| Tuesday, August 16, 2005 |
19:19 - Reports of my becoming lost in the Yukon and being taken off to be raised by wolves are greatly exaggerated
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Hey, guess where I am? Hint: it's not actually any different from my plans. I'm in Williams Lake, BC, a few hours north of Vancouver.
We drove here straight from Prince Rupert, where the ferry dropped us off this morning at 6:15. Which means we caught the ferry from Juneau just fine, which means we caught the ferry from Skagway just fine, which in turn means we successfully made it from Valdez over the Top of the World Highway, spent a night in a tent on a bed of rocks in the middle of downtown Dawson City, and drove down to Whitehorse and through to Skagway through a pall of impenetrable forest fire smoke. All reservations at hotels and ferries were magically there waiting for us, and there were no problems of any note. Well, except that the "EPC" light came on on my dashboard just after we came across the border northeast of Chicken—the most remote possible location in the entire vacation, the place where I knew deep in my bones that if anything was ever to go wrong, that's where it would be. Fortunately, as we were frantically looking up the meaning of the EPC light in the manual (apparently it means the engine computer has malfunctioned and reset itself to a backup set of dilithium crystals with less power), it went off, a minute after it turned on and just as mysteriously. I'm thinking maybe it was a combination of the altitude, the smoke, and the dust from the road somehow choking the air mixture, but I can't confirm it. No recurrences since then, though, so that's cool at least.
The ferry ride was nice and relaxing, and sleeping on deck chairs in the solarium was actually really fun and quite comfortable—heat lamps hanging from the partial overhang roof, and lots of people to get to know and talk with for two days, really reinforcing the feeling of being a couple of bums slumming it across the planet on a budget. Given the cost of the tickets it's hardly accurate, but it's as close to the penniless-bearded-backpacker thing that I'm ever likely to get. Plus we got to commune with a grizzled old Alaskan native the whole time, which is something I was specifically hoping to get to do sometime this trip.
It's raining now (southern BC—surprise, surprise), and the grime of two and a half days of ferry rides is now washed off, so now it's time for some food.
Just a few more days and I'll be back in the land of the living—but ever since Prince Rupert it's felt like the real world again...
   
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Brian Tiemann
