl and Jesse – Far West’s mechanics – at half past the 8 o’clock hour the next morning at the gas station, where the Subaru had sputtered to its despondent stop at the 2,500-plus mile marker of our trip. Far West, in relation to the gas station, wasn’t much further west at all, just two doors down, but the Subaru needed a pick-me-up all the same. We towed it to the shop, then awaited word for their parking-lot prognosis to grow wings into a full-fledged, hood-popping diagnosis.
Broken axle. Two of ’em, to be exact.
This is that part of the story when the guy says, “You’re lucky X, Y, and Z, otherwise something really, really awful.” In our story, Jesse tells us, “You’re lucky it’s a straight shot into Beaver Creek, because there’s no telling how much longer that axle would’ve held if there were bends in the road.”
Now that we’re all speaking Lady Luck’s native tongue, ma and pop just spewed a fountain of fortune on us, and the broken axles notwithstanding, at least we were whole. A broken axle? Two of ’em? Hell, we can fix that! Right!? They could, and they would … they just needed to find the parts first.
Here are our options:
A) Hope an outfitter in Tok, Alaska, has the available parts. Estimated travel time: four hours round trip. B) Hope an outfitter in Whitehorse, Yukon, has the available parts. Estimated travel time: 10 hours round trip. C) Have the parts delivered from closest available town. Estimated delivery time: one week (and well past Amanda’s start date in Anchorage).
Far West Holdings doesn’t hold parts, so they have to depend on town runners to make collections whenever the need arises. Plan A was quickly ruled out: Tok didn’t have the parts. Plan C, given its time constraints, was a non-starter. Plan B, fortunately, was a winner: Whitehorse had the parts; we just needed to find a runner. If necessary, that gallant runner riding to and fro on my white horse into Whitehorse and back could’ve been me, but after eight days and close to 3,000 miles on the long, hard road, the last thing I wanted to do was drive backward five hours, gallantly or not. Fortunately (there’s that word again, fortune: chance or luck as an external, arbitrary force affecting human affairs), it just so happened Carl knew a guy – just a guy from the community, name’s Brandon, from down the street, who just so happened to be passing through Whitehorse on a Wednesday. Technically, Brandon passed – as in past tense – through Whitehorse, but he turned around to pick up our parts. Brandon, our knight in shining armour carrying two shining axles.
There was still the matter of price to be haggled over, but that typically turns out fair and fine when dealing with auto mechanics, especially with auto mechanics in the middle of nowhere, so we weren’t worried. Besides, Lady Luck was starting to favor us. Why, while Amanda, Lou, and I were commiserating over our Alaskan (mis)adventure with a couple of Midnight Sun Espresso Stouts from Yukon Brewing on Buckshot Betty’s patio, we met someone. We met Dave, a friend of Betty’s. Dave was helping his friend repair a couple of craters in her parking lot. Dave was short and round in stature, a sexagenarian; he wore boots, cargo pants and a hoodie, and glasses around his neck attached to a chain. His long, white hair was tied in a ponytail. He reminded me of Jerry Garcia as Santa Claus; he certainly inherited Santa Claus’ benevolent personality. His smile was an open invitation. Dave recently bought land next to the Pine Valley Bakery Creperie a few miles back near Pickhandle Lake where he’s going to set up shop as a jewelry maker. He turns rocks into art. Dave, he explained to us, tries to give away one piece of jewelry a day, and he’d had a lot of time to sit and make jewelry the last few days on account of all the rain stalling the sealing project. Given the nature of our sagging character no doubt due to our somber conversation, Dave sought us out; he kept his reasons to himself. More specifically, he sought Amanda out. Dave gifted Amanda a stunning amber and cream agate gemstone necklace on a gold filigree chain; the stone’s radiance was equal parts Amanda’s beauty and Dave’s generosity. A myriad of cultures across the world believe agate provides healing properties, cleansing and stabilizing auras, Dave explained to us somewhat offhandedly without a hint of new-agese. Agate is believed to have the powers to eliminate and transform negativity, soothe and calm inner anger or tension, creating a sense of security and safety. We had definitely seen better days, but it’s difficult to find better Daves.
With Lady Luck by our side, and Dave’s agate necklace around Amanda’s maligned neck, we put our eulogies on hold at Far West Holdings and instead breathed new life into our Subaru and our journey far west. On our 10th day of travels, we crossed the U.S. border into the 49th state and cast aside the other 48 misadventures. Later that night, and without further ado, we finally laid anchor in Anchorage. It’s high time to take two steps forward into our 49th adventure.