by Jack Donachy
Muncho Lake, British Columbia, 2009: Stanley and the Lance - our Chevy pickup and Lance truck camper - lay ahead in the future. Our first trip from Sacramento up the Alaska-Canada highway took place behind the wheel of a mighty 2005 Tacoma, riding a little low in the back, pulling the boat of our dreams.
We met on Match.com at a time when our first marriages - for more or less the same reasons - had come to an end. It was at a time when we both were giving serious thought to what we really wanted - and did not want - in our lives, a time when were done living behind masks, trying to sell ourselves.
I had recently purchased the sweetest little pickup I've ever owned. I had a sunroof cut into it, installed a killer sound system, put a fiberglass shell on the back, made a slick shelf-box to organize my camping and fishing gear and outfitted it with a rod carrier where six carefully chosen rods were capable of handling everything from tossing flies to coastal cutthroats to trolling for salmon from my friend's boat to muscling sturgeon up off the bottom of the Columbia River to my absolute favorite - casting jigs to lingcod and rockfish from the Columbia's infamous, treacherous, uncapped South Jetty.
On Match, Barbra described herself as "chameleonic" - a word I doubted was real. In the self-descriptive choices regarding drinking habits, I skimmed past "teetotaler," "occasional," and "social" and clicked "regular" since there was no category beyond that. In my bio, I expressed a desire to leave Astoria and move to California. "I don't know, Teach," Barbra wrote when she initially contacted me. "It's pretty crazy down here."
I had recently purchased the sweetest little pickup I've ever owned. I had a sunroof cut into it, installed a killer sound system, put a fiberglass shell on the back, made a slick shelf-box to organize my camping and fishing gear and outfitted it with a rod carrier where six carefully chosen rods were capable of handling everything from tossing flies to coastal cutthroats to trolling for salmon from my friend's boat to muscling sturgeon up off the bottom of the Columbia River to my absolute favorite - casting jigs to lingcod and rockfish from the Columbia's infamous, treacherous, uncapped South Jetty.
On Match, Barbra described herself as "chameleonic" - a word I doubted was real. In the self-descriptive choices regarding drinking habits, I skimmed past "teetotaler," "occasional," and "social" and clicked "regular" since there was no category beyond that. In my bio, I expressed a desire to leave Astoria and move to California. "I don't know, Teach," Barbra wrote when she initially contacted me. "It's pretty crazy down here."
Back in the day, stoked about my first slot-limit sturgeon from the lower Columbia near Astoria, Oregon.
By the end of the week Barbra and I were engaging in long phone conversations as seemingly every new topic led to discovery of common ground. Among other things, it turned out that she was reading a book about Alaska. I'd just finished a book on the same subject. This might be going somewhere, I found myself thinking.
Three years later on a sunny June morning in front of our mid-town bungalow in Sacramento, we hitched up Gillie to the Tacoma, went over our check list one last time, and eased away from the Sycamore-shaded curb, Alaska bound. The plan was simple: for the next month-and-a-half Gillie's cuddy cabin would be our sleeping quarters and my trusty Coleman stove would be our kitchen. We'd take advantage of state parks along the way from time to time, and we knew we wouldn't be able to resist occasional restaurant experiences, but we also knew our travel budget would go a lot further if we boondocked and cooked our own meals throughout most of the trip.
Three years later on a sunny June morning in front of our mid-town bungalow in Sacramento, we hitched up Gillie to the Tacoma, went over our check list one last time, and eased away from the Sycamore-shaded curb, Alaska bound. The plan was simple: for the next month-and-a-half Gillie's cuddy cabin would be our sleeping quarters and my trusty Coleman stove would be our kitchen. We'd take advantage of state parks along the way from time to time, and we knew we wouldn't be able to resist occasional restaurant experiences, but we also knew our travel budget would go a lot further if we boondocked and cooked our own meals throughout most of the trip.
Gillie's cuddy cabin made for cozy quarters.
It took us six days to get to Valdez, Alaska - not exactly a leisurely pace to cover over 3,000 miles. Nonetheless, the trip up the Al-Can was amazing. We saw deer, elk, coyotes, moose, beavers, all kinds of birds and 33 bears. Once we got into northern British Columbia and pushed on through Yukon Territory and eastern Alaska, we found ourselves driving for long stretches without encountering another human being. We regretted that we couldn't linger.
