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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