The Home Stretch

It turns out Whitehorse, Yukon Territory was perhaps one step above Dease Lake. Which is saying very little. Don't get me wrong. The scenery surrounding these areas was unbelievably gorgeous--even in the cold and dreary rain. It's just that the towns in between were a strange brew of frontier meets ghetto.

Let's take Whitehorse, for example. Our hotel was right next to the "real" Canadian superstore. Which is apparently not Walmart? Because Walmart is the fake American one? I don't know. Whatever. We purchased chocolate drumsticks there, and I can vouch for the fact that they were both real and super. So I'm giving the real Canadian Superstore some points for that.

Anyway, I woke up the next morning to walk the dog and hunt for really strong coffee. Which, without the coffee, might result in me walking the coffee and hunting for a really strong dog. Anyway, when I got back to the hotel parking lot, I caught a glimpse of L's truck and did a doubletake.

The kids' bikes were missing from the bike rack! I'd just assured my restless little ones the day before that as soon as we arrived in our new neighborhood, we'd ride our bikes around the clock until we knew every last cul de sac by heart. And now this?! Stolen bikes! 

I stormed into the hotel, breathless and two seconds away from a total meltdown, and asked the front desk attendant for the phone number to call the police. Did you know that they call police officers "Constable" in Canada? I would've found this amusing if I hadn't been so worked up about how these heartless criminals had just swiped the one form of entertainment that we'd brought with us for the kids.

Lucky for us, my husband has a somewhat disconcerting ability to think like a criminal. After we broke the bad news to the kids, shed a few tears and discussed the problem of evil in its entirety, L decided to make one last check of the property. Turns out the perps had stashed both bikes in some shrubs near the hotel, perhaps hoping we'd drive away after which they could claim to have "found" them.

Once the bikes were safely back on the rack, we gassed up the cars and got the heck out of Dodge.

The further we got from Whitehorse, the closer we got to this....

The day's drive was as spectacularly beautiful. It helped too, knowing we had just one more night on the road before we could sleep under our own roof.

Getting ready to leave our cabin and head HOME!

We crossed into Alaska that afternoon. Three hours later we were gulping down delicious Thai food on a table in our very own cabin while the kids ran around like monkeys who'd eaten through the inventory in a Fruity Pebbles factory. Then we chatted with some fellow travelers in the cabin next door who had also braved Whitehorse and lived to complain about it. (By now, our kids were old friends and had played about three dozen rounds of tag.)

The next morning, we got up, walked the dog, packed the car, grabbed some strong coffee, and then we drove home.

The most beautiful part of our 4600 mile journey was through the state we now call our own. It was worth a thousand Dease Lake moments (and it took at least as many!) to get here. 

It's so very good to be home.

Then we drove and we drove and we drove

Have you ever wondered what lies between the towns of Smithers, BC and Whitehorse, YT? No? Well, I'll tell you anyway.

That little red dot in the middle of nowhere = Dease Lake

Nothing but fireweed, my friends. And a random Jade store that also sells fuel. Oh, and also, a little horror movie setting of a town called Dease Lake, heretofore referred to as the place in which we will not stay, like ever again.

We repeatedly reminded the kids that this 4600 mile journey to the last frontier was a once-in-a-lifetime experience. Because, yeaaah, after Dease Lake and Whitehorse, once seems like it's going to be enough.

This Jade store was perhaps the only sign of civilization for hours.

Aside from camping under the stars, there's one place to stay for roughly 800 miles, one little town that boasts no more than a motor inn, a saloon and a "restaurant". (More on those quotations later.) The day we drove to the aforementioned town of Dease Lake, it rained all day and continued to rain after we arrived. The motel itself was....(if-you-can't-say-something-nice-don't-say-anything-at-all)....dry.

We were all quite hungry after the long drive and our paltry granola bar lunch. So we went across the street to the only food joint in town. It wasn't crowded. Friends, when it's the only food joint in town and there's still plenty of seating, this will serve as your first clue. 

We ordered a pepperoni pizza. I mean, really, you can't mess up pizza, right? Right?!

Wrong.

I don't know what they put on it, but it wasn't pepperoni. Thinly sliced spam, maybe? Bologna? Slimy unclassified deli meat? Oh lord, where was Papa John when we needed him?

