No Northern Lights Tonight

By the time we reached eastern Alaska, we resolved to not drive at night any more in moose country. At twilight we stopped at Moon Lake and paid the princely sum of $18 for a camping site. Ah—the precious luxury of a chemical toilet and a fire pit! Still, both of us were feeling a bit gamey and a hot shower was starting to seem like the Holy Grail.

At dusk, I painted a small study while Mary cooked dinner. The only other visitors in the park were four young German tourists. After we exchanged greetings, they ambled off and got high by the light of the setting sun.

My goal for this trip was eight hours of painting and driving per day. That was not very realistic, and the pace was part of the reason we were flirting with head colds. After my summer in Waldoboro, I should have remembered that everything takes longer off the grid.

In 2016, my daughter Mary and I set off across Alaska and Canada on a Great White North Adventure, which you can read about starting here. We arrived in Anchorage at the beginning of September and got home in mid-October. In between, we visited every province but PEI (been there, done that), and Yukon Territory. In retrospect, it might have made more sense to do this during the summer, since Alaska and Canada threw a mess of strange weather at us.