“I’m John” “And I’m Stephanie” “And we’re goin’ for a drive!”

On the eve of 4,000 miles with a cat and a dog

In late February 2001 my then-girlfriend (now wife) Stephanie and I set out to drive from Louisville, Kentucky to Anchorage, Alaska. We were moving because I had picked up a job and we were looking for adventure. We arrived just in time to catch the start of the 2001 Iditarod.

Outside our apartment in Louisville we packed up my 1998 Honda CR-V with a portion of our stuff, a cat, and a dog, and then took several days to make our way to the Alaska Highway (which starts deep inside Canada), and finally all the way to Anchorage. We souped-up my car with hard-core winter tires (a special-order in Louisville), an engine block heater (another special-order, and vital along the way), and a Yakima rack and “Space Booster” container on the roof. We looked like we belonged in Anchorage long before we got there.

We stopped each day to rest and only had 2 notable weather challenges. The first was a cold snap in Watson Lake, Yukon Territory that dropped nighttime temps to about -30° F. The engine block heater just barely kept up. The second was a heavy snowstorm near Destruction Bay, Yukon Territory that dropped about 2 feet of snow in just a couple hours. We survived both. Without cell phones. Without GPS.

The midwest-to-Alaska drive is a helluva thing. And I loved it. I’ve made that trip about 8 times in my life, between 1996 and 2013. I’d do it again in a heartbeat.