We got back to the motel and tried to settle the kids into bed. At this point, it's safe to say L and I were not our "best selves". I sulked as I sorted through the back-up suitcases in search of warmer clothes (did I mention it was 51 degrees out?). I felt at odds with my husband and annoyed with my children. And I swear my face was already breaking out from that damn pizza. 

Both L and I would later look back on that evening as the colossal low point of our journey, even coining a new phrase from the experience: "having a Dease Lake moment." Which translated into the vernacular means: No bueno / Me no like this / I freakin' hate my life right now.

The next morning we got up, took the dog to do her business, commandeered the lobby coffee pot to make our own respectably-strong brew (oh yes we did), shared said brew with a few other guests in exchange for their silence, and then hit the road for Whitehorse.

Then we drove and we drove and we drove. You might not guess it, but the Yukon Territory is kind of expansive. Forget the moon, kids. I love you to the Yukon and back. Now that's love.

In which the journey takes a turn for the remote

It appears I left us stranded in Jasper for the last two weeks. Seriously, two weeks. If I keep this up, I'll have us rolling into Alaska on Christmas day.

So yes. Jasper. After a dreary day of rain, the sun came edging out of the clouds just as we drove into town. We soaked in the vitamin D as we walked to dinner in the picturesque village. The children stopped along the way to climb and pose on bear and moose statues and beg for stupid gimmicky pink tourist crap. Yeah, um, no. We're giving you freakin' experiences of a lifetime, kids. You're just going to have to find a way to keep on living without the basket of miniature pink bear cubs. (Sheesh--you could dye a cockroach pink and my daughter would want to buy it.)

I took the kids to the hotel pool for a bit, then shuffled their dripping wet, dog tired bodies back to the room so L could settle them into bed. Then I donned one of the dry-wick tees collecting dust in my suitcase and headed out for a twilight run faster than Bogs fly off the shelves at an Anchorage Costco.  It was exactly what I needed to keep from going cattywampus. (We've covered this before, I believe.)

My turn-around point on the out-and-back run through Jasper

After Jasper, things got a bit more, howshallwesay, remote. We drove to Smithers, BC the following day. This was the part of the show when you fill up at every gas station you pass and begin to subsist on trail mix and random pantry items the packers left but you didn't want to throw away. (I may or may not have polished off a bag of croutons and called it lunch.)

And you learn something every day. When a sign says, "Watch for Livestock", this is what it means:
If I'm going to have to slow down, it might as well be for these beauties. They sure beat the heck out of Chicago traffic.

When we checked into the motel in Smithers, my husband gave me the "you seriously couldn't find anything better?!" look while my children hoped against hope (despite my repeated assertions to the contrary) that there might be a pool. I smiled at the clerk, took the keys, and then shot back my best "Don't. Just. Don't." look to everyone who dared make eye contact.

Later that evening, in this discomfort of our own space, I warned my husband. It's going to get worse before it gets better. You think tonight's bad? Just wait until tomorrow....

Dun dun duuuunnnn....

What? Don't you like my suspenseful ending? Aren't you hooked? Well then, come back tomorrow to hear the rest! Or maybe make that two weeks from tomorrow, or sometime before Halloween, or by the turn of the century...

On taking the plunge

When you decide you are to have an adventure, when you're tired of feeling boxed in by the same old grow-up-and-stay-put life, this is what you do. You find a place on the cliff where the water below is deep, deep, deep. (Maybe nudge a friend to go first.) Then you fix your eyes on the far out spot in the sky, perhaps on the cloud that looks like Mary Poppins' umbrella. Then you back up, give yourself room for a running start. Then you run, leap, jump feet first, plug your nose, point your toes, scream to high heaven.

You can do it any number of ways. The key is to stop deliberating on the edge. The key is to jump.

We jumped, and I'm not a bit sorry. But there are still spots where I'm raw, where it stings to the touch. There are times, like on a Sunday afternoon, when I sit without a chair, trying to figure out how to undo the Amazon order that shipped 4000 miles in the wrong direction, times when I want for everything not to feel like such an effort, when I'd like to trade all this adventure crap for a nice long nap on a real mattress.

We've hit some snags and hurdles. It will all be okay, and there will come a time when I don't feel overwhelmed and alone. But it's going to take a good deal of swimming toward the shore and a healthy dose of metaphoric aloe vera.

::

There's a reason they call it Big Sky Country. Can you guess?

