Hit the Road, Jack!
18 June 2006
Braden DeWeese |
After
a nice pillow to the face and some irritated words, I groggily woke up
to the sunlight rushing through the zippered screen door. “Dude,
it’s time to get up. We gotta pack up the tent and hit the road.” There
was a nice chorus of moans in response to Andrew Johnson’s prodding.
After packing up the tent, we settled into the van for a nice long ride
to Grizzly Bear campsite with one stop in little old Talkeetna.
Two hours and plenty of mad libs later, we had finally arrived at our mid-break
stop, Talkeetna. Talkeetna is a small climbing town with well under 500
residents. Being a climbing town means that it’s the starting place
for many experienced mountain climbers; in this case, that mountain being
Denali. Denali is 4,320 feet high and can be seen on a clear day from over
100 miles away. Unfortunately we have yet to view the mountain.
We also had some very exciting experiences throughout the ride. First,
there was a red car that decided it was pretty sweet to go 85 mph in a
65 mph zone. Mrs. Fitzpatrick, being the good person she is, reported this
person to the police; the results of this incident are not yet known.
Second, we were driving on and off through the rain; at one point, there was
a rainbow right in front of us. I must say it was the most beautiful rainbow
I had ever seen, not because it was bright, but because of the mountain surrounding
it. The mountains in Alaska are what take an ordinary place and make it extraordinary.
We also happened to cross over the tree line on our journey to Grizzly Bear campsite,
which if you’ve never done before, looks extremely awkward. There are absolutely
no trees above that point. This is because the trees find it difficult to survive
with the wind and the temperature at the altitude. The trees just below this
line aren’t much to look at either: no massive trunks or majestic bows.
There are only tall skinny scraggly evergreens. The reason for these unattractive
features is to lessen the amount of snow that falls and builds up on the tree
in general. If the trees were to have large limbs, the snow would pile up, break
off the limbs, and ultimately kill the tree.
After three more hours of driving, we got the announcement from Captain Ishtar
that Grizzly Bear campsite was over the hill. The cheer that arose from our van
was deafening.
We quickly set up camp and grabbed a nice hot bowl of veggie soup. Seeing as
how it was a somewhat cold and rainy day, the warmth was greatly appreciated.
After a quick impromptu prayer service led by Mr. Maynard and some goodnight
hugs, we laid down to bed with bits and pieces of the day’s events still
running through our heads. |
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Highway Extravaganza
18 June 2006
Emily Murch |
Our day
started out like any other. We packed up our tents and sleeping gear
and loaded them in the vans so we could take off for Talkeetna. We had
been driving for a while when Eddie (Elizabeth Damron) really had to
go to the bathroom. The only problem was we were on the highway and there
was no place to stop. Ishtar told us that she had to wait until there
was a place to stop. She tried to wait but the road we were driving on
was really bumpy and soon she just couldn’t hold it anymore. We
decided that we should just pull over on the side of the road to let
her go to the bathroom in the weeds. When we found a place to stop, there
were not enough trees to hide her. Cara Cook had to go with her to hold
up a towel so no one on the road could see her. There were also two other
vans that had to stop, so we had a guys side of the woods and a girls
side of the woods. After everyone had finished his or her business, we
took off for Talkeetna.
As we were driving to Talkeetna and all the vans were driving one after another,
this little red car started passing some of the vans in the back of the line.
We didn’t really think anything about it at first. However, we started
to worry when it started raining and he started racing past everyone as fast
as he possibly could, almost clipping one of the vans’ front bumper. As
the red car passed the rest of the vans, the car seemed to get sort of annoyed
because he was passing faster and faster. Soon the car had almost passed all
the vans and was passing us at dangerous spots on the road. We decided that it
might be a good idea if we called and reported him to the police, so Erin Fitzpatrick
did just that. We sort of forgot about it for a while and finished our journey
to Talkeetna.
On the way to Denali from Talkeetna we ran into another speed happy car that
was trying to pass all of the vans. This car also happened to be red just like
the car from earlier in the day. There must be something intimidating about seeing
a line of twelve of the same vans on the highway, because there were a lot of
cars trying to pass us. There were some pretty weird things that happened on
the highway today, but all turned out for the best. |
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