Alaska!!!!

10:00am Sunrise along the Alaskan Highway near Whitehorse, Yukon Territory

It was barely light and lightly raining in Whitehorse when the car merged onto the Alaskan Highway at 9:30am  headed northwest for the final leg of the journey through the Yukon Territory.  The rain quickly turned to snow but soon the skies cleared an hour out of Whitehorse to reveal a beautiful sunrise. Within an hour of being on the highway on a straight away two elk cows stepped out of the brush on the roadside.  Their breath was white frost in the chilly morning air.

The road through the western potion of the Yukon is rough, barren and lonely.  The few small towns are long distances apart.  Many listed on the map turned out to be just an abandoned business that was boarded up and dilapidated.  The road was straight and rose and fell with the terrain.  It was obvious the road had been improved in places where the old highway was visible as it went around hills then rolled up and over steep hilltops.  The new road ran straighter and with less hills as cuts had been made through the hills.  The road ran toward high snow capped mountains and turned north skirting them.  These were the St Elias Mountains.  Thankfully we did not have to go over them.  The road followed the wide valley between the mountains rising higher and higher.

The Alaskan Highway (Alcan) follows the river valleys through this high section of the Yukon.  The highway runs straight with sweeping curves.  It bumps up and down like a roller coaster where the permafrost has heaved it.  You could see the bumps in the road by watching the white lines along the side the road (where there were white lines).  For miles the road was so rough with bumps and patches it was a slow going slalom course driving on both sides of the road to avoid them.  With the lack of traffic in either direction, I drove on the left side of the road often to avoid the bad sections.

Abandoned business along the Alcan

The highway passed a few abandoned businesses and houses as it wound northwest up the river valleys and over a long high ridge.  The road after Haines Junction climbed steadily for miles and miles as it climbed over a ridge then around the south end of Kluane lake.  A glacier in the St Elias range was visible high in the mountains on our left.  We crossed the wide rocky Slim, Donjek and White glacial rivers.  It was remote as we wound through the scrub pine trees on the tundra.  The road became covered with snow and ice in sections.  The plow truck had spread sand so travelling was good but with the poor condition of the road itself, it was a little nerve racking.

Casualty of the Alaskan Highway.  Roll over accident in the middle of nowhere.

After hours of driving, with only the occasional tractor trailer bumping by us heading south, we arrived in Beaver Creek.  This is the most western town in Canada and hours away from anything else.  The nearest big town with a grocery store was Whitehorse six and a half hours away.  This was the only gas station we had seen for over 125 miles and it would be 100 miles to Tok, Alaska. We made a stop here for gas at 3:00pm. The young girl working the register (wearing boots and pajama pants) informed us we were her first customers of the day when she had a problem with the cash register.  Leaving Beaver Creek it was a 30 mile drive to the U.S. border.  The highway for this last section was a wide dirt track.  Luckily it was smoother than the paved highway we had been driving for the past two hours.

Kluane Lake

Nearing Beaver Creek, Yukon Territory

Shortly after leaving Beaver Creek the U.S. border came into view.  This was a small building on a hill with nothing else around.  It only had three lanes and two of those were closed.  The border guard was nice and very relaxed.  I had worried about crossing back in the U.S. and having the packed car searched.  This worry was for nothing as the guard asked a few questions and gave us our passports back.  Apparently, terrorists aren't common in the Yukon in late October especially ones driving Hyundai Tuscons.  I had thought there would be a town at the border crossing.  I could not have been more wrong.  There was just that small building.  The road, however, did become noticeably better and I welcomed the signs in miles per hour. The Alaskan portion to Tok wound over some hills with snow capped mountains in the distance.  It was eighty miles of snow and ice covered highway to Tok and our stop for the night.  The motel, restaurant combination is nice and tomorrow it's on to Anchorage.

As a I spent the majority of today driving the last section of the Alaskan Highway through the Yukon, I thought I'd post another poem as homage to Robert Service the famed poet of the Yukon.

