Once again I've been neglecting this journal. Which means that I've also neglected to mention that I drove up to Alaska with the kids this past week. We started out Monday afternoon and it took 5 days of driving - approximately 44 hours - about 2370 miles to get here. More or less. We drove up in our new car - our tiny (well, it seems tiny compared to the minivan!) little Honda Fit. Which is actually very roomy when not stuffed to bursting with 4 children, a car seat, a tent, 5 sleeping bags, 5 sleeping pads, a large box of food, a small cooler, numerous pairs of shoes, sweaters and hats, at least 5 backpacks worth of clothing, books, toys, a laptop, a large mosaic in progress, a sewing machine(!), and myself - the driver. pshew.
And the drive was actually still quite comfortable, despite all that! Our 14-year-old son rode in front with me and helped out with the soundtrack (primarily the Decemberists, Magnetic Fields, Nouvelle Vague, Santogold, Iron Horse/Modest Mouse, and good old road tripping Son Volt), as well as reading me trivia from The Milepost, helping to choose camp sites, and general entertainment and humor value. The baby was unbelievably amazingly good in the car. Each day we drove 3 to 5 hour stretches at a time, with generally a longish one hour stop halfway through the day. And the car, even loaded down, got such fantastic gas mileage! Between 38.6 - 39.8 miles per gallon average, but (as you can see below) we did actually hit 40 there for a bit.
I feel like I should have taken a lot more photos than I did, but, to be honest - I just wanted to get there. Highlights of the trip though: Bright, sunny, gorgeous weather the first 2 1/2 days of the drive. Lots of close-up animal sightings: including 3 or 4 moose, 4 black bears, lots of buffalo (so great!), a couple bunnies, one retreating caribou bottom, and... a grizzly bear!! Easy driving the whole trip - very little traffic, not too many stops for construction, and only one chip in the windshield - which I had fixed as soon as we got to Fairbanks. Also - overcoming my trepidation at pumping gas with the seriously old school gas pumps - which I was pretty much forced into as that's about all there is throughout much of northern BC and all of the Yukon. As well as camping with four kids by myself - and finally learning to use our little gas can camp stove. So one of the great things about this drive, aside from the beauty, relaxation, and accomplishment of such a long drive in itself, was having to do some things that I really didn't want to do, but then once I tried - I found that they were easy - which was a good lesson for me.
Another big moment of the trip was finding out that there had been a large forest fire burning for weeks up north of Liard Hot Springs and that the highway had just been closed that day due to the fire. Luckily, we arrived there a half hour after they'd re-opened the road and were using pilot cars to guide people through. The woods were burned on both sides of the road in many places and there were still small patches of fire burning beside the road in some sections. The fire was still going strong in the hills and we were driving through pretty heavy smoke for about two hours that night.
So now we're in Fairbanks through mid-July, then on to Olympia and Portland for a couple days before returning home. I'm busy already trying to soak in every fleeting ray of sun here - already feeling the little pangs of missing the heat of Montana summers that I love so much. But of course it's gorgeous here, as always - bright lush green everywhere. We got here just in time for the wild roses that are now blooming everywhere, and there are thousands of bluebells this summer, too - more than I've seen since I was a kid. The kids are outside - despite the hoards of mosquiotoes - building fairy houses and going for walks with their Grampa. And I got on a team in the women's rec soccer league - my first practice is tonight - so it's good.
