Let’s go!

 North to Alaska, the rush is on …. No, wrong song again.

Home, home on the range , …. That’s more like it.

Driving has never been a problem for me. I actually find it very relaxing. In college, it was one of the best way for me to construct a paper or think through a problem.  I would get into my car and drive from Lawrence to Baldwin down Highway 59.  Mowing a pasture, or yard, is also a great way to think through issues. So just imagine how many books and novels could be written in my brain while driving home to Kansas from Alaska.  Lucky you, you get blog posts.

Being an early morning riser, I’m able to get out and get started down the road before most traffic and construction. You also get to see the city in a completely different light. Starting in Anchorage and heading south, let’s go.

This country and state of Alaska is really beautiful. It’s also enormous with tons of space. I’ve always been partial to the Rocky Mountains and cold weather, as most of you know.  This takes it to a whole new level. And so. You get pictures of mountains and scenery more than anything else in this blog.

I also didn’t expect for the radio or cell phone connectivity to be non-existent while traveling on the highways. But that happens a lot, especially when you’re in valleys and driving in the middle of nowhere, literally. However, the silence is actually kind of nice. Even when I may have connectivity, I find myself driving in the silence, and enjoying it.  The drive actually reminds me of driving to Western Kansas, except for the mountains, the endless number of Aspen and pine trees, and the streams and lakes next to the highway. OK, maybe I closed my eyes for a second.

One thing that I really appreciate is the DMZ area next to the highways. 

No, don’t look at the mountains in this picture, look at the side of the highway.  Alaska and Canada have done a good job by freshly mowing down the brush and trees for about 100 feet on each side of the highway. This makes for a good fire break, if there’s a forest fire, to prevent the fires from jumping across the road.  It also gives the drivers on the highway, the ability to see wildlife coming out of the trees and crossing the road.

This is really important when you have browsing buffalo (anybody need a ride),

Crossing Caribou (I haven’t seen any of those yet), meandering mama moose and babies (the mama moose was faster than me getting my camera),

Stampeding sheep (it was 6 AM and too dark to get a picture), and pesky porcupines, who think they want their half of the road out of the middle.

I also get a kick out of driving by places and see how appropriately they’ve been named,  like Tok (pronounced with a long “O”), the highest, I mean the northern most city surrounding the Wrangell - St. Elias National Park.  I also liked following:  La Prairie, a sign across the driveway, similar to our Bonita Prairie, but their pasture was filled with Aspen and pine trees, and Stoney Creek.  Yep, no water just a lot of rocks.  How about Destruction Bay, the city where I stopped after driving day one. It was all in one piece, so I’m not sure what actually got destroyed. But that’s a whole other story.