So long Alaska - We're starting the long trek home

     Well, the whale watch did not materialize because of a thick fog that settled in on Valdez.  So we decided to take our leave and head north to Denali and Mt McKinley.  At 20,320 feet high, it is the highest point in North America.  It also has its own weather and it's a lucky day when you can see the top.  Our day wasn't one of the lucky ones.  We stayed at the Princess Lodge in Denali where we had stayed last year.  It was cold and windy when we arrived at 8 PM and we had to carry our luggage to our cottage which was in outer Slobobia.  We had driven almost 500 miles and flopped into bed without any fanfare.  We found a restaurant for breakfast across the street from the lodge called Salmon Bake.   The permafrost was causing it to sink on one side, so the building was lopsided.  A fellow at the next table went out to his camper and brought in a gadget that measured the tilt.  The floor sloped two and a half degrees.  We drove twenty miles into the park and saw a moose and some rabbits, but not the Grizzly that we were hoping to see.

     We left after breakfast and headed due east on the Denali Highway which is closed all winter, but was now open.  Calling it a highway is a large stretch.  It's an unpaved road…all 135 miles of it.  It switched back and forth from gravel to mud and we probably averaged about thirty miles an hour for the whole thing.  In the entire 135 miles, we only saw eight oncoming vehicles and we saw four brave bicyclists.  The highway er…cow path ended just north of Anchorage, which we had no interest in seeing and purposely avoided.  It's a quarter million people, it's crowded, and we didn't come to Alaska to see crowds.  The next place on the road was Wasilla.  As we entered the town, I expected to see a big sign announcing "The home of Sara Palin," but they didn't acknowledge their famous former governor.  Probably all liberals living there.  You know, we looked all around, but we couldn't see Russia from there.

          We stayed in Delta Junction, at the Steakhouse Motel, the most decrepit of our lodgings so far on our entire trip.  All we really care about when we're tired out from a long day is a hot shower and a clean, comfortable bed and it did provide that, so we paid our $95.  Besides, it was the only show in town, so we didn't have much choice.  The next morning we had breakfast in the Steakhouse Restaurant and hit the road.  The road that we hit is called the Top of the World Highway and this was a case of the left fork being the wrong fork.  This was a narrow, winding dirt road full of steep grades that went up and down through beautiful mountainous terrain.  There was a steady rain falling, there wasn't even any gravel on the road and the dirt had turned to mud about three inches thick.  We had to be careful to avoid ruts that could pull us off the road… there were no guard rails and frequent steep drop offs.  I needed to get up a head of steam to climb hills; there was no chance of starting up a steep hill from a dead stop.  It felt like I was driving in slushy snow most of the time…intensely and totally focused every second.
      There was a sign at the beginning warning that there were no services for the next hundred miles and we drove our hundred miles this way until we finally limped into the town of Chicken…that's right, Chicken, Alaska.   There is a restaurant operated out of a camper, a little log structure where you took your food to eat it and a gift shop where I bought a "Chicken" tee shirt so I could prove that we were actually there.  We met two bicyclists who were resting from the rain and mud in the little building.  They were traveling to Cancun, Mexico and it will take about a year to get there.  They were soaked and cold, but they were jovial and ready to continue on riding in all that mud.  Amazing.  That’s all there was to Chicken so we said goodbye to our new friends and back to the mud once again. 
     The road didn't improve and finally, fifty miles later, we crossed into Canada after answering the standard questions about what was in our car.  The inspector always smiles as he asks his final question, "Are you carrying more than $10,000?"  Whatever the consequences, I want to answer, "As a matter of fact, I am." As soon as we crossed the border it was pavement at last…hard pavement.  Curvy, bumpy, up and down, pot-holed wonderful hard pavement…a real road at last. 
     What do you think of my poor car?  There is no dirtier car anywhere on this planet, I guarantee it.