Driving to the Top of Alaska (and Salmon Winners!)

We went on a road trip last week. My DH and I. We HAD to get off “the Rock.”

We drove the road we’ve always wanted to drive: the Dalton Highway, the mostly gravel road that goes to Prudhoe Bay. To the top of Alaska, the top of the world. It’s mostly a supply road for trucks provisioning the workers and the oil facility. Beside the road snakes the 800 mile long pipeline, chuting crude oil from Prudhoe Bay all the way down to a refinery in Valdez. It’s a primitive road. There are two places to get gas along the way. Otherwise—-there is nothing.

The road has been made famous by this (semi) Reality TV show:

My husband and I are road trip fanatics. We’ve traversed continents near and far, (including the Sahara and the Australian Outback) so this is not a hard trip. We flew to Anchorage, picked up a rental car and began. First stop Denali.

The road into Denali National Park is usually closed, open only to a few scheduled buses a day, to preserve the pristine wilderness. But at the end of September, the road was open for 30 miles.

The space is vast——-yet we saw Dall sheep high on the mountains, two moose and this voracious grizzly bear gobbling cranberries.

It’s another 2.5 hours to Fairbanks. Then the highway officially starts an hour north.

It’s not terribly pretty for awhile. The fall colors are gone. Scrub forest, tundra, low mountains. Some of the road was paved. Most of it not. The only traffic an occasional semi, spraying gravel as it blasted past.

And always the pipeline, near us, parallel, crossing the road beneath us . …

500 miles north of Anchorage, we came to Yukon Crossing, where the road bisects the mighty Yukon River (nearly 2,000 miles long.) Ten people live here, mostly to service the trucks.

We were in luck this day. We met a father and son, both dog mushers, who were catching and drying sheefish to feed their dog team through the winter.

A few hours later we crossed the Arctic Circle. From there, the magic and the fear began . … (Slideshow below)

And then we hit the pass. Atigun Pass, a 5 mile long pass that’s not terribly high—-4800’—-but it’s very steep and very long and very isolated. And this day, like many, it was covered in fresh snow and ice. We barely made it to the top of the pass. Should we continue? I SO wanted to get to Deadhorse, just 4 more hours away . …

Once we made the decision, we were all right. We just had to get back down the pass safely.

And we did.

We didn’t make our goal to reach Deadhorse, the very top of Alaska, the top of the world. We’ll go back another time. We’ll be better prepared. We’ll take our own car on the (12 hour) ferry, and drive all the way from Homer to Deadhorse—and back. It will be an adventure.

Why did we do this? I’m getting older. Maybe you are too? I want most to stay awake, alive, to never grow tired of seeing the God who is both visible and invisible in this spectacular world of His. “Either life is holy with meaning or life doesn’t mean a damn thing,” says Frederick Buechner.

Life IS holy with meaning. I am chasing after holy.

It’s in your backyard too.

Keep watch.

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Who won the smoked salmon and Russianberry jam Giveaway offered two weeks ago? I had about 70 entries. Congrats to Lynnette Jones and Janice Covert!

How are you chasing Holy this week?