The Ballad of Blasphemous Bill

by Robert W. Service

I took a contract to bury the body Of blasphemous Bill MacKie, Whenever, wherever or whatsoever The manner of death he die -- Whether he die in the light o' day Or under the peak-faced moon; In cabin or dance-hall, camp or dive, Mucklucks or patent shoon; On velvet tundra or virgin peak, By glacier, drift or draw; In muskeg hollow or canyon gloom, By avalanche, fang or claw; By battle, murder or sudden wealth, By pestilence, hooch or lead -- I swore on the Book I would follow and look Till I found my tombless dead. For Bill was a dainty kind of cuss, And his mind was mighty sot On a dinky patch with flowers and grass In a civilized bone-yard lot. And where he died or how he died, It didn't matter a damn So long as he had a grave with frills And a tombstone "epigram". So I promised him, and he paid the price In good cheechako coin (Which the same I blowed in that very night Down in the Tenderloin). Then I painted a three-foot slab of pine: "Here lies poor Bill MacKie", And I hung it up on my cabin wall And I waited for Bill to die. Years passed away, and at last one day Came a squaw with a story strange, Of a long-deserted line of traps 'Way back of the Bighorn range; Of a little hut by the great divide, And a white man stiff and still, Lying there by his lonesome self, And I figured it must be Bill. So I thought of the contract I'd made with him, And I took down from the shelf The swell black box with the silver plate He'd picked out for hisself; And I packed it full of grub and "hooch", And I slung it on the sleigh; Then I harnessed up my team of dogs And was off at dawn of day. You know what it's like in the Yukon wild When it's sixty-nine below; When the ice-worms wriggle their purple heads Through the crust of the pale blue snow; When the pine-trees crack like little guns In the silence of the wood, And the icicles hang down like tusks Under the parka hood; When the stove-pipe smoke breaks sudden off, And the sky is weirdly lit, And the careless feel of a bit of steel Burns like a red-hot spit; When the mercury is a frozen ball, And the frost-fiend stalks to kill -- Well, it was just like that that day when I Set out to look for Bill. Oh, the awful hush that seemed to crush Me down on every hand, As I blundered blind with a trail to find Through that blank and bitter land; Half dazed, half crazed in the winter wild, With its grim heart-breaking woes, And the ruthless strife for a grip on life That only the sourdough knows! North by the compass, North I pressed; River and peak and plain Passed like a dream I slept to lose And I waked to dream again. River and plain and mighty peak -- And who could stand unawed? As their summits blazed, he could stand undazed At the foot of the throne of God. North, aye, North, through a land accurst, Shunned by the scouring brutes, And all I heard was my own harsh word And the whine of the malamutes, Till at last I came to a cabin squat, Built in the side of a hill, And I burst in the door, and there on the floor, Frozen to death, lay Bill. Ice, white ice, like a winding-sheet, Sheathing each smoke-grimed wall; Ice on the stove-pipe, ice on the bed, Ice gleaming over all; Sparkling ice on the dead man's chest, Glittering ice in his hair, Ice on his fingers, ice in his heart, Ice in his glassy stare; Hard as a log and trussed like a frog, With his arms and legs outspread. I gazed at the coffin I'd brought for him, And I gazed at the gruesome dead, And at last I spoke: "Bill liked his joke; But still, goldarn his eyes, A man had ought to consider his mates In the way he goes and dies." Have you ever stood in an Arctic hut In the shadow of the Pole, With a little coffin six by three And a grief you can't control? Have you ever sat by a frozen corpse That looks at you with a grin, And that seems to say: "You may try all day, But you'll never jam me in"? I'm not a man of the quitting kind, But I never felt so blue As I sat there gazing at that stiff And studying what I'd do. Then I rose and I kicked off the husky dogs That were nosing round about, And I lit a roaring fire in the stove, And I started to thaw Bill out. Well, I thawed and thawed for thirteen days, But it didn't seem no good; His arms and legs stuck out like pegs, As if they was made of wood. Till at last I said: "It ain't no use -- He's froze too hard to thaw; He's obstinate, and he won't lie straight, So I guess I got to -- saw." So I sawed off poor Bill's arms and legs, And I laid him snug and straight In the little coffin he picked hisself, With the dinky silver plate; And I came nigh near to shedding a tear As I nailed him safely down; Then I stowed him away in my Yukon sleigh, And I started back to town. So I buried him as the contract was In a narrow grave and deep, And there he's waiting the Great Clean-up, When the Judgment sluice-heads sweep; And I smoke my pipe and I meditate In the light of the Midnight Sun, And sometimes I wonder if they was, The awful things I done. And as I sit and the parson talks, Expounding of the Law, I often think of poor old Bill -- And how hard he was to saw.