Dempster Diary Update 8

The Fifth Day: From Whitehorse to Tok (US)

There’s no particular reason I had to go into the US, aside from my dislike of repeating any route I’ve been on before (I call it running in circles, ha ha). Truth to tell, after consulting my map yesterday, I knew that the trip could just as easily gone straight up Highway 2 from Whitehorse through Carmacks, and on to Dawson City from the south, thereby saving me two days going west to Tok at the Tetlin Junction in the US, and then east again, arriving at Dawson from that direction.  I would, of course, have had to repeat the journey back down again (hmmm….).  But the thing was, also, that to be able to say, as one hoists one’s tankard and sneers at the lesser bred who took a cut-rate package tour down to Cancun for a hundred bucks,  to be able to say that one had been on the “Top of the World Highway” and stopped over at Tok and Chicken…well, to compare that with saying that one had gone north on the #2 or I got a deal on a vacation – it just doesn’t have the same ring, somehow.  What can I say. On such small points of future beer stories do long journeys hang.

So this morning, all packed, I started my day at six with three acts of cheapness that would have made my penny-watching, deal-sniffing wifey gasp, then sniff, then dab her eyes, and say, “I’m so proud.” I’ve driven her to utter distraction on occasion with my usual shrug and indifferent, “The few extra bucks don’t matter” statements that have her hands itching to once again caress an AK and perhaps point it in the direction of my nether regions.  But I digress. 

To begin with, I had been told that there was a $25 reduction in my bill for a “walk in incentive” two days ago.  The morning clerk had forgotten or was not aware, so I cheerfully reminded him (at six in the morning with a trip to look forward to, I’m very cheerful indeed), and he proceeded to knock it off both days, for which I was duly grateful. Then I was out of small bills, so tipped rather measily for breakfast, apologizing to the (new) waitress for my scandalous lack of couth and begging her not to think of me as a cheap bastard (even though I was).  And lastly I actually found a gas station after a mere fifteen minutes or so, that had the cheapest gas in Whitehorse, and happily waited five minutes for them to open for me, and filled up. Dearest wife, I hope you have read this, are nodding and approve and are muttering happily “Pravilna” and “Haroshi malchyk”.  However, do not take this as license to now go and find ways to spend my saved sixty bucks…I have plans for this $$.

But anyway.

Off I went out of Whitehorse, and hit the Alaska Highway (why they call it that when it’s actually in Canada for most of the way is not a question I have heard answered yet) by seven.  The weather report was miserable: rain and showers, with Sunday looking just as bad.  But as I drove, the weather was great: lowering dark gray clouds for sure, but also a bright sun behind them, peeking out every now and then to illuminate the landscape.  I was definitely away from inhabited parts after the first miles.  There was, quite literally, no-one home.  The landscape was deserted, and I passed as many abandoned shacks and old houses and buildings as I did inhabited ones.  And in each one where I saw some semblance of habitation, where a car was parked and toys were strewn in a yard jam packed with discarded, rusting relics of machines long dead, I wonder: who lived there?  What did they do?  Why did they live there?  How do they eke out a living in this place where probably the only regular paying work is for the government or some road contractor, a town-based business, a tourist-related trade, or maybe a guide?  What keeps them in this place? The question fascinated me.

The Alaska highway was built in the 1940s, after the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbour.  The Americans realized that the sparsity of communications and links up north could possibly lead to an invasion that might not even be heard about for months, so they put together a small army of 10,000 men and constructed the road from Dawson Creek in B.C.,  to Fairbanks in Alaska, some 1500+ miles of road – in nine months.

