The Trek to Alaska

It all started on Saturday night. I was in Spokane organizing the Global Night Commute for Invisible Children. Cale was at a wedding in Seattle. Cale drove through the night with Jer-dogg and I stayed up through the night on the streets of Spokane with the 700 people who showed up in support of the GNC.

That's me in the bright green t-shirt on the left. Needless to say, Cale and I were in prime condition to depart Sunday morning on our 2000 mile trek to Alaska.

Our 8am departure turned into a 10am departure as we worked on MapQuest to find the optimal route. We opted for the slightly longer path taking us to Banff and Jasper national park. We filled up on gas and headed north. This is my buddy Cale:

And this is me:

It all started a couple hours into Canada.... my good friend was driving (name withheld, but he's the only other guy I was with). We just finished lunch when I decided to take a nap to catch up on sleep from the previous night entrusting the navigation to the pilot. I woke up a couple hours later and pulled out the map. "So where we at Cale?" "Um, let's see what this sign says......: Lethbridge, 186 km." I glanced down to study the map. Strange....I didn't even see Lethbridge on the map....oh, but then I did....."Cale, we aren't on the right road..." "No, we are....what do you mean." "We're heading East!" "Paul, don't mess with me." "You've driven almost a hundred miles in the complete opposite direction!" "Oh crap." And then the most appropriate movie quote came to mind--so I said it: "You drove a sixth of the way across the country in the wrong direction!" Thank you Dumb and Dumber. Well, Cale felt