Dang, some forum updates are absurdly overdue. The Dalton Highway was so absurd and difficult to wrap my mind around that I’m still trying to write little overly-philosophical snippets for my website a month later. (See below)
Explanations
Peeing in the Arctic Circle
The Bearded Ones
The reality of where you are on Planet Earth is staggering enough, and the landscape itself is overwhelmingly, hauntingly beautiful. Try to imagine a drive you do that’s four or five hundred miles. Then imagine it with zero civilization, 90% of it above the Arctic Circle, as fall collides head-on with winter. It is of a scale and latitude that I still struggle to convey, with unending hundreds of miles of tundra and mountains in every direction. I crossed over a dozen rivers, a few of which were nearly the size of the Mississippi. I saw muskoxen, grizzly bears, grayling, caribou, moose, and a handful of humans. I drove for the entirety of two days to cover just under 500 miles, and I stayed at one of the ‘camps’ that runs at 99% occupancy year-round, with at least 99% of those occupants being oil field workers who are flown into Deadhorse from Anchorage, where they are free to go wherever they so choose during their two (or three) weeks off after their two or three weeks on. It is a wild, strictly corporate setting to see anywhere on earth, let alone at the end of one of the wildest ‘roads’ fathomable. Deadhorse is a surreal place, where even the most optimistic and intrepid adventurer will run out of things to do within a couple of days. Things are much more enjoyable a few dozen miles south of the Arctic Ocean.
Girls I met in Coldfoot who ended up pouring me coffee and whiskey, leading us on an ill-fated hike, then making gourmet grilled cheese on this glacial gravel bar outside of Wiseman:
From Deadhorse, we hustled back to Fairbanks. I was excited to buy some new groceries and take a hot shower and get a couple nights’ of good rest before plotting out and following the aforementioned week of stops. Of course, in typical fashion, that plan quickly went to all hell as soon as I drove the Top of the World Highway from Fairbanks to Dawson City, YT. That drive was another one for the books, over a hundred miles of gravel along the ridge of some rolling Alaskan mountains at peak fall foliage. It partially made me wish I had a lot more horsepower to do some serious tail-out hooning, but as usual, it was fun to just roll down the windows and cruise slowly and jump out whenever we were so inclined.
We crossed the border at the hilarious two-room hut that is only open from 8-8 (or 9-9, depending on which time zone you’re approaching from) that has to be one of the more remote road crossings into and out of the United States. About an hour later, we crossed the Yukon River via ferry (there is no bridge, which means during the slushy season between full-freeze and full-thaw, there are some weeks where the river is impassable) and were instantly embraced by the faint twinkle of Dawson. I parked on what seemed to be the main street and almost by accident walked into the bar that serves the toe shot, which meant that before dinner I did the famous ‘sourtoe’ shot (yes, it is a real human toe, and I had mine served up in Jose Cuervo), met a cute bartender and a few rough old hippie dudes, drank too much, went to the locals only dive bar, agreed to do it all again the next night and play at an open pic despite not touching a guitar all year, and just like that my itinerary vanished into thin air.
Dawson City is truly one of the coolest places I’ve ever been. It manages to live up to the “hype,” if that’s even the right word for a nearly inaccessible town of 1,500 in the far reaches of the Yukon. It can wow the average tourist but it can also transfix the more curious traveler. It has an infectious energy that makes Whitehorse look sprawling, homogenous, and corporate (and I still freaking love Whitehorse). I ended up meeting some more interesting folk my first full morning in Dawson, which I spent praying for my hangover to relent while sipping coffee and writing outdoors with Hank. Two ladies wanted to pet him, which led to us chatting, which led to an invite to another bar, which led to another long night of the all-too-common semi-platonic longing that plagues the traveler. The group those two were a part of was big and varied, including a hilarious French Canadian dude, the type of huge gay best friend everyone wishes they had (who encourages everyone to do too many vodka shots and makes all the jokes you weren’t going to make out loud), and a lady who was the type of pretty that’s almost hard to make eye contact with. After the summer tourist season wound down, she was heading to North Carolina to finish her bush pilot certification. I got that tidbit sometime during the midnight cabaret at Diamond Tooth Gerties, a raucous casino/cabaret/saloon/bar that has been serving gold miners and derelicts since Dawson City had a population of 35,000 around 1899.
The next day I departed with an equally fierce hangover and a slightly larger hole in my heart and headed towards Whitehorse, another favorite city of mine, where I would get waylaid even further.
Anyway I I'll shut up now haha
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