Alaska Highway Archives | Carol L. Douglas

December 14, 2018

Goodbye, Old Paint

Sometimes sentiment overrides practicality. That’s not always a bad thing.

Arctic Mud in happier (and cleaner) days.

I believe that I’m the best person I know for picking out a good used car. I’m not talking about the late-model beauty that comes with a warranty, but the clunker your teenager buys with the money from his first job. I come by it honestly. I don’t think I ever paid more than $50 for a car before I married my husband with his big-city ways. In fact, the first time he came to call at my parents’ house, I was changing a tie-rod end.

Arctic Mud was a 2000 Suzuki Grand Vitara. It was my daughter Mary’s first car. I’d helped her sisters and her brother-in-law choose cars, but I wasn’t around to help her. Frankly, the thing was a wreck from day one. Still, she loved it.

Her dad and I helped her drive it to Alaska for college. On arrival, our first order of business was a new track bar. Most calls home started, “Mom, my car’s making this noise,” which would then be followed by another trip to a garage. When she decided to come back east, I strongly advised she sell it there. But she loved that old reprobate of an SUV, and I love her.

That car spent a disproportionate amount of its life being hauled. Thank goodness for AAA.

I cooked up a scheme. We’d fly back to Anchorage and fetch it and drive it back across the continent. Not the California to New York trip everyone takes, but Alaska to Newfoundland. It would be cold, and we’d be sleeping in the car, but we had warm blankets. Most of my luggage was for painting supplies. A nice pastor’s wife, Heidi Godfrey, took one look at the jacket I’d brought and gave me one more suitable for a late Alaska autumn.

It was Canada’s sesquicentennial. I’ve always loved the Great White North. What better way to honor it than to head down the Trans-Canada Highway and paint a little bit of the whole country?

We almost didn’t make it out of Anchorage. The car coughed, rattled, and died on the Glenn Highway. Pastor Godfrey and his wife rescued us again.

The catalytic converter was completely clogged. The replacement cost was irrelevant; no such part was to be had in Anchorage for a vehicle that old. That led to a miraculous intervention. A kindly stranger took the beast into his shop on his day off, opened the converter, cleaned it out and welded it back together. Catalytic converters are not supposed to be serviceable.

I did a lot of painting with my easel lashed to the bumper for stability.

It was a few days later and late afternoon, but we were finally on our way. North of Wasilla, AK, the muffler fell off. We picked it up off the road and looked for a shop. That led to our second miraculous mechanic. He welded and bolted and sent us on our way with a bill for $40 and several jars of salmon his wife had canned.

Arctic Mud behaved all the way north through the Brooks Range and back down again, where a breakdown would have been catastrophic. In fact, I had no more trouble until I tried to jump a ditch while bouncing out of a fire break. I snapped the tailpipe. But that was my fault, not the car’s.

The alternator went somewhere in the Great Plains, in a spot where we actually had cell phone reception. We were riding back to the closest town with the tow truck driver, when the airport on our right seemed to explode in flames. “Oh, it’s just firefighting practice,” he said. That was a pricey fix but the last of our repairs.

Much of our journey was on very dicey roads.

In Newfoundland, we drove north through Hurricane Matthew, which had morphed into a Thanksgiving Day blizzard. It seemed fitting that our trip was bookended by snowstorms, one in Alaska and one in Newfoundland. In all, we traveled 9,998 miles, a lot of it on rutted gravel roads.

Alaska has no state inspections, so our first order of business was to have Arctic Mud re-inspected back in Maine. Of course it failed. After all that driving, our neighborhood mechanic said it wasn’t worth fixing. Just Right Auto in Warren didn’t agree, and managed to do it without bankrupting us.

It’s up for inspection again and this time it isn’t going to pass without a lot more money. The hood latch rusted away and came loose on the Masspike last month. Mary fixed it well enough to drive with a ratchet tie-down. The 4WD is making ominous sounds and it has a persistent check-engine light. So Arctic Mud, my boon companion, is off to the bone yard. It was, in many ways, the worst of cars, but it had a redoubtable spirit.

Goodbye, Old Paint. We’ll miss you.

