AlCan Roadtrip

Today was our last real day in Canada. I ran to downtown Whitehorse early for an oil change, since I’ve now beaten the Celica enough that I owe it one. The Jiffy Lube shared a parking lot with a Tim Horton’s, which is apparently a Canadian tradition because multiple people told me I had to go to one. It’s… it’s a fast food place — it’s a McDonald’s. But I gotta admit, it is really good, and I had a waffle breakfast sandwich, which was obviously the best choice. Once the boys finally arrived — George got stuck talking to a local in the parking lot at the apartment — we feasted, stopped by a NAPA for a couple things, and got on the road.

Our first stop was a hike I found on AllTrails on the edge of a neighborhood by a lake. It was one of the only “moderate” rated hikes in the mountains, but one of the comments read, “’Moderate’ is not the correct word to describe this hike.”

Guess that could only go one of two ways, so we gave it a shot. Turned out it was a pretty inclined rock scramble, so we made it to a stunning viewpoint and called it.

Next up, we looked for a hike George found at the gorgeous Kluane Lake, but we couldn’t find the trailhead, but we did poke around a bit at the edge of the park. There was a small abandoned house, fall colors in sharp display, and a dried up marsh that has formed as the glacial river flow has changed directions in the last ten years.

In the parking lot, we noticed that right behind where we’d driven there were two ball bearings and a piece of a race, still covered in fresh grease. That was a bit frightening because… well… no one else was around… and no one else was broken down on the side of the road… Surely you’d know if you’d blown out something like that. Right? I was still a little shaken from replacing C/V axles in the Celica, but having found the race, we decided that it was possibly less likely this was a blown C/V joint because they have a different structure. (Or maybe we’re wrong about that.) So we all checked around our cars, and not finding any obvious damage, we gingerly got back on the road.

The one hike we managed was more of a stroll. In fact, the Soldier’s Summit Trail actually follows some of the original path of the first AlCan Highway route around the lake before the road was widened and a bigger bridge put in place closer to the shoreline. There was a display at the top of the hike with retellings of the opening ceremony as two remaining segments built up to meet in this point, officially completing the route. One placcard had an audio recording of the CBC broadcast.

I was hoping to find something on the waterfront for an early dinner, but both towns along the Alaska Highway on the lake were small First Nations communities that didn’t seem to have much in the way of tourism or motorist support beyond a gas station, so we headed on to Beaver Creek. I did get one entertaining photo though — truly, despite the heavy RV traffic, we really haven’t spent much time stuck behind them, but this mess did last for about ten miles:

On the last segment, we drive through a fire. They’ve had wildfires off and on this summer and there were a couple brewing off the highway as we drove in. Not close enough to be dangerous, but when the sun passed behind the smoke and turned bright red, that was profoundly creepy. I wish there’d been a better place to stop and look around. Also since I had the top down in the Celica, the car, all my stuff, and I smell very campfirey.

Beaver Creek is a town of less than 90 people. Along the highway, there are only three businesses currently open. Each is a hotel plus other services. We’re staying at the hotel/gas station/gift shop/c-store/liquor store, but their restaurant was closed, so we walked over to the motel/campground/restaurant/bar/liquor store/gift shop for dinner. And then back later because our hotel liquor store wasn’t as good as their motel liquor store. We ended up just having a drink at their motel bar instead and chatting with the owner of the place.

I can’t tell if we got to Victoria, BC just yesterday or if we’ve been here for a year already. Either way, it just doesn’t feel like time to leave just yet. Also I have a hard time squaring the bittersweetness of leaving Canada with we still have another thousand miles left and another five days. By morning, I bet I’ll be excited for Alaska, because we’re only about 20 minutes from the border and I’ve never been there, either!

Won’t miss this:

Also need to get rid of the last of this:

Which as it turns out is exactly enough for one last French Canadian Diet Coke.

Well, vacationing got in the way of documentation, and it’s been fantastic. I have all the photos but few words. But that’s good because I’ve been super wordy recently. In short, we got up in Canada and drove to the United States! The border crossing was uneventful, thankfully. The border guard was so excited to get to use his Texas joke — which he admitted to pulling from a comment on a Native communities tour he once took — welcoming Texan motorists to “the largest state” in the Union.

We made a few scenic stops on the way to Delta Junction for lunch, partially to see the beautiful scenery, and partially because George needed a break from how much the Tracker is damaging his spine. The scenery grew increasingly dramatic through the day.

