I had just settled in to the driver’s seat of the big diesel F-350 pickup, my cute wife next to me, and her mom and her two little taco dogs (I don’t know how to spell Chihuahua) in the back seat. After a week of intense packing, we were finally on our way! But wait, in the rearview mirror I’m seeing smoke from the tires of the car we are pulling, I hear screeching, and there’s my brother-in-law running after us waving and shouting. After some appropriate cursing and banging of tools, we are finally on our way.
We are moving my precious mother-in-law (and two taco dogs) from Anchorage to Wenatchee, and I’m wondering how long 2500 miles will be. I’m sure everything will go just fine,….which just shows how naïve and uninformed (okay, ignorant) I really was. One of the big problems with this trip that only got bigger along the way was the fact that we are pulling a Jeep Cherokee on a car dolly. The thing about a car dolly, you CAN NOT BACKUP, EVER. Just remember that for later. The pickup with a tall canopy cover is stuffed to the gills with everything that wouldn’t fit in the Jeep Cherokee that is stuffed to the gills. Then, there is a king-size mattress with two double mattresses all stacked on top of the Cherokee. As we were going down the road, the Jeep Cherokee looked kind of like the Flying Nun and gave the vague impression of “sailing” in the wind, rocking back and forth and continually threatening to either roll over or just take off in a gust of wind with us dangling below it 50 feet above the highway.
We traveled several hours that afternoon before calling it a day, and that’s when I started realizing the full scope of this trip. We had gone a whole 143 miles, which left only 2,357 to go. Heck, we were practically there! The next morning we woke up to a snow storm, and that’s when the adventures really began. Between stopping every 15 minutes (well, it seemed like it) for the taco dogs to do their thing, avoiding sliding our whole covered wagon train off the side of the road somewhere, putting up with continual verbal abuse from my cute wife, her mom, AND the taco dogs, and various road hazards it was a long morning. We finally arrived at Tok, I opened my door, stepped out, and immediately fell flat out on my back, while my cute wife snickered. Later that day, the snow was gone, only to be replaced by something much more dreadful. Now, the locals call these things “frost heaves”, which of course is what snowmen do when throwing up. However, they were referring to the HUGE dips in the road that come out of nowhere, which is exactly where you’ll end up if you aren’t super aware and observant as I myself am. Up in Alaska, they just came out of nowhere, firmly trying to rip the tires off of my truck. Further into the Yukon, they actually had signs warning of the upcoming frost heave. This helped some, but we soon realized that different people must have used different standards as to what was worth putting up a warning sign for. At some of the signs, there was barely a flicker of a bump as we went over; at other signs, we had to have our rock climbing gear ready along with military grade parachutes just to survive. So, after the second day, we were now over 1/10th of the way.
I will not bludgeon you with the details of the whole trip, as it would not be fair for both of us to have to suffer when I already have enough for two of us. But here are some highlights.