As for the actual journey to Alaska (the part of the jump where we flail our arms and make the crazy flared-nostrils face), I believe I left off somewhere around Yellowstone, yes?

Well, the following day we drove parallel to the ever gorgeous Glacier National Park before crossing into Canada. Thankfully my son waited to sing his improvised lyrics to Oh Canada until after the border agent let us pass.

We stopped in Calgary that night, staying at the hotel with the much anticipated "spinny slide" and pool.  Here's the honest truth. When you're a kid, hotel pools are the most awesome thing ever of all time in the history of the universe. And then here's the other honest truth--that when you're a grown-up, you just freakin' want to go to sleep. Of course, when you're a grown up, you tend to concern yourself more with putting smiles on your children's face than with your own need for slumber. So we swam until way past bedtime.

Pictured above: My favorite part of the leg from Montana to Calgary. Not pictured: The kids favorite part, aka the pool

We left Calgary the next morning with high hopes for another low mileage day, planning to take our time driving from Banff to Jasper on the Icefields Parkway, a 280 kilometer trip touted as one of the world's most scenic drives.

I had already prepped the kids that there would be no screen time allowed on this particular leg of the journey, only gawking at glaciers and oohing/ahhing at the mountain views. But then it rained, poured really, almost the whole way to Jasper. The mountains and glaciers hid behind the fog and clouds, and every which way you looked? That's right, gray.

There was quite a bit more whining and ingratitude than I'm going to admit to on the interwebs (and the kids were a little ungrateful as well), but I stuck to my guns on the no-screen time decree. Instead, we began listening to the Anne of Green Gables audiobook while I craned my neck trying to catch a glimpse of something beautiful.

I had almost resigned myself to the "depths of despair" and declared our day "a perfect graveyard of buried hopes" when the rain finally began to subside. Then the sun threw a few darts into the clouds, and bam, bullseye. We had our view.

Oh, Marilla, I couldn't even imagine a place so glorious, could you?

Stopped for construction, the rearview mirror view, leaving the rain behind.

I've rambled well beyond what a reasonable person would want to read, so I'll save our stories and pictures of Jasper for the next post. 

But can we go back to the jumping just for a minute? When I started to write this (about 500 hours ago), I was weary and melancholy and dreading the unpacking of All The Things, not feeling nearly strong enough to navigate the 4000 mile leap we just made. But writing here, the words become strokes that get me back to shore. They take me back to the solid ground where I can look up at the cliff, now bending small against the sky, and to be ever so glad that I took the plunge.

Moats and boats and waterfalls (and geysers)

My dog still hasn't forgiven me for not letting her loose to frolic in Yellowstone Lake. She's not usually a puller, but man, had it not been for the massive amount of arm strength I've built up by stress-shoveling chocolate peanut butter ice cream into my pie hole, we might've both ended up going for a swim.


So yes, we made it to Yellowstone. We weren't able to find lodging nearby, so we just made it a short driving day and detoured our way through the beautiful national park. Our one and only must see stop was of course, Old Faithful. It was horribly crowded when we arrived, not a parking spot in sight. So we drove around the lot for another 20 minutes, doing wonders for both our bladders and blood pressure. After finally scoring a spot (ok, I confess, we created a spot), we rushed to the restrooms and then off toward the geyser to find out when this show of natural wonder would start.

Oh, it erupted five minutes ago, you say? While we were in the bathroom? Ok, no problem, so when's the next one? An hour and a half to two hours?? Gaaaah!

So we did the next best thing. We took a picture by the sign.

Watching the geyser not going off. Anti-climatic much?

When we finally made it to our hotel that evening, we were tired and crazy hungry. I found a restaurant on TripAdvisor that had great reviews and touted a kid-friendly menu. But upon arriving, we discovered that the restaurant was decidedly more "fancy" than we'd anticipated, not a crayon or kids' menu in sight.
L and I were craving a decent meal with recognizable vegetables and fish or beef that didn't make you wish you were a vegetarian. So we took the plunge and prayed the other patrons would be long suffering should our children choose to act their age.

I know it sounds lame, but this random meal in Butte, Montana turned out to be one of my most favorite memories from the trip. The kids ordered "fancy meals" from the grown up menu (chicken with artichoke hearts and sun dried tomatoes, salads, linguine, etc), drank lemonade from delicate glasses, and made delightful conversation. They rose to the occasion. That is, until I made them pose for a picture to prove how refined they were. Then they were all quick, pick up your spoon and start goofing off!