After we had lunch (which had to double-count for dinner), we decided to run through a carwash. This may seem strange given how much further we had to go, including unpaved roads, but the flies and mosquitoes in Canada were so unbelievably bad that our front bumpers were each emanating an odor that could not only overpower any scalding petrochemicals but also attract their own flies.

Cleaned up, we got back on the road, joining the Richardson Highway headed south from Delta Junction toward tonight’s stop in Paxson.

Also George discovered that he’s missing a lug nut. Not sure how long that’s been the case…

After an hour or so of thrilling scenery, we hit the only scenic stop I had marked for today — the cave on Castner Glacier Trail. The trailhead was off an unmarked, unpaved, unimproved two-track that the Xterra would have made quick work of but the Celica only survived about 1000 feet. Evan knew the feeling, so he graciously parked alongside me in a clearing as George forced us into being passengers in the Tracker. Mercifully, the Tracker only made it another quarter mile until it, too, had to be parked because George bonked its differential on a pretty stout rock in the road and feared (rightly) that the road condition was only going to get worse. We continued on foot, not entirely sure what we were supposed to be on the lookout for until, suddenly, with a blast of cold wind, we found it.

We played around there until we had to leave in order to make the check-in cut off at the cabin rental in Paxson. The drive in was lovely, through another valley pass between mountains, along a river and a few small lakes. We arrived with just enough twilight to wander around for a few minutes before darkness set in. But what we all really wanted to do was make that segment of drive again.

Tomorrow, we set off for our overnight in Denali State Park by way of the Denali Highway, a mostly unpaved (but major?) roadway westbound which terminates at the Parks Highway that runs from Fairbanks through the State Park and Anchorage to Seward, our finish line.

Greeaaaaat…..

I could be totally off base here, but despite the weird appearance, I do have a distributor, not coil packs. And the timing belt rotates both camshafts, so their position is fixed… What an I missing? Because I wouldn’t have expected to have this sensor. The truck doesn’t.

But it’s hard not to take this one personally because Xterra the Elder had a camshaft position sensor let go and it caused rough starts, stalls at speed, and a $600 hole in my pocket.

We started the day at the small cabin in Paxson. The family that runs the lodge hosts a breakfast each morning — Audie stuck around as we ate to fill us in on some interesting details. He, his wife, and their 2-year-old son are the sole inhabitants of downtown Paxson. The town was founded in 1905 by Allan Paxson as one of the first non-native communities. By the 60s, Paxson was home to nearly 80 people. The largest employer in the area was the Paxson Lodge, a roadhouse which was this town’s multi-business, which we’ve become very familiar with — this one was the inn, bar, restaurant, dance hall, tire shop, gas station, and local hangout. It was the only stop on the Richardson Highway between Glennallen and Delta Junction. The business was sold in the late 90s and the new owners failed the business and it closed in the mid 00s, leaving nothing left of Paxson but the cabins we stayed at and their hosts.

On our way out, we decided to poke around. Who doesn’t love a good abandoned building?

I even wandered upstairs, against my better judgement. As I was poking around, suddenly I heard a man’s voice mumbling from down the hall, something about “not ready” and “upstairs.” I knew I went upstairs alone, so I quickly but quietly flew back down and demanded to know where Evan and George were. I found Evan in the ballroom, and he told me that George was outside. And if he had done anything just to screw with me, he’d be trying not to laugh — and he was not laughing.

It’s time to go. We’re going right now.

With what little composure I could keep together, I jumped down the porch rail into the parking lot to a confused George.

I went upstairs, someone started talking at me, Evan was in the ballroom, you’re outside — where have you been? Was that you?

George looked surprised, he hadn’t even gone inside yet. Then Evan wandered out, with his camcorder going.

Were you narrating? That was you, wasn’t it? Did you follow me upstairs?

Safely outside, Evan denied having gone upstairs, but we did put together that he had found a back stairwell that I hadn’t seen. He got up to the first landing and said into the recording, “No, I think I’m not ready to go upstairs” and turned back. The video recording of the whole affair was actually pretty amusing once I knew that I wasn’t about to be chased out of an abandoned hotel by a meth-head with a board full of nails.

