Fall comes early in Alaska. By September the once vibrant yellows were in a state of decay and the rafts prickled with frost come morning. The cruise line garys had stopped touring and business was slow. With little work and slim pickings at the cook shack Nick and I checked out early and were in route to Fairbanks before dinner on the 8th.
The next four days it rained. The all day showers followed us throughout the Alaska Highway, albeit mercifully intermittent as we set up camp in the Yukon and BC. Compared to the drive up in May there was fewer game hunting the highway, excluding a lone wolf circling the civic as we entered Canada. Somewhere near Mile 1--Dawson City-- our stash of fresh moose hind dwindled as our noodle a la sriracha dinners had a bit of added color from roadside produce stands.
On day five we arrived at my uncle's property on the southern tip of Key Peninsula, a bit of coastline jutting into Puget Sound. We unpacked the car and hung busted camping gear to dry while we stretched our driving legs into a pair of sea kayaks, trailed by a duo of spotted seals.
We had planned to hang low and take the scenic route back but after a nightmarish vision of apocalypse we decided to rush home. We left around lunch with hurried goodbyes and damp clothes, stopping only for gas, coffee and Backwoods. Near Olympia we rented the final installment of Harry Potter on CD and didn't rest till peace had been restored at Hogwarts, a 27-hour stretch from western Washington to southeastern Colorado. There was an oil change in Wyoming, a sunrise through the canyon lands of Utah and the Wild West disappeared into a never ending line of angry taillights in the merging metropolis of Dallas- Fort Worth.
From there to Picayune, Mississippi the trip was an uneventful stretch of interstate, where Nick retrieved his home on wheels and I made the final stretch back to the suburbs of Atlanta. Over the next month we toured the southeast-- kayaking in Chatoogaland, hiking the Smokies and rafting the Gauley-- before venturing into the dirty dirty south: Chile.
--nickiD
Fall comes early in Alaska. By September the once vibrant yellows were in a state of decay and the rafts prickled with frost come morning. The cruise line garys had stopped touring and business was slow. With little work and slim pickings at the cook shack Nick and I checked out early and were in route to Fairbanks before dinner on the 8th.
The next four days it rained. The all day showers followed us throughout the Alaska Highway, albeit mercifully intermittent as we set up camp in the Yukon and BC. Compared to the drive up in May there was fewer game hunting the highway, excluding a lone wolf circling the civic as we entered Canada. Somewhere near Mile 1--Dawson City-- our stash of fresh moose hind dwindled as our noodle a la sriracha dinners had a bit of added color from roadside produce stands.
On day five we arrived at my uncle's property on the southern tip of Key Peninsula, a bit of coastline jutting into Puget Sound. We unpacked the car and hung busted camping gear to dry while we stretched our driving legs into a pair of sea kayaks, trailed by a duo of spotted seals.
We had planned to hang low and take the scenic route back but after a nightmarish vision of apocalypse we decided to rush home. We left around lunch with hurried goodbyes and damp clothes, stopping only for gas, coffee and Backwoods. Near Olympia we rented the final installment of Harry Potter on CD and didn't rest till peace had been restored at Hogwarts, a 27-hour stretch from western Washington to southeastern Colorado. There was an oil change in Wyoming, a sunrise through the canyon lands of Utah and the Wild West disappeared into a never ending line of angry taillights in the merging metropolis of Dallas- Fort Worth.
From there to Picayune, Mississippi the trip was an uneventful stretch of interstate, where Nick retrieved his home on wheels and I made the final stretch back to the suburbs of Atlanta. Over the next month we toured the southeast-- kayaking in Chatoogaland, hiking the Smokies and rafting the Gauley-- before venturing into the dirty dirty south: Chile.
--nickiD 