-In the Yukon area along the highway there would often be a gravel frontage road that would start along one side of the road, go for ¼ or ½ mile, then connect back to the highway. I have no idea what they were for. One evening we were in the middle of nowhere and had just passed a little gas station/restaurant/hotel when my wonderful mother-in-law says, “shouldn’t we stay there for the night?” As I have great self-control, I did not slam on the brakes in anger, but merely looked angrily at my wife. You should know, she’s trained me over the years, and I’ve learned that when she says to do something, I just do it. It just seems to make meal times and bed times much more pleasant. So, as I look over at her angrily, she right then spots one of the gravel frontage roads coming up, and promptly tells me to turn off. So, I did. What we should have done of course, is go to the far end of the frontage road and turn off and come back along it to the first entrance. But we didn’t. I had a wife to obey, after all. So we drove along the gravel road in the gathering dusk with bears and who knows what else lurking in the woods around us, looking for the far end back to the highway. We found the far end alright, but it turned off into the bear infested woods, not to the highway! As my normally confident and out-spoken wife slid down into her seat, I came to a stop. I didn’t even yell or anything, I prefer to quietly boil and raise my blood pressure as far as I can. Remember, WE CAN NOT BACK UP because of the car on the dolly. Even so, I tried. Within about two feet the car started going one way and the dolly the other. We were stuck. No cell phone coverage. Probably two miles from the gas station/restaurant/hotel. Its getting dark. We have no knowledge of first aid for bear bites. I got out and followed the road on up the hill away from the road into the darkening forest. I heard my wife saying, “honey?, are you coming back?” or something like that. Sure enough, I followed the road about ¼ of a mile which went from a gravel road to a wide dirt path to two narrow paths to nothing in an alarmingly short distance. My pastor says I should pray more often, and that night I gave it some serious effort. As I walked back, I noticed a clear area with some trees and brush in the middle. I realized that we could possibly drive up to the far side, turn into the field and follow the edge around and back to the road going the right way! I walked through the field looking for big rocks and hidden mine shafts and by golly, I think its going to work! I walked back to the truck feeling a little better while the two ladies and two taco dogs looked at me. “Lets go, I’ve got a plan I think” I said as we got in. Up where we were to turn into the field, I had my cute wife get out and walk ahead of the truck in case I’d missed anything, while my mother-in-law and the taco dogs prayed in the back seat. We did get turned around, back on the highway with a great sense of relief and back to the nicest looking gas station/restaurant/hotel I’d ever seen. I was kind of a hero I guess, even the taco dogs quit barking at me for a while.
-Once again, its been a long day. Getting near the end of the trip. We have just passed Kelowna and are looking for some town called Peachland to eat and maybe stay the night. Its almost completely dark by now. Most of the paint is worn off from the truck, broken windshield, tires shot, we don’t talk anymore, the taco dogs aren’t even barking anymore. A local in Kelowna who seemed to be very confident told me to look for a road called “Princeton” and turn there. Now, he didn’t tell me which way to turn, just turn. Sure enough, twenty minutes later, here comes Princeton at a stop light. The problem is, as we were approaching this area, the large (and very beautiful in the daylight) Okanogan lake was on our left, and there didn’t seem to be any land on that side until just getting to Princeton street. Because of my continual worry about getting stuck where I’d have to back up – which we couldn’t do! – I decided to turn right. Lots of roads and options there, right? A quick turn, and we immediately start up a STEEP incline, with our cherished car dolly and Jeep dangling behind. Almost immediately, my wife quietly starts saying “I think we should have turned the other way.” Great, I liked it better when she wasn’t talking. It became immediately clear that she was right, of course. We are slowly grinding up the road, locals getting bunched up behind and passing once-in-a-while. The only restaurant that could possibly be up here is for expert mountain climbers or Bigfoot. There were streets going off to the side at places as this was a residential area, but I didn’t know if they went through, or just dead-ended as we were definitely on the side of a hill that was starting to appear to be from the Himalayas. The topper came about ten minutes later when my cherished mother-in-law chimes out, “I don’t think there are any restaurants up here Steve!” Now in my head, I slammed on the brakes, jumped out of the truck, and yelled “DON’T YOU THINK I KNOW THERE AREN’T ANY RESTAURANTS UP HERE O HIGH AND MIGHTY ONE?!@#@??” Of course, instead of doing any of that, I just glared at my wife who informed her mom that we were trying to turn around. Finally, at a large intersection it looked like I had my chance. No traffic behind me. I swung far to the right, barely missing the fire hydrant and a fence post (I think I missed them), then at the last possible moment started turning back. My wife kept saying “I don’t think we’re going to make it”, “I don’t think we’re going to make it”. Fortunately, this was one of the few times she was wrong. We slowly made it back down the hill, brakes smoking, me smoking, trying to figure out what lesson I was supposed to learn from that debacle. Anyway, we found a restaurant on the OTHER side of the highway, and we all started feeling better then. When I got home I looked on the map and found that the road we were following goes on pretty much forever into the forbidden hills of terror, where none have been known to survive. Guess we outsmarted them.