Regardless, I opted not to go back in, thusly solidifying Paxson Lodge in my memory as a haunted house. We got on the road. For the first twenty miles, the Denali Highway was paved, and it weaved up the mountains to above this region’s timberline — just over 4,000 feet due to the latitude. It is the second highest pass road in Alaska. Such a different view than the boreal forests we’ve seen so far.

Then we got to the unpaved section. Which was the almost-all-of-it.

It was rough as hell and rattled new rattles into each of our cars. But worth it. Probably best all-around scenic views of any drive day so far. And that’s a bold statement.

Then we stopped off at one of the few remaining roadhouses on the route.

It was a cash-only air-fryer/microwave kinda joint which appeared to have only one employee, but he made a surprisingly good burger and fries combo for how little he had to work with. On the satellite tv muzac, Johnny Cash’s One Piece at a Time started playing. It was a very “this is our trip” moment.

And shortly after, we found a pretty amazing viewpoint, which I thinks serves as the best group photo spot we’ve seen yet!

On the other side of the Denali Highway, we landed in the Denali State Park for a hike up Ermine Hill along some creeks and a waterfall. Unfortunately, the whole day had been rather overcast so the “magnificent views” of Mt. Denali had been somewhat oversold, but the area was still gorgeous and other mountains were out.

This evening’s overnight is inside the State Park at a small cluster of cabins. We didn’t have enough car snacks to constitute a meal so we went looking for food at… the special hell.

The only restaurant within 50 miles was 10 miles away at a resort run by Princess Cruises and Resorts. You know the place: entirely full of people, no one eating there or working there is from the area, its walls are laden with kitchy fake local sporting equipment as decoration (climbing gear, in this instance), and there’s not much in the way of whiskey. But to be fair — the food was quite good and surprisingly moderately priced given the captive audience situation.

And the boys even rode down there with me in the Celica!

And, on the way there, the mountain came out, everso briefly, to tease me because I left my Nikon in the cabin. But what a spectacular sight!

Unfortunately, as I noted when it happened, the Celica decided to chose this moment, on the way back from dinner — in front of an audience of hecklers — to do this:

Back at the cabins, we tried to read the tea leaves of the Celica’s service manual as we we reflected on our final drive day ahead, taking us through Anchorage down to Seward on the peninsula.

This morning started with muffins and coffee in the lodge under the apartment we stayed in last night. I learned that the host and his wife own the lodge and spend winters at their other home in Pennsylvania. Someone should tell these people that escaping south for the winter is usually a little further … south. Also that she’s already gone home for the season, but he has stuck around for the next few weeks of moose hunting season before he closes the house down for the winter.

Today’s drive would take us all the way to our final city, in Seward, AK, beyond Anchorage. Before we started, we all took a look at the Celica in search of that sensor. After some research, I realized that yes, I would have a camshaft position sensor because I have electronic fuel injection. But the sensor proved difficult to locate, and it seems to be inside the cover that protects the timing belt, which is itself wedged between the engine and the wall of the engine bay. Also, I’ve spent weeks now being so focused on the fluids and hoses in this engine bay that I hadn’t stopped to sufficiently appreciate what a birds nest of partially exposed wires and zip ties the electronics are.

Our expert diagnosis was “probably got too jostled off-roading yesterday, clear the code and see if it pops up again.” We’d also planned to unplug and reconnect the sensor but given its position, we tried the “let’s just do it with computers” approach instead. Sure enough, the light stayed off, and shortly after, the Celica celebrated another significant odometer event.

The drive, unfortunately, was our most underwhelming yet. It was decreasingly-rural highway toward Anchorage, with poor visibility due to rain and fog. It clearly had the potential to have been pretty in better weather, but we also haven’t been near a big city since Victoria and it was feeling a bit like reentering the real world. We stopped for lunch in Anchorage at a restaurant and coffee shop to list our cars for sale. That was a bit of a bittersweet moment, particularly because of the lackluster drive.

---

1997 Toyota Celica GT

Selling off my Celica after taking it on an epic roadtrip from Texas. Runs and drives well, lots of life left in this car. Strong heater and A/C, top and upholstery in good condition, new front C/V axles, good tires, rust-free. Interior needs some love, leaks some oil, could use an alignment.

Cash only, no trades; motivated seller with clean title in hand. Available to show starting Friday 9/13 at 6pm.

1998 Volvo V70 XC Cross Country AWD

For sale is my 1998 Volvo V70 XC Cross Country, later called the XC70. This vehicle has heated seats, traction control, full time AWD, automatic climate control, and working AC. Interior is in great shape, with the driver’s seat showing some wear but the rest presenting well. The cargo capacity is truly a sight to behold.

