And I’ve got some photos from these epic 4,000-mile journeys. This post is the fourth post in the series.
June 2010: Toledo, Ohio to Anchorage, Alaska
After the failed experiment of living and working in St. Louis (long story), I headed to my parents’ place outside Toledo, Ohio to take a break and look for work in Ohio (mostly Columbus).
But this was 2 years into the total financial market meltdown, so work wasn’t so easy to find and I had no network to rely on. I was also missing my wife, who stayed back in Alaska while I tried out this “Lower 48” thing.
To cover my bases I talked to some folks in Anchorage about opportunities and landed one. The financial crisis never really hit Alaska like the rest of the country, so it was a safer and more familiar choice.
So in June of 2010 I packed up what I had with me and ventured out yet again to make this cross-continental journey.
First I headed to Minnesota to stop off and see my sister, then it was onward on a new path into North rather than South Dakota.
Heading north this time I took a modified path so I could see “Dog River,” the fictional town in Canada’s popular sitcom Corner Gas. This took me up through Minot, North Dakota and into Saskatchewan for the first time.
Back in 2010, the Corner Gas outdoor “set” was still there — I have no idea if it’s still there today. What’s remarkable about it, however, was that it was a scale model. It was perhaps 80% of real-life size. So I’m not quite sure how they shot the show on this location — maybe it was purely for the exterior shots. I know the interiors were shot in a studio in Regina.Driving the Alaska Highway in the summer means driving through construction zones. Much of the highway is gravel and it gets re-graded in sections all summer long. They also lay down tar and other materials in an attempt to keep the dust under control. PRO TIP: Never take a convertible on this trip.This wind vane at Muncho Lake, BC was on-brand for sure.Turns out the Bison are on the highway for summer runs through the Alaska Highway, too. This big guy was just one of perhaps 40 or 50 on and around the road near the YT/BC border.Back in Alaska, on the road from Tok to Glenallen. This summer evening shot captured Mt. Drum towering over the other peaks of Wrangell-St. Elias National Park.After several months away from Alaska, I got home to a warm, fuzzy welcome. Ophelia—born and raised in Anchorage—is still with us today, though probably not for much longer, as she’s already 16 years old.
Once back in Alaska in mid-2010, I would stay another 3 years, doing some formative work in my career and feeling pretty good about “fitting in” in the community, which tends to be pretty welcoming of newcomers.
But the pull of family and prospect of more career opportunities would draw me back down the Alaska Highway once more in July 2013. That story and those photos are up next week.
And I’ve got some photos from these epic 4,000-mile journeys. This post is the second post in the series, covering each trip.
February 2001: Louisville, Kentucky to Anchorage, Alaska
I was working at a tiny Internet banking startup in 1999, survived the Y2K transition (I was at the bank the night of December 31, 1999), and watched as the dot-com boom went bust shortly thereafter. My boss said we would be laying low for a while, waiting for the economy to rebound, but he admitted that could take years. Our jobs were safe, but they weren’t going to be dynamic or interesting for a while.
I was young, hungry to learn more, looking for adventure, and sitting in a bank for the next 5-10 years didn’t sound appealing.
The Search
So by late 2000 I started to search for new options. I interviewed at Booz Allen Hamilton in DC and was offered a job, but I turned it down. I interviewed with security vendor WatchGuard in Seattle, but that didn’t pan out. I interviewed with other tech places in Portland, Oregon, too. But during my search out west, I saw a listing for a job in Anchorage, working in a large hospital setting. Having briefly lived in Alaska, I had a sense of the adventure that represented, but I didn’t think they’d actually talk to me. In early January 2001, I threw in a resume and didn’t think much of it.
I was called back the same day.
Within a couple weeks I was on a plane to Alaska, headed to an in-person interview (there was no Zoom back then) and I took my then-girlfriend with me. We stay a couple extra days, looked around, and figured if we were okay with seeing Anchorage at its worst—the dead of winter in January—we could make the move and definitely enjoy Alaska at its best.
The Choice
They made an offer, I accepted, and preparations began. We packed, terminated the lease, prepped the car, got everything ready for a trans-continental drive with 2 people, 1 cat, and 1 dog through the depths of Canada and onto the Last Frontier in late February 2001.
We would arrive just before the start of the 2001 Iditarod.
We said we would stay 2, maybe 3 years, then head back to the lower 48. Little did we know.
Our trip was in a fully-decked-out Honda CR-V, including my first engine block heater, installed by a puzzled technician at the Honda dealer in Louisville. This trip was with my soon-to-be-wife Stephanie plus our cat Arcadio and dog Angus. The first day was… tough. The cat wouldn’t shut up. He was calmer the second day. He accepted his fate by the third.Watson Lake, Yukon Territory is famous for the Sign Post Forest, with signs from cities and other locations around the world, brought by travelers driving the Alaska Highway. This shot was the morning after a -20° F. night at a local motel, after which the car almost didn’t start. Thankfully the block heater just barely kept the car alive.Bison run free in parts of northern British Columbia and southern Yukon Territory. They most frequently show up on the Alaska Highway in the winter, when the deep snow can make getting around tougher for them. And yes, they can, and do, block the road at times.Some people thought we were nuts for making the drive to Alaska in the depths of winter. In some ways, it IS a little nuts. But if you plan and prepare, it’s fine. In fact, some of the roads are far smoother in the winter because the frost heaves are gone and the snow and ice creates a smoother road surface. You should have killer snow tires at least (and maybe studded tires), and you should drive more carefully, but it’s really not that bad. This shot is from somewhere along Teslin Lake in the Yukon, before we made it to Whitehorse, YT.It’s easy to stop just about anywhere along the Alaska Highway in winter — it’s a quiet road. There’s definitely other traffic out there, so you won’t be stranded if you break down, but it could be a while before you can get help. This shot is from just beyond Haines Junction, YT, before we barreled head-long into a white-out snow storm around Kluane Lake and Destruction Bay that would force us to stop early and stay at a motel as roughly 2 feet of snow dropped in a matter of an afternoon. Everything was cleared by morning, though.A cross-border kiss on our arrival at the Yukon / Alaska border in late February 2001. That’s our first Cairn Terrier, Angus, who lived nearly his entire life in Alaska after being born in Ohio and living with us in Kentucky for a while. In this shot Canada is on the right, U.S. on the left. The U.S. border station is about a mile inside the actual border. But Canadian customs, heading south, is in the next village (Beaver Creek) — about 20 miles beyond the border itself.Our cat Arcadio was a trooper on our trip (after the first day or so). Here he is in the final hotel in Anchorage, in a warm spot by the window, just happy the room is not vibrating from driving over ice and gravel for hours and hours at a time.The ceremonial start of Iditarod 2001 was our “welcome” to Anchorage. This is a traditional sled dog transport—a wooden multi-dog kennel placed on the back of a pickup truck. The dogs often pop out their heads to see what’s up as the crowds wander around the mushers, sleds, dogs, vendors, and crowds. It’s quite the scene.
Thanks for reading! This was the second post in a five-part series covering all my north-south trips. Subscribe for future releases.
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