First, I was out of pocket for a while, then they were. And in their absence, I booked a few of the remaining accommodations! We now have thirteen hotels/cabins along the way.
Picking up after Whitehorse:
We decided to shorten the drive after Whitehorse by a day, which buys us a finish-line day in Seward instead. I’m really excited about this because it means I can drag them to Kenai Fjords National Park! That means we leave from Whitehorse and head directly to Beaver Creek, which is the AlCan Highway border town on the Canadian side. From there, we go pretty remote to Paxson (population 40), to an overnight stay in Denali State Park, and finally down to the finish-line in Seward.
I’m pleased with us — mostly cabins in interesting places on this leg of the trip. And the “cabin” in Anchorage has its own airstrip, which, like, how could we not?! I wonder if we can race on it…
https://oppositelock.kinja.com/alcan-trip-is-on-rails-now-hopefully-1837207345 Kinja has deleted its OppositeLock and Overland communities. Content Unavailable
I’ve already started cataloging hikes and roadside points of “Taylor made us stop again,” since that is usually my job. I found an ICE CAVE! yesterday, so we’re definitely doing that. Might make a good picnic place, if we can find… food… which seems in short supply on this route.
The shipping situation
George and Evan have finalized an arrangement for shipping. The bid went higher than they had hoped, but shipping together, it’s not catastrophic. I got a few bids, but they either “ruinously high” or they were “very high” but with caveats about needing upgraded service if I wanted guarantees with regard to damage in transit.
So what am I supposed to do with that, exactly? You’ll take my money… but only in exchange for even more money will you actually deliver the vehicle undamaged? I think the Emily Post approved response to that is “oh, fuck off.” Or, in illustrated form:
Yes, I have lost my mind and am prefixing an ambitious roadtrip with an arguably even more ambitious roadtrip — I will be alone on a highway hell-ride in a still-new-to-me (but decidedly used) vehicle. And to make this work around my job and the meet-up in Seattle… I have to make it to Roswell on the first day and Moab on the second.
On the bright side, if I make it that far, my confidence in this vehicle will be sufficiently rock-solid. And if I mostly make it that far, what better place to have a car repaired than in Moab? According to shopping math, I earned nearly two thousand dollars making this decision… that’s enough for more car parts, right?
So with that settled, I booked one last piece: a one-way flight home from Anchorage.
And with that, we’re fully booked. And I leave in ten days.