The views yesterday were incredible. Each turn of the Alaska Highway brought a new peak.
Traffic was sparse. Since leaving U.S. Customs, Gosia and I have yet to read a single state license plate from the U.S.
The grand views are even worth the now-busted windshield on the Chevy Uplander. It was a gift from one of the pushy semitrucks barreling across the graded highway. Oh, well, Fairbanks seems to have as many glass repair shops as it has bars and churches. I’ll get the van windshield fixed soon.
It is now 5:15 a.m. as I write. The only breakfast place in many, many miles will open at 6:30 a.m., but this is Alaska and our one room cabin has makings for four coffee pots. Canadians and Alaskans like their coffee, I can see. Even in the middle of nowhere, you can find two-three people pumping coffee into sturdy paper cups at the service station counters.
Yesterday morning, I sipped my coffee after pouring and turned to find a female six-foot woman tapping her booted toes behind me.
“Forgive me for getting between you and your coffee,” I joked. She chuckled.
Gosia and I tell each other we are traveling on moose time. We dare drive about two hours in the morning in the dark. A fellow we met in a service station I named Old Blue Eyes told me a moose destroyed his pickup in the dark. He was lucky he hit him on the right corner of the windshield. “True, he took out the entire side of the truck, but if he hit dead-center he might have come through the windshield,” said Old Blue.
Gosia’s neighbor at our Warsaw, PL flat had a youngest daughter who experienced just that nightmare. The daughter was riding in a car with her mother-in-law when they collided with a moose. The poor critter landed on their hood. They survived but the daughter later related how she was mesmerized by a wide collection of freeloading bugs that streamed out of the dead beast’s hide.
We went to bed without supper again last night. We bought two cans of local Churchill beer, but they remain untouched in the cabin’s fridge.
Gosia reminded me that we had 1,100 miles to go before Fairbanks, and thanks to the Minnesota snowstorm, we were a day behind schedule.
Yesterday I posted a photo of a female moose watching us as I photographed her with my mobile device from a safe distance. Before departing, the mother made sure she nosed her yearling to warn it to escape into the woods.
Now it’s time for breakfast and a drive to Whitehorse. There are two U.S. Customs entrances in driving distance of Whitehorse. The first is near our 15 acres in the boonies between Tok and Tanacross, AK. That one is closed all winter. The second we will take has us reach our land from Tetlin Jct. from the south.
The vistas are even worth a busted windshield on the Alaskan Highway.Thank you for reading and a special thanks for your comments.
Breakfast awaits!