This car lived most of its life in Oklahoma, and only made its way to Alaska in the last couple of weeks. As a result, while the body has small dings and scrapes from 20+ years of use, it has no rust. Transmission shifts smooth and gas mileage is excellent. Drives fine on regular gas and premium is not required by the manufacturer.

The car runs and drives great, having been well taken care of my myself and the long-time previous owner. The head gasket and timing belt were both recently replaced, as were the spring seats, rear shocks, and turbo oil return seal.

There are a couple problems, of course. The car has an intermittent oil leak from an unknown source. Also the cruise control currently doesn’t work, nor does the parking brake. A few other small things need doing, but overall this is a very solid car. Just drove it on a 2,500 mile road trip through Canada.

Comes with a full size spare in addition to the factory donut, as well as a few other odds and ends.

Car is available for viewing in Anchorage starting around 5PM on Friday through about noon on Sunday. After that I have to fly out and don’t know when I’ll be back. I’d love to sell it before I leave, so no reasonable offer will be refused.

No holds. No trades. Cash only.

Rust free! 2003 Chevy Tracker V6

For sale is my 2003 Chevrolet Tracker, aka a Suzuki Grand Vitara. This rust free Oklahoma car just completed a 3000+ mile road trip to get here with no problems. Starts, runs and drives great. Transmission shifts smoothly and the cruise control, heat, and AC work great.

Recent brake service (all new pads, calipers, rotors, and drums), differential service, and new tires.

Has a small oil leak which can be stinky, but it only loses about half a quart every 3000 miles, so no need to top up between oil changes. One power window switch needs to be replaced ($20 on Amazon).

Needs to be sold this weekend. Accepting any reasonable offers. First come first served. No holds. No trades. Cash only, please.

Clean Carfax available on request.

---

Then we hit the road for Seward down what should have been a pretty stunning highway, but it was raining even harder and construction caused single-tracking through a couple pretty big sections. Still, it weaved up and down another small mountain pass, along the water. As we approached the Prince William Sound on the Seward side, I got my first breath of seaside air in a while and it smelled good. This may not have been the final long-drive day I had hoped for, but I was still pleased. I’d made it from Austin to the coast of Alaska. And I have several sightseeing and driving things for tomorrow, so maybe the sun will come back out.

I was moderately bummed that, thanks to very dreary weather, yesterday’s final drive into Seward did not live up to what it looked like it could have been on a map:

But today made up for that in a big way. We decided first to drove to Lowell Point, just minutes down the road from Seward, but it is in that community that we finally ran out of road. Seward Highway out of Anchorage becomes Main Street in Seward becomes this RV park and boat ramp at a dead end in Lowell Point. So it may have been a short drive (made longer because we were trapped following the bulldozer that was maintaining it), but ended this way:

We poked around for a bit, then wandered over to the State Park for a stroll on our finish line beach. I’ve never seen a black sand beach before, but it was beautiful.

For reasons unknown to science, George decided, in this victorious moment, to brush his teeth using his phone as a mirror, here, in this place. Then a fly flew into his face. This is irrelevant to the story, but the photos must be added to the record.

Then on to our final stop, the Exit Glacier overlook hike in Kenai Fjords National Park. The drive over there was brilliant. We’ve dropped far enough south that autumn color is only just starting to punch through, leaving a road lined with brilliant green and chartreuse. And the sun finally broke through the cloud cover.

Between this drive and the glacier overlook, in my mind, this was our finish line. With the clouds parted and the rain stopped, I even put the roof down one last time.

After our hike, it was time for one last drive — to return to Anchorage and get down to business.

Final Drive Thursday

Backing up briefly — we listed these cars on Craigslist and Facebook Marketplace on Thursday afternoon. The response has been mixed and not what I had anticipated. I saw the Volvo (an AWD wagon) as ideally suited to this market, with the Tracker close behind. I knew from the beginning that finding a buyer for a soft-top on the edge of fall in Alaska would be a tall order, but I did price it with that in mind. So we set off from the internet cafe down to our finish line in Seward and had a lovely Thursday evening and following morning.