But we had a date to meet. In those days we typically ran three or four half-marathons a year, traveling all over California tent camping, running and exploring new communities. That spring, we'd signed up for Sockeye Half-Marathon in Cordova, Alaska - a fishing village of just over 2,000 people accessible only by boat or plane. Our plan was to launch Gillie at Valdez, make the 90-mile run across the sea to Cordova, get set up in the harbor over there, do the run the next morning and then spend a week or so boat camping and exploring the village.
The descent down the mountain highway into Valdez was stunning. Waterfalls spilled from vertical drops and massive glaciers hugged jagged, verdant-shouldered peaks pushing up into a blue sky where soft, billowy clouds slowly drifted. In Valdez, we went straight to the harbor master's office. When we told the harbor master our plan, she offered to let us park our truck and trailer in a back section of the parking lot, no charge. "I'll try to keep an eye on it for you, she said." You gotta love Alaska.
The descent down the mountain highway into Valdez was stunning. Waterfalls spilled from vertical drops and massive glaciers hugged jagged, verdant-shouldered peaks pushing up into a blue sky where soft, billowy clouds slowly drifted. In Valdez, we went straight to the harbor master's office. When we told the harbor master our plan, she offered to let us park our truck and trailer in a back section of the parking lot, no charge. "I'll try to keep an eye on it for you, she said." You gotta love Alaska.
The view from the Cordova harbor where we spent eight nights camping onboard Gillie.
The "Big First," our first trip to Alaska, was marked with dozens of additional firsts and other superlatives:
- encountering ice bergs on the boat trip from Valdez to Cordova
- experiencing a tidewater glacier calving on the Copper River
- first halibut, Dolly Varden char and salmon and our biggest rockfish
- sighting more bears in one week than we'd seen during the rest of our lives combined
- add moose, beaver, eagles, and sea otters to the list of "more"
- biggest razor clams we'd ever dug
- longest run in our boat
- sighting our first salmon shark (which circled Gillie)
- first Dall's porpoises (playing in Gillie's bow wake)
- closest encounters with whales
- best wild berry picking
- first time seeing brown bears (grizzlies) feeding on salmon
- longest periods of daylight each day
- wolves
- caribou
- and art that we found ourselves responding to in ways we don't often respond to art
With razor clams this size, it only takes a couple. We served them on pasta that night. And with nearly 20 hours of daylight in the Land of the Midnight Sun and an endless list of cool things to do and see, who can sleep?
Throughout our journey, from British Columbia through Yukon Territory and all over Alaska, we met some of the nicest, most interesting, most genuine people we'd met in a long time. Once we were clear of Interstate 5, across the Canadian border and past the areas of dense population, life slowed down. People had time to talk, to show interest in each other, to relax. There we no lines to stand in, nobody impatiently sighing or tapping their feet cuing someone else to "hurry up." And parking? A potential source of confrontation virtually everywhere these days, up north you can park pretty much wherever you want to park. Even in Anchorage, driving a rig over 40 feet long, we had no problem finding places to park. We felt as though we hadn't merely traveled 3,000 miles north, but decades back in time to a more serene era as well.
On hikes along steams in the salmon forests of Alaska, wild berries - currants (above), blue berries, raspberries and more - grew in profusion...
...and wildlife, like this friendly guy who frequently came to check us out while we were docked in Cordova, seemed to be everywhere.
Subtracting out the drive up and back, we spent four weeks in Alaska. The days flew by. We felt like we'd barely scratched the surface. Denali National Park, the Northern Lights, mastering fishing hoochies for ocean salmon, our first taste of caribou... There was so much more to see, to do, to experience. And what about the really far north, up above the Arctic Circle in the land of Eskimos and the vast Arctic tundra?
As we were driving home, somewhere just past Tok as we neared Alaska's easter border, one of us turned to the other and said, "We need to move up here."
Without a moment's hesitation, the other replied, "We could get jobs. We could live out in the bush."
And that's how it began.
As we were driving home, somewhere just past Tok as we neared Alaska's easter border, one of us turned to the other and said, "We need to move up here."
Without a moment's hesitation, the other replied, "We could get jobs. We could live out in the bush."
And that's how it began.