September 23, 2016

Goodbye, Alaska Highway!

“Regrowth and regeneration,” (Borrow Pit #4), by Carol L. Douglas

Last summer it took us eight days to drive to Alaska in this vehicle. Given our detours and painting stops, doubling the time this year seemed a fair estimate.

Instead, we left the Alaska Highway at 4 PM yesterday.

East of Fort Nelson, Mary and I had to admit that not much looked familiar. True, we’d passed through here a month earlier last year. In fact, this was the same area in which we’d been stopped for hours due to an accident. But, no, we remembered nothing.

Getting out of here, even in 4WD, was tough. A sharp rise and a lip before we hit the road tore our tailpipe off.

Getting out of here, even in 4WD, was tough. A sharp rise tore our tailpipe loose.

Last year, this stretch seemed so desolate. Yesterday, it seemed sedate and settled. The Al-Can looks very different going west to east. Last year, we counted off the signs of civilization as we lost them: regular gasoline, rest stops, power lines, restaurants, and other travelers, until all that was left was us and the open road. This year, those same amenities crowd back into our vision like not-particularly-welcome relatives. I’ll be happy to be in my snug Maine house again, but I do like the solitude.

The Kiskatinaw Bridge is a three span, timber truss structure built in 1942 by the Corps of Engineers. It's still used today, and its maintenance must be a pip.

The Kiskatinaw Bridge is a curving, three-span, timber truss structure built in 1942 by the Corps of Engineers. It’s still in use today, and its maintenance must be a pip.

One great difference this year has been pavement. It’s mostly past construction season. There are not many sections gravier signs left to remind Mary of poutine. However, the fact that she could joke about poutine is a good sign, for it signals the return of some appetite, even though she still remains pretty low.

About 100 km east of Fort Nelson, I pulled down an off-road track to paint some regrowth in a wildfire area. This is a subject I’d like to return to, since the geometry and variety are so fascinating. But I never relaxed while doing the painting. Plein air painters know this feeling of unease. For me it’s very rare, so when it happens, I heed it. After all, I was standing in a black bear’s salad bowl. So this was a rushed effort, and I’ll detail it in the studio.

There are a few paintings that “got away” along the Al-Can. One was of a hunting camp along the highway. I’d hoped to find one on this last day to paint. I also wanted to paint something of the Peace River Valley, for it looks so western here in its deeply cut ravine.

Goodbye, Alaska Highway!

Alas, the Al-Can carries much more traffic near its eastern terminus. There’s gas exploration, agriculture, and much logging. The shoulder is narrow and the lay-bys few and far between. I took a few tracks off the main road, and came up with nothing. That seemed ironic, since most of the trip has been filled with stunning vistas at every turn.

“It’s an early bedtime, then,” I told myself, and pushed on to our destination. There, Mary pointed out that I’d knocked the tailpipe off while off-road. So once again this morning will be spent in a muffler shop and we’ll be that much little bit more delayed.

I remind myself that we’ve just passed through more than a thousand miles of territory where there are no muffler shops. We have a choice of four here in Dawson Creek. My irritation melts into gratitude to a providential God.

September 22, 2016

On the edge of civilization

“McDonald Creek,” by Carol L. Douglas

I’ve seen Mary’s headache, malaise, and swollen neck before. Her older sister had mononucleosis in college and looked and acted the same way. When Mary’s tonsils started to swell, I decided to make quick time to a medical clinic at Ft. Nelson, BC.

Three minutes and $70 later, Mary exited with a scrip for penicillin. No blood tests, no swabs; the doctor took a quick look in her mouth and announced it was tonsillitis. Penicillin won’t hurt the girl and might actually help, so we had it filled. Mono is untreatable anyway.

Mary took a nap in the sun while I painted.

My husband asked why I didn’t see the doctor myself, since I’m still hacking. I just have a cold, I answered. For less than the cost of penicillin, I can rinse my mouth with Alberta rye whiskey. If it doesn’t cure me, at least I won’t mind so much.