I joined the Highway the day I emerged from the thousand kilometer drive up the 37, and have stayed with it since Watson Lake.  Now I was going on another section, from Whitehorse to Tetlin Junction in Alaska. It was a reasonable drive, about 625km, not too taxing, and because the weather was so fine, I paid careful attention to the scenery.  Here and there I could see where the route of the highway has been changed, to make it straighter: the old section of the road that the Americans built is slowly going back to bush, but can still be seen, the way I once saw the ghost of the old 1950s cattle trail from the Rupununi to Georgetown being swallowed up by the jungle, but visible to those with an eye to see.  Drew had explained it to me: the engineers deliberately made the route a snaky one through the mountsins so that Japanese planes could use them as runways, nor would they be so easy to bomb.  After the war, when such fears receded somewhat, certain sections were made more navigable, but the ghosts of the old road are still there, as they were in an RV camp I saw, which still held relics of the construction and military equipment used, or the 1942 GMC truck perched on a hill I passed too quickly to take its picture.

I passed Haines Junction at around 8:45 and a hundred miles into it, fueled up (as it has now become my practice to do every time I approach half a tank) and continued.  The weather continued to be great – dark, lowering clouds pierced by dazzling gold sunlight of a particular hue that is impossible to describe precisely.  Sometimes, coming over a rise, I saw great pillars of sunlight pouring from rents in the clouds, and march in stately procession across the low lands beneath.  I kept jumping out of the car to take a picture, bemoaning my lack of ability to capture what my eyes saw so clearly.

When I passed Kluane Lake – a very wind-chopped body of water today – my luck with ‘trust, no security’ streak came to an end at a small place where the guy asked to hold my credit card at Destruction Bay (how appropriate is that?). before turning on the pumps or me to refuel.  Bummer.  The lake is surrounded on all sides by mountains and long shelving beaches, but for sheer magnificence can’t hold a candle to Issyk-Kol in Kyrgyzstan for grandeur, and since the light was wrong, I regretfully could not get any picture worth a damn, and pushed on.

I finally hit Beaver Creek, the easternmost settlement of Canada, at around 12:30.  There’s a small RCMP station here, more gas, the usual shops and knick-knack sellers, plus an equal assortment of long abandoned buildings, where people or their businesses have simply folded.  I’d sorely love to do a photo essay on these little towns, though I concede I lack the friendliness and approachability – the love of other people – which would make such a venture a success.  In any case, at this particular juncture, I was more concerned about crossing the border than I was about essays or “the colourful 5%” as they are referred to here.

I always detest border crossings of any kind.  That great economist, John  Maynard Keynes, once noted (in an essay that some see as the precursor of globalization’s effects) that an Englishman could, without moving from his door, invest his capital worldwide, afford himself of the bounty the world had to offer, or travel without hindrance or passport across any land. I have paraphrased that here, but the gist is there; not so, now, alas.  We now live in a world of rigorously patrolled borders and officious nonsense preventing free movement of people or labour. And my experiences with border guards were never really that pleasant for me, because under all the affability and mutual bonhomie, I always felt that if one of them one day decided to be pissy and not like the colour of my eyes, well, he could just stop me, and there was precious little I could do.  In some countries, the ever-present fragrant grease could not be avoided.  So even though I knew (better than my wife, who received hers on the same day I did) that my Canadian passport granted swift passage to the US, you can forgive me for being quite antsy about it.

I was actually so wound up that I completely forgot to take a picture of the signpost welcoming me to Alaska as I passed it, and that annoyed me so intensely that it snapped me right out of my funk: because wasn’t I the guy who told Kym that we are afraid of too much in our lives, and that we live with a constant low-grade apprehension surrounding us at all times?  Fear for our kids playing on the street, of the food we eat, getting fat, getting cholesterol, getting sick, being attacked, being alone, being old…fear of trying?  This shit had to stop.

And so I approached the border crossing in a more zen frame of mind (hush, ye snickerers), and answered the litany which the blonde, crew cut young man posed, as he probably had to hundreds in the past week: was I alone, did I have a pet, where did I live, how long was I staying, did I have any firearms.  The usual. He didn’t offer to look into the car, and I didn’t volunteer. I did see him smile a bit when I said I was just staying in Tok for a night and then heading to Dawson the next day.  I guess he sees a lot of nutty Canadians who want to say they had done the Taylor Highway (which is what the yanks, poor lost lambs, call the Top of the World highway).  And he waved me casually through without further ado.  Sixty seconds, start to finish.  I drove out, up a hill and around a corner and the little border point was already invisible, and I could no longer tell where Canada ended and the USA began.  What a total waste of time, I thought, the way I do every time I cross a border.

