Posts tagged #driving

Canadaland

 

Flashback Friday  

Is this Landscape for real?  

    Almost a year ago I started packing, packing up my life into little boxes, well bags, to bring down, down from Alaska, and my sweet little cabin, down to Madison, WI. When you move from a state like Alaska, you can't just bring everything you own, it's expensive to ship things from that state, and expensive to rent U-Hauls etc. So, I did what everyone else does, sold most of my belongings and tried to reduced the number of bags to bring on my Journey. It was quite remarkable that I who came to Alaskaland 7 years ago (then) with only two suitcases now had so much stuff. Where did all this stuff come from? Bike, cross-country skis, backcountry skis, climbing gear and the list goes on. You can't just not bring those things, they are expensive, and have a low value second hand, much lower than what they cost when you buy them. I had already been bringing things down from Alaska, during several trips, and I still had this much. Either way, packed the car and drove with W, into the wilderness, into the big land of Canada, into no mans world and the Yukon, following the Alcan. What a trip, what a landscape. Completely breathtaking. 

 
 
Have you gazed on naked grandeur where there's nothing else to gaze on,
Set pieces and drop-curtain scenes galore,
Big mountains heaved to heaven, which the blinding sunsets blazon,
Black canyons where the rapids rip and roar?
Have you swept the visioned valley
  with the green stream streaking through it,
Searched the Vastness for a something you have lost?
Have you strung your soul to silence?
Then for God's sake go and do it;
Hear the challenge, learn the lesson, pay the cost.
- Call of the Wild, Robert Service
 
 

    Have you ever been to Canada? If not you simply have to go!

 

Driving in Alaska

When I moved here I didn't even have a drivers license, so I didn't know how to drive. After a couple of years I started thinking more and more about learning how to drive, and W was about to move out of state, and living in a dry cabin without a drivers license can be....tricky. So, I went to the DMV, picked up one of their tiny books on rules etc, and went back after a few weeks and took the written test. Passed, and got the permit. Then I went driving with a friend of mine, in his truck, and compared to Sweden most cars here are automatic, so driving that truck was pretty easy. I practiced with him, maybe 3-5 times.

Then W was going to teach me how to drive his car, that I later bought when he moved. Well, his (now mine) is a manual, and I remember up at my summer house in northern Sweden when my dad tried to teach me, for fun, on one of the back roads how to drive....that just did not work for me. Driving with W didn't really work that great either, and I stalled out almost every time I got to a stop. Then W moved, and I asked another friend of mine to drive me to the driving school because I booked a session (which is way cheaper here compared to Sweden). The car I was driving there was an automatic, I don't even think they have manuals at the driving school. At the end of the session my teacher said: 

-well to bad you didn't sign up for the drivers test because I think you would have passed! 

He went on to his next customer and I tried to schedule a new appointment for the test. But that was tricky, my schedule didn't quite align and by the time we were almost done with everything the teacher came back and said that he had some extra time if I wanted to take test. So I did, and I passed and then I had a drivers license, and a manual car that I didn't quite know how to drive. 

I taught myself how to drive the manual by doing my errands very very early in the morning, or late in the evening, and today I have no issues driving any car!

When you go out in the field you drive a truck, so next step was getting used to drive a truck. Driving the field truck turned out to be really easy, and fun, also this truck is super old! Every time we go out in the field we also use ATVs to get around from one end of the watershed to another, and these can be tricky to drive in uneven terrain if you have a lot of stuff on them. 

 

However, today I had to go out into the field and the truck I was given is a real "monster" truck, a "spaceship" it's literally taller than me. It's scary to be near other cars in it, I mean in the parking lot, backing up and turning because it's hard to see where the rear end is. In the end though it's just another vehicle and once you get used to it, it's like riding a bike. 

It's Like Alaska or Something

If you listen to Greg Browns live album, the live one, he talks about the UP, and he says

"It's like Alaska or something"

 

before he starts singing the song "the Laughing River". Well as I wrote in an earlier post I went to Wisconsin for Christmas and New Years and we drove up North to Northern Wisconsin and the Western UP of Michigan. The drive further up North from Northern Wisconsin was pretty sketchy, and we drove into a snowstorm. Everyone in Northern Wisconsin and other midwestern states were in emergency mode, because of the weather forecast of -35 to -45...Well coming from Alaska those temperatures aren't really biting on us, right now today it's -33F here in Fairbanks. I do understand that people that aren't prepared for these cold temperatures will run into problems and that it is dangerous and that is why everyone was in emergency mode. So clarifying that part, we on the other hand were pretty calm :) Maybe a little too calm, halfway up north on our adventure to lake Superior we were like:

Hm, maybe we should have brought a shovel, just in case, yeah, maybe we should have brought sleeping bags....

And all of these things that we ALWAYS do in Alaska were completely forgotten about when we started our drive. Nothing happened, but it just shows how you get as a person when you are taken out of your regular zone and into a new world.

The drive was really slow due to the snowstorm, and everyone we saw, that saw us looked at us as if we were crazy driving up north. We were like, huh, maybe they know something we don't know..In Wisconsin they always have all these signs at road intersections and such, with names of all people living down that specific road, or companies etc in that direction. Pretty cool actual and it makes it feel like such a friendly community. And I love the thick forest. AND we finally arrived, at the end of the world as I called it.

We experienced the so called "lake-effect snow" on the road driving along lake Superior. The lake produces evaporation that, when it blows in over land, turns into snow (in cold temperatures of course..) and we also saw a lot of drifting snow blowing in on the road that was just right by the lake. We were wondering how you as a person manage to have a house right by lake Superior and not totally go crazy with all shoveling you presumably would have to do...

The drive back down was filled with snow again of course. And I took some pictures of some pretty buildings along the way.

As we crossed the state border to Wisconsin again, the sun came out and all of the sudden we had clear skies and sun. It must be so beautiful to drive through this part during the fall. This thick forest would surely make some great light shows.

Northern Michigan and Wisconsin was pretty entertaining with snow-machine trails all over the place. The big tourism highlights in Wisconsin, as we understood, is snowmobiling and ice fishing in the wintertime and fishing in the summer time. Not as much hiking or snowshoe hiking, or at least we didn't see any signs of that. We came back to the cabin right on time for the sunset, and making a few snow-angels! just Wonderful.