The epic road trip story really begins in Fairbanks, Alaska, several days before the road trip began. It starts with the purchase of the SkyBox 18. The 18 means that it is 18 cubic feet in volume. I bought the SkyBox at Beaver Sports. Yes, I know, I hate Beaver Sports for many reasons, but time was limited and it is conveniently close to the university and I knew that they sold the SkyBox, because several of them are on display outside the front door.

So, at Beaver Sports, with Sarah, I was being helped by a saleman there. He showed me the list of SkyBox models and the prices for each. For each size category, there is a SkyBox and a SkyBox Pro. The difference, apparently, is $200 and a “fancy” silver finish. Sarah was particularly confused by this, and kept asking pointed questions, such as “Is the Pro more durable?,” “Wait, I must be missing something…is it more aerodynamics?” “It must have better features, right? Easier to open?...Better latches?...” To each of these questions, the salesman, who happened to understand the ironic humor in this situation, kept patiently responding, “Nope. Just the color.” So, now, anytime I see anyone driving down the road with a fancy silver SkyBox Pro, I will be laughing, because I will now know that they paid an extra $200 for the silver color.

So, the reason that I include this as a monumental event for the start of the road trip, is because I have had a life long dream of making a road trip in a station wagon with a cargo top (or hamburger box, as I called them when I was a kid). I don’t know why I have always felt like this would be the dreamiest way of traveling, but the impression was burned in my memory from childhood, perhaps on one of the long family road trips out west when I was young, I saw some other family in such a set up and was jealously looking out from the back of the 1971 mustard yellow Datsun or the 1973 blue-blue Audi sedan, fighting for space between the back seats with my older sister. So, now, with a SkyBox 18 on the top of my 1999 green Subaru Legacy Outback, I feel like a Kind of the Road…ready to hit the road in the ultimate, vehicle-of-my-drams, road-tripping vehicle. Owen, unlike my childhood dream, does NOT however, have all of the space in the world to play. Some dreams stay unfulfilled, I guess.

Day 1:

Sunday, February 15, started out later than planned, of course. For some reason, saying goodbye to my friends and home, packing, and getting myself together in general, took longer than expected. So, we started from Fairbanks at around 5:30 pm, and headed out for the highway. SkyBox full with winter clothes, camping and survival gear, for just in case, back seat full of toys and food, back of the station full of Spirit, Thunder, and Fire, and front seats full with me and Sarah. The drive, was a drive, and we pushed it late into the night to try to make up for lost time and also because there is really not much open on the Alcan Highway in winter. Well, it’s a long time between stops in summer sometimes anyway, but even less is open in winter.

We crossed the border rather uneventfully, though the maybe-slightly-older than high-school border official was not impressed by our jokes of irony. “Do you have anything to declare?” “Well, our clothes, camping gear, child, road snacks, the dogs.” “Do you have health certificates for the dogs?” “Why yes, I do!” (I proclaimed this very proudly, because the “Pet Passports” folders containing the dog’s certificates from the vet are just ridiculously cute.) “Do you have any firearms?” “No.” “Do you have any pets?” “…do you mean, other than the ones we just showed you the certificates for….?”

So, once in Canadia, our late night driving talks focused around defining the different types of snow and ice that exist on the road. There’s black ice, texturized black ice, snow pack, patchy snow pack, texturized snow pack, …we were up to about 18 categories and counting. I am, by the way, already planning to use this for my excuse for when I get pulled over for speeding in the lower 48. I will explain, “what, speed limit? But…the road is clear, I don’t get it…I thought I was driving at a safe speed.” Sarah drove between Delta and Tok, and successfully avoided hitting the token moose-nearly crossing the road just as the only other car that we’ve seen for hours is about drive past us going the other direction. She also successfully navigated the “Corridor of Death,” a stretch of highway with an uncanny number of upturned hooves. The drive was mostly uneventful, until the stretch after Tok…

At Tok, we switched drivers and it was my turn to drive again. Then, the road became frost heavy, slow, icy, and late. Owen started getting frost-heavy car-sick and vomiting. I drove with constant nervous glances back to see if he was going to be sick again. We had made some plans to stop at one “lodge” that clamed to be open year round, but wasn’t, and were forced to push on for several more hours to Kuane Lake, which WAS opened, but not at 3 am when we rolled in to town. But, at this hotel, after driving around and knocking on several doors of nearby residences, we found an unlocked door to a laundry room, and out of desperation, from being overly-tired and the vomiting child, we started blowing up an air mattress on the floor of the hotel’s laundry room. But, Sarah then went off to find a pee spot and on her way back, found a room with a tv on, and knocked. She did find a hotel employee, or rather, one vague, and rather scary employee who referred her to another door where she could wake up a sleeping, but helpful hotel employee. So, we nonchalantly whisked the air mattress away and slept for the very short night.

