Welcome to the Jungle

To whatever readers are left,

It's been awhile. My apologies.

I meant to update whilst in Seattle, but I couldn't get up the energy. To hugely shorten a week of the trip - we drove up through northern California along the coast, which was gorgeous. Made it to Crater Lake in Oregon, one of the most startlingly blue, deep, unbelievable lakes in the country. The Oregon coast was cold, cold, and more cold.

For the sake of time, we had to skip Portland and go straight to Mt. Rainier in Washington. On the drive, we passed Mt. Saint Helens, which was endlessly cool. The only con to Mt. Rainier is that we didn't see it while we were there - the mountain is so enormous (nearly 15,000 feet) that it creates its own weather system, and was thus enshrouded in clouds. The surrounding scenery was great, and the brief glimpses of Rainier's slopes were nice too.

After Rainier, we spent a couple days in the Hoh Rainforest at Olympic National Park. A beautiful area with some interesting hikes, but somewhat underwhelming. The truly weird thing about the Hoh is that it's near the town of Forks, Washington. Unbeknownst to me and Lizzie, Forks is where the Twilight books are set, so the town is Twilight-OBSESSED. Stores, tours, gift shops, everything. The town has been infested. It was terrible.

We spent a couple days in Seattle with Lizzie's family, who were great hosts. We had a lot of fun going to the Mariners game with my aunt and uncle, despite the fact that the Mariners beat the Red Sox. Seattle was pretty low-key for us, as we were mostly resting for the grand adventure that lay ahead: The drive to 'Laska.

We started last Tuesday, the 27th. Made it through customs with ease, landed in Vanderhoof, British Columbia for the night, about 13 hours into what would be a 46 hour drive. At this point, we had to make a decision. Take the Cassiar Highway north to the Yukon, which goes northwest through British Columbia, or take the Alaska-Canada Highway, which goes Northeast through BC. Mileage and time-wise, they are almost identical. So, I arbitrarily picked the Cassiar route. These are the ONLY two routes through northern BC. We got a late start Wednesday, drove to Tatogga Lake, British Columbia. The scenery this whole way was mostly gorgeous mountain scenery, with endless runs of pine trees.

In Tatogga Lake, we met Margaret Klocker. She was a vaguely German park official who came to collect our camping fee. Despite the fact that we were in the forest, and we had seen 6 black bears that day, she told us "There are no bears here. And no squirrelly things to eat your food. What would they want here?", all in a thick German accent. Wonderful. We also met and camped with a group of motorcycle riders bound for Prudhoe Bay on the arctic ocean. An interesting and varied group of people, for sure.

Thursday morning we hit the road at 6 am, and by 10 am, were within 2 hours of the Yukon. This means we would've been in Alaska on Friday afternoon. UNTIL, we see signs warning us of the road being closed approximately 50 miles shy of the Yukon border due to forest fire. After waiting all day Thursday for updates, the road was still closed indefinitely. Rather than wait for potentially days or weeks, we decided to drive back south down the Cassiar, around to the Alaska-Canada Highway, and up that way. This little detour would add 1,500 miles to the trip. It took us four extra days to drive around and up into Alaska, where we mercifully arrived Monday around 1 pm local time.

We saw lots of good wildlife, including black bears, moose (and baby moose), coyotes, and a couple herds of bison/buffalo.

Thank goodness there was family, showers, laundry, and overall hospitality awaiting us. That drive was truly brutal. And now, we're going to spend the next week exploring Alaska!

More later,
Tom