In town that evening my phone would blow up about the Celica every time I hit a pocket of cell coverage. Over 600 people viewed my Facebook ad and I got a dozen messages, half a dozen texts (not counting the scam ones), and three phone calls about it. I was actually a bit unsettled because I was not expecting this level of response. I also felt weird about pushing people of until Friday or the weekend — they were more interested than I’d expected in a car with obvious issues, so I didn’t want to risk losing the opportunity. Did this mean I was asking too little? But I was busy:

I was determined not to get “go fever” and sacrifice what little time we had in Seward in a rush to sell. I’d driven over five thousand miles to get here and I was going to enjoy it.

Evan, on the other hand, got less interest than I had anticipated for his — George and I were forced to admit — perfect car for this market. By dinnertime, he had two solid leads that he set times with for after our arrival back into town on Friday.

And then there’s George. There’s no easy way to say this — so I’ve delayed writing this post a couple days — there were not many bites on the Tracker. As an SUV driver myself, this surprised me. It may not be a 4×4 but clearance is worth something; how was it not generating more interest than this? By bedtime, George only had one serious offer, but it wasn’t a cash offer, it was a trade. For this:

Friday the Thirteenth

After our hike at Exit Glacier and making peace with the end of the journey, we made a mad dash back up to Anchorage. There was so much to do. When we hit town, we found our AirBnB in South Anchorage. As promised in the ad, it is a very large but lovely modern cabin in an otherwise highfalutin neighborhood on a private airstrip. It almost reminds me of some of the 90s-modern beach houses in Galveston.

The owner of the place lives in an apartment downstairs and came out with his adult son, who I gather is our AirBnB host. The son started driving off but the owner struck up conversation. Inevitably, the questions about the roadtrip and separate cars came out. In a bit of a hurry, and on top of trying to unload and strip the cars of all our belongings, we told the story. When we mentioned that they were all for sale, he actually started looking them over. When he got to the Volvo, he waved after his son to pull back in, but after looking inside, waved him off again. Brutal, but priceless. Somewhere in all of this one of Evan’s two appointments cancelled on him, too.

After unloading, we gathered for one final cars-and-drivers group photo before splitting up to run final errands.

Then, as quickly as we parked in formation, we disbanded to run errands. And though we didn’t know it in the moment, that would be the last time these three cars would see each other.

Oklahoma vehicle titles have to be notarized to be released for sale, so the boys went to do that, then a quick auto-wash carwash to remove as much of the dirt as possible. I didn’t need a notary and I can’t use an autowash, so I ran to a self-service wash with what I really needed — a bigass vacuum and a foaming brush because I didn’t want the Celica to look like I’d been offroading in it. It was a sketchy cash-only kinda place and I was down to my last $20 bill, so I bought a pound of quarters (thankfully they’re actual quarters, not tokens) and got to work. Also did I mention that it was raining during all of this? But if I am to sell a convertible with questionable roof mechanics, I would like to do so in the rain.

In between all of this, Evan and I were juggling setting up times with the kinds of people who want to buy cars in this price-range — notably disorganized and noncommittal. In the flood of messages, I had a hard time getting people to pick times, but ultimately I landed a 6pm, a 7pm, two people who were okay with 8ish, and a handful of “tomorrow mornings.” He still only had the one, but they were interested enough to make a rather long drive to come check it out.

My first appointment was the most enthusiastic but also most difficult to set up. A gentleman named Mark had called me wanting to see the Celica. … He also called Evan, not realizing we were selling together. And when he mixed up the addresses and make of vehicle, I gathered he was shopping around with other people, too. But ultimately I was able to get him to commit by promising that we had three vehicles to choose from. So I gave him biking directions to our cabin from his bus stop (he didn’t have a phone that could do maps) as I furiously dried off the rest of the Celica and scrubbed away as much dirt as possible before leaving the carwash as George pulled in to do a little more detailing.

When I pulled up to the aircabin, I saw Mark biking up the lane and Evan shaking hands over the Volvo. Mark and I started talking about the Celica and Evan wandered over with a beer as the Volvo drove away. I wanted to see it off, but I had a deal to push.

Like this one, Mark’s story was also rather long. To summarize: his Saab blew a head gasket and then someone looking to buy it in that condition ruined its handbrake by test driving with that engaged. So he needed a car for transportation to and from work by Sunday and was touchy about cars that potentially had expensive leaky issues. You know, like the Celica’s. I was up front about the nature and magnitude of the leakage. He checked the oil level — which I neglected to do this morning — and found it to be low. I should have done this before he got to me, but I didn’t have the chance. I felt so stupid. But I also had a half-liter of 5W-30 from Whitehorse in the trunk and Mark was surprisingly undeterred. He added the oil and took it out for a spin, leaving his bike and backpack as collateral.

