When Lindsay and I first start planning this trip, most people’s responses was…you’re driving to Alaska? How many miles? How many days in the car? Are you sure you and Lindsay won’t kill each other? After all, it was 30 days of just us, together, non-stop. I figured it would just be like we were married, in a type of marriage that you never got to leave each other’s side..so maybe like the Amish..but even they got some relief when the men went in the field and women did everything else. And I don’t know if in today’s society, a marriage is the relationship you aim for..given the high rate of divorce. I consider it more like a catholic marriage, without the option for divorce, since unless one of us abandoned ship and fly home, we were stuck with each other. So given that, and the fact that Lindsay and I used to spend all of our summers together, I didn’t really question this ambitious idea. Today was the first day I had any doubt. I was damp and cold and I woke up in flipping Chicken Alaska. Which actually made me feel a little better, cause it was called Chicken and the people loved on it. When Lindsay started lecturing me on the proper way to pull out the tent poles for the 149th time, and then told me to roll up the mess of the extension cord, I had about had it. First of all, if you have a way of doing things that you feel is superior, just do it yourself. Or let the other person do it the way they want, no matter how ass backwards it is. And the stupid extension cord. I swear extension cord rolling is the most hated activity in the family. It reminds me of the time my dad made Brent roll the hose until it was perfect… little sweatshop workers we were. Therefore, I don’t understand why I always get stuck with this stupid task. I’m not good at it. And I am a firm believer of not doing things you’re not good at…. Once again, comparative advantage. Why waste my time, which could be better spent doing things I am good at. Luckily for us, my anger is short lived and my rationale is great, and knowing there’s no sense in getting upset and being mad all day, and we just get frustrated like sisters, I sucked it up, and enjoyed the great town of Chicken. Now when I say town, I mean three shops all owned by the same proprietor. Chicken has no in ground plumbing, or cell phone service, and in the winter, the population is a whopping 6 people. There’s a bar, a liquor store, a gas station, and that’s about it. People utilize the “Chicken Poop” for all of that such activity. Sounds like people just lay around, squawk with each other, and drink.
After leaving Chicken, we headed West, towards Anchorage on more unpaved roads. The Taylor Highway connects the On top of the world Highway with the Alaskan Highway, so once we got back on the Alaskan Highway, we were a little bit back in civilization. A little bit. Now once leaving Chicken, the landscape didn’t change much… just more mountains. And trees. I know it’s not logical for me to assume that the clouds would part and some gloriousness of Alaska would emerge, since obviously basic geography says that Alaska is just a continuation of the roads we’ve been traveling, but the first few hours of driving in Alaska were just sub-par. We even stopped in the North Pole. Yep, that’s right, North Pole, Alaska but all we found were some cheesey statues and a Santa Claus house full of knick knacks and what nots that would’ve had Aunt Kathy shopping for hours. We took some pictures of Santa, and headed to Fairbanks. Well, not really, since there was not much to see there, we passed on through it. South to Denali National Park.
Unfortunately, Denali too was a disappointment. You need to take the Park System’s 6 hour bus service to go through the bank but we missed the last bus. So we were only able to drive the first 14 miles into the park, which only gave us glimpses of a canyon, some trees, and one critter…some little rodent thing. Not exciting. We had a busy day planned for the following day, so we headed to our campsite to get some rest.
The Denali Grizzly Bear Campground/Resort was probably the most fancier of all the campgrounds we’ve stayed at…for the hotel guests that is. We found our piece of land, that they charged us $24 to squat on for the night, and set up the tent. A wine tasting party was going on just a few yards down hill and the party was pumping. It’s kind of hard to enjoy camping when you have to listen to people laughing and drinking and having a good time…. When you have an airmattress to sleep on, and are eating granolas and fruit snacks for dinner. We opted for the best part of my day…showering. But ofcourse that required coins. $1.50 got you 4 minutes of shower time. 4 minutes…that’s barely time to save the world…let alone wash all my hair and get clean. Luckily, my travel haircut has proved to be a good decision, given lack of proper showering facilities. We decided to take advantage of the laundry facilities. But yep, another $3.50 per wash and $3.50 per dry…and you needed special tokens. So after a million trips up and down the hill and the office, we finally got our laundry in and headed to the showers.
A little frustrated with the Denali’s nickel and diming, we decided to take sweet revenge. I told you Lindsay’s a bad influence. Just call us the Ice Bandits from now on. Kind of like the wet bandits from Home Alone. So we stole Ice from the hotel ice machine. Listen, a bag of ice is $3.50, and it melts, and we’re in Alaska, they should have a surplus. A harmless crime..but it’s the little thrills in life. And we’ve probably spent more money on ice on this trip than actual food. Our usual daily intake goes something like this… fruit or jello fruit cup for breakfast…. Fruit snacks around 12…maybe a brownie bite…. Some twizzlers…around 3 or 4, we make dashboard sandwiches… 6ish we snack on chips and more fruit snacks, maybe a soda or a bag of skittles. Around 8 or 9, we make hot dogs, if we have enough energy to get out the cooking stuff… if we’re really luckily, smores, but so far that’s only happened once.
Probably one of the least eventful days thus far, except for the almost running out of gas and having to use our back up stash… but after a shower and clean clothes, and a day to look forward to, things were looking up… plus a day on the road is better than a day of work. Still loving our adventure. And as for me and Lindsay, we’ve gotten along great. We both understand each other, finish each other’s sentences. Like a good marriage, you’ve got to accept people’s flaws (extraordinary love of birds) and work with it. Lindsay likes all things nature, and I like trying new things, so I’ve just let her do her thing, and I take on what I want to do… not like I see any bears in Chicago, unless you count the football kind… I’m pretty sure Brian Urlacher would have a hard time sacking these guys. Right now she’s out wandering some wildlife conservation place…and I’m eating chips and writing. Everyone’s happy. Not quite as happy as the wine drinkers who partied late into the midnight sun last night….
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