Fort Nelson is on the east slope of the Rockies. It seems positively cosmopolitan compared to where we’ve been. Some women have tri-colored highlights in their hair, all in the same gingery tones. That, I presume, implies a beautician in town. There is clothing other than camouflage, although the Super 8 where we’re staying does have a sign asking visitors to remove their muddy boots.

Trail riders are a common site in northern British Columbia.

Hayfields and buildings appear sporadically along the road into town. The tree cover looks more familiar to my eastern eyes. Mixed forests of predominantly deciduous trees cover the lower slopes.

Today we will follow the Alaska Highway to its starting point at Dawson Creek. This will take us down into the prairie land of Peace River Country. This area was explored during Sir Alexander MacKenzie’s journeys of 1789 and 1792-3. The latter was the first east-west crossing of North America north of Mexico, preceding the Lewis and Clark expedition by 10 years.

Like so many great American explorers, MacKenzie’s goal was to find a water route across the continent—the fabled Northwest Passage that beguiled the Vikings, Cortés, Sir Francis Drake, John Cabot, Henry Hudson, LaSalle, and so many others. MacKenzie, however, managed to reach all three great oceans that surround Canada, and his explorations took him on the longest possible route, for the continent grows wider as it goes north.

My main companions yesterday were bears, not hoofed things. It’s almost time to hibernate.

Our prairie time will be briefly interrupted with a slight detour into Banff and Jasper National Parks this weekend. After that, I’m hoping to make better time. A flatter road will be nicer on the old hooptie, which seems to have sprung another exhaust leak. Poor old thing. I’m not sure who’s suffering more, the car or Mary. I’ll push the liquids at both of them.

September 20, 2016

Little bear

“Tamarack bog,” by Carol L. Douglas

While painting the bogs along the boardwalk to Liard Hot Springs in British Columbia, I was interrupted by a park vehicle that needed to pass. The driver and I peered at each other and realized we’d met last year. He’d given us a ride back from the hot springs in the middle of the night, stopping to check for bears frequently along the way.

“Good thing he did,” his brother told me. In 1997, a bear attacked four people at the hot springs. Two died and two were horrifically injured before the animal was shot. The park remains a hot-spot for bear-human interaction, and this year was particularly hard. When the blueberries are bad, the bears come down the mountain and enter the human areas of the park. The average tourist is clueless about bears, as I was reminded when I saw them exiting their cars to take photos of bears on the side of the road.

A black bear looking for clover in the Liard River Basin. “Bears are like hairy pigs,” a naturalist told me. “They’ll eat anything.”

These are not our eastern black bears. “People tell me that they saw a ‘little’ bear,” the park worker told me, “and when they’re trapped they turn out to be 350 pounds. That’s 350 pounds of muscles, claws and teeth.”

Right now, they have the bears pretty well cleared out of the area, but they’ll inevitably be back. The park is full of warning signs about them (“A fed bear is a dead bear”) and instructions on what to do if you encounter one.

The Liard River basin is known for its wandering herds of bison. They own the road, and this big bull was disinclined to let us pass.

The brothers are busy with chainsaws and weed-whackers, cutting the brush back from the boardwalk. That cuts down on surprise encounters.

Even though this is by far the best hot spring I’ve ever visited, I’ll never walk down to it in the middle of the night again. And in fact I didn’t visit it yesterday, either. Instead, I set up on the boardwalk to paint the tamaracks turning color along the bog.

Tamaracks, or larches, are deciduous conifers. They shed their needles in the fall.

In the east, we call this tree a larch; either name is correct. Although conifers, larches are also deciduous, meaning they lose their needles in autumn. I’ve been watching the spruces give way to them as we’ve traveled east. Their yellow is a more delicate color than the blazing golds of birch and aspen.

Watson Lake's signpost forest was started in 1942 and now has over 70,000 signs from all over the world.

West of Liard River is Watson Lake. Its signpost forest was started in 1942 and now has over 70,000 signs from all over the world.

There are two more subjects in this part of the world I’d like to capture. One is the vastness of wildfire; the other is the color of water containing rock flour. Being ill, I haven’t done justice to this part of the trip. So I plan to backtrack today, toward Muncho Lake and the fast-moving waters of the Toad River.