::

As I try to recall the details of the trip, so many of the moments I remember are the small ones. Like when I looked in the rear view mirror and C was wearing his bike helmet and creating facial hair out of post-it notes. Or the time I camped out in the laundry room at the Best Western until midnight to ensure we would all have 2,500 more miles worth of clean underwear.

There is little glamor to be found in driving two cars across two expansive countries with two young children and an old dog. I still cringe when I recall the packing and unpacking of suitcases each night, the loading and unloading the cars each day, the often fruitless pursuit of decent coffee each morning. But still I smile when I recall the way the horizon rose and fell on the back roads of Montana, when I remember the sound of D's voice as she tried to sing every word to our traveling song, the one we played every morning to begin our drive. 

Moats and boats and waterfalls, alley ways and pay phone calls,
I've been everywhere with you (that's true.)...
Home, let me come home
Home is wherever I'm with you.

Even now, when we get in the car, they say, almost out of habit, "Hey mom, can you please tell Siri to play Home by Edward Sharpe?" And now, even when the music is off, I hear Siri's robo-voice saying, "Looking for Home....Ok, Jo, here's Home."

Once upon a time, in a small town in South Dakota

We spent the 4th of July at Mount Rushmore. It's all well and good for an impressive Facebook status, but to be honest, the park wasn't our favorite. There was no going off the paved and commercialized trail--not even a little bit. (It seemed like every other stone on the path was "sponsored" by one "freedom patron" or another.)

While it poured rain, we watched a film that emphasized the featured presidents' commitment to individual liberties. The irony wasn't lost on my eight year old. "Sooo, we're celebrating freedom, but they don't give us any freedom and make us stay on the same little trail the whole time?"

Still, I'm glad we made the stop. The mountain is a colossal work of art, and it was amazing to learn about the craftsmen and master artist behind it. And you know, the whole patriotic Facebook check-in thing doesn't hurt either. 

Photo credit: The 8 year old

An old filling station in Lead

We were planning to go back to Rushmore that night for fireworks, but they had stopped doing a fireworks display in 2012. (Our timing was impeccable.) So we headed to the small mining town of Lead in search of food and fireworks.

The town was quaint and inviting, yet rough around the edges, with a vintage toughness and tenacity to it. We made friends with some biker chicks in the line for lemonade, and then settled in for the fireworks.

My favorite part of the 4th of July would've been the same whether we'd laid out a blanket on a grassy patch in an Ohio parking lot or stood on a pier in Maine or fought through the crowds at the national mall in DC. It was when, in a small town in South Dakota, my kids leaned in (one on my lap, one under my arm), looked up, and marveled at what they'd later describe--before dozing crooked-necked in their car seats--as the "best fireworks ever."

North to Alaska, the Rush is On

I'm not gonna lie. I wished some moments of my life away. The South Dakota moments, to be exact. Someone please tell me how Pa and Ma Ingalls didn't fall apart entirely on their way to Dakota Territory, because I'm pretty sure the covered wagons didn't come equipped with DVD players.

Pretending to be pioneers for about 5 minutes before resuming the begging for more screen time

Fording the Mississippi

After crossing the Mississippi, our first notable stop was the Wall Drug Store in Wall, South Dakota. The signs for Wall Drug line the highways for at least 200 miles. These also happen to be just about the only signs you see for hours, which of course creates a desire to stop and see what all the fuss is about. So we stopped, along with the whole realm of humanity traveling on 1-90.

We hurried out of the 93 degree parking (baking) lot and into the AC. Who cares what time it is or whether we've had a proper meal all day, it's time for root beer floats!

The kids stopped to listen to the mechanical cowboy band sing "North to Alaska, the rush is on", and I felt a surge within my spirit.  

We're doing this. We're really doing this. We're moving to Alaska.

North to Alaska, the rush is on

This is the first post of  my feeble attempt to chronicle our two week journey from Ohio to Alaska. Much more to come. Also? I still don't have a chair. All hope for comfortable seating is still 8 days out, currently floating somewhere in the Gulf of Alaska. Now that we've been without our belongings for over a month, I can say that minimalism certainly has its advantages. It's just that the general enjoyment of sitting for any length of time isn't one of them.

Family selfie. After we'd finally made it to Rapid City, near Mount Rushmore