Day 2:
We saw elk along the road and had a little side-jaunt into Whitehorse (including a walk to Sarah’s favorite landmark of Whitehorse, the “skyscraper log cabin”), a little shopping trip for supplies at “The Real Canadian Super Store” (as opposed to the fake one?), where we bought snacks with labels in English and French Owen was rested and well, the sun was shining, it wasn’t too cold, and Owen continues to be thrilled at the idea of being in Canada. At one gas station in the Yukon, the store owner gave Owen a bag of chips, because “Canadians are just nice.” We found a decent, but overpriced, but most of all, open, hotel in Watson Lake and spent the night. All was good.

Day 3
The lesson of the day is that one should NOT leave a full, unopened can of diet Coke in the drink holder of the car overnight when the temperature dips down to 20 below (F, even though we’re in Canada). Sometime in the late afternoon, the last the mess thawed off the windshield and visibility was improved. With that and a lot of mopping with a roll of toilet paper “stolen” from the hotel room the night before.

Liard hot springs made a wonderful stopping point, despite the pain involved in getting into and out of the swim. But, yet another sunny day, Owen continues to be an absolute trooper, the dogs are happy, we saw lots of bison and beautiful scenery, and all is good in the world.

As a side note, Canadians tend to display some slightly weird road signs. For example, a “landfill” sign with an arrow pointing into a forested gully (it was actually down the road a little way). My favorite of the day, however, was a yellow diamond sign with a picture of a truck on a triangle. Nothing else. No indication of percent grade, no caution warnings, no “check your brakes,” no…nothing but a sign with a picture of a match-box truck on a triangular-shaped building block.

And I will now sign off and get ready for my next driving shift with my cold mug of coffee that wasn’t good even when it was fresh and a few handfuls of Wasabi almonds, purchased at the Freddie’s back in Fairbanks. This trip has been characterized by excessively strongly flavored foods: such as the dill and sour cream potato chips Sarah bought in Whitehorse that seem to have gotten the flavor of dill and sour cream with excessive vinegar and dill, the Wasabi almonds, and the candied ginger that kept me awake on the late night shift of Day 1 by a ginger flavor so strong that my eyes watered and my throat felt like it was on fire. You can always count on pure discomfort to keep you awake.

We had “dinner” in Fort Nelson at the Backstreet bar, restaurant, and liquor store. The food was good and it was one of the few non-chain restaurants in the town. The town that we almost missed in the course of a sentence, by the way. The restaurant is located, after turning around, before the ball park, according to directions given to us by a local. Of course, this means that you pass the turn, with this manner of giving directions. But, passing it allowed us to pull into the turn for the Fort Nelson Heritage Museum and dump station. Yes, they are both located off the same turn.

Dinner brought out one of life’s important lessons, which is that not all things improve with time. In this category of things are: my marriage and squirrel and dumplings stew. Trust me on this. They absolutely do not improve with time.

I also almost violated my most important rule of driving the Alcan today, which is: Always park your car in the direction you intend to be going. Lesson learned the hard way on my first trip. But, this time, I am, in fact, wiser, and caught myself mid-turn and did a nice 360 before stopping.

Today we also bought the most expensive gas, I hope, of the trip. Because we pulled into a gas station/store that was literally, just in the process of opening for the winter. The gas pump was not quite yet plowed and the man at the store offered to fill the tank for us. But, then, I found out that they were selling the gas at last summer’s prices. But, I figured it is more like a donation to some folks trying to make a go of keeping the store going through the winter than a rip off. Plus, we got to use the bathrooms in their home because the power wasn’t turned on at the public ones yet.