George returned as Mark rolled back in. He liked the feel of the Celica but wanted to see the Tracker until he discovered that it’s an automatic. Man after my own heart (which I still can’t believe is a thing about me, either). After a more more questions and debates, we settled on a deal. That he didn’t have enough cash for.

And here’s where I made a questionable decision, but I’m not sure what the better option was: Mark gave me the cash he had, then drove me in the untitled Celica to the grocery store to get the rest from the ATM and sign the title in the Starbucks. Then he drove me back in… his Celica — side notes: 1) 😢 2) he does not drive standard very well.

At this point, he realized he didn’t know what to do about his bicycle, which would not fit in the car, nor could it be disassembled because it had weird security/locking nuts on the wheels. So he left the bike under the outside stairs at our AirBnB (remember how the host lives on property?) and promised to come back and get it quietly before we leave. As he drove away in my car, I stood in the driveway-taxiway and watched. Everything had happened so astonishingly fast that it was so procedural. But then, as Evan walked over to console me with a “closer beer,” it hit me:

Here’s to the Celica. What a grand time.

That left only the Tracker, which didn’t have any leads yet, so we did a little tweaking to its ads and posted it on a few other networks. Then we piled into the Tracker and went out for our first dinner in Anchorage.

We’ve had such amazing and thrilling — but admittedly draining — two weeks that most of our Anchorage weekend was a staycation at the aircabin. We woke up Saturday morning focused entirely on three things: the Tracker that needed selling, the TU/OSU football game that needed watching, and Mark’s bicycle still on the porch that needed a clandestine fetching. I worried that the deal on the Celica didn’t feel “closed” until that bike was gone.

Meanwhile, George and Evan both adjusted the Tracker listing and took more calls, fielding questions and requests. Ultimately only one family came out to see the Tracker, but it was quite an ordeal. Two women from the family arrived to check it out and do a test drive. While I stayed scarce to avoid making anyone feel crowded, I listened from an open window. The two seemed pleased with the interior and how good everything looked, but then… when they went to drive it… it didn’t start.

The engine just wouldn’t turn over but the starter motor was definitely cranking hard. It almost sounded to me like the starter wasn’t engaging with the engine because it sounded like it was spinning freely. It was perhaps the most disappointing noise I have ever heard. I looked out the window to see the pair starting to drive away as George and Evan poked at the Tracker.

In frustration, Evan floored it trying to start it. It roared to life and I ran back to the window to see the vehicle puff out a massive white cloud. Our current working theory is that the test driver had flooded the engine by trying to start it with the gas pedal in. I didn’t realize that could happen with modern electric injection, but it’s the best explanation so far. Thankfully, the women stopped, reversed back into the driveway, and came back over. The four of them spent the better part of an hour down in the driveway as both women did a test drive, then turning the car off and back on endlessly.

Then they FaceTime’d with another family member. Long enough to discover a new pool of oil leaking. Further inspection from George, confirmed by a mechanic friend of that family, revealed that the valve cover gasket and oil pan were both leaking. $30 in parts but several hours in labor. That was super disheartening because, to that point, it had been the only leak-free vehicle among us.

Ultimately, they left for the day but promised to return after church in the morning. That would leave them enough time to actually close the deal if they showed up. But church would let out around 2 and George and Evan’s flight to Tulsa departed at 7, so if anything didn’t go well, I would probably own a Tracker for an extra day.

From our perspective, we were desperate for them to execute this purchase, but objectively, they missed a lot of opportunities to run away. But they had faith, perhaps strengthened at church.

And as they drove away in the Tracker, I stood on the porch and again reflected on how far we’d come as a group, and how bittersweet it was that it was all over. I know George is disappointed because the Tracker’s extensive repairs combined with its low sales price put him in a a hole, but I remained fond of that vehicle the whole way up. I do hope that one day that man and that machine’s memory can reach peace.

As quickly as the first round of sales went, so too did the end of this one. While I stood in the rain seeing the Tracker away, George and Evan frantically packed up for their fast approaching flight home. We hopped in a Lyft to ANC, I snagged a rental car for my last day in Anchorage without them.