Now that I was in the US, I faced an ethical dilemma: in Canada, I had a good feel for where the ghost cars were and if any was keeping tabs on my speed: in the north, outside the towns and cities, you can take that to be almost never.  I had regularly travelled for long stretches at 120 km per hour, sometimes higher.  There were often hundreds of kilometers where I didn’t even see a speed limit sign, though logic told me it was probably meant to be whatever the last one was, usually 100.  Here, though, the signs saying 55 mph was the speed limit, were posted every few miles, and so I took no chances, chafed at the restriction, and moseyed on at the equivalent of 90 km per hour.  Grrr.  It made the eighty miles to Tok a pain in the ass, especially when I was stuck behind three slow-coach RVs that were doing about 48.

I have to be honest, though and admit that when at 12:30pm Alaska time, I saw a sign that said “Anchorage, 534 miles” I was tempted, sorely tempted, to go further, take this trip to the logical, even ultimate conclusion – the end of the road.  Because I could go to Fairbanks first – this is where the Alaska Highway officially ends – and then drift on to Anchorage, all in a single day.  But then reality asserted itself, and I regretfully turned away from this altogether excellent idea.  It could be done, yes, but just because it could, didn’t mean it should.  I had made my plans and reservations and much as I would like to wing it and go all the way, this was not the time.  Later, perhaps – after all, I had already done more than I had expected or dreamed of a mere year ago.  Why be greedy?

Tok, like Haines junction, and Bell 2 before that, was no more than a small collection of houses, gas stations, souvenir shops and motels, plus a contingent of state troopers and a smattering of smaller businesses mostly involved, I would guess, in construction. I fueled up and checked into my fleabag motel, which helpfully informed me that (a) their restaurant was closed for the season so I could pick one of two greasy spoons they would recommend up the road (b) cash was fine if I didn’t want to trouble with my credit card and (c) yes they had wireless internet, but I would have to register online with my credit card and pay $6.95 for a 24-hour useage. Ah well – I guess my own cheapness was coming back to haunt me. However, to my delight, Rogers was active so I spent some minutes on the clock leaving a message for Kym to let her know I had arrived safely and was now ensconced in yet another fleabag.

Given it was now close to five, and since I had food in the car, I just schlepped what needed into the room, parked my car right outside, and mournfully warmed up two tins of soup (which my darling wife probably got on sale) on the baseboard heater (well ok, so I was lazy and not inclined to be picky, what of it…I was tired) and some trail mix, stuffed my face with some sausage, and actually had a pretty good dinner. 

The soup tasted like it had old cardboard and sawdust I it, but the sausage and the trail mix were fine.

When I talked to Kym later, she had no sympathy, and rather snippily informed the love of her life (I hesitate to use the term “Lord and Master”, much as I’d like to) that this was the just reward of faithless husbands who abandon their dedicated, long-serving, loving wives to go on long, selfish holidays on their own, drive to remote and romantic locations and have great fun, leaving aforementioned wife alone to deal with bills, garbage, kids and all other issues of a domestic nature.  I was archly informed that she was glad, *glad*, that all I had was soup and trail mix, and she hoped it tasted real nice, ‘cause she got it all special for me from the Starvation Army food bank basket…a year ago.  Apparently she saved it for a special occasion.

I dunno. Somehow I always end up on the losing end of an argument like that.  I save sixty dollars and get fed canned cardboard soup. There is no justice in the world.  And just to show I am serious, please see my last photo of the day: note the can next to the computer.

Tomorrow: on to Dawson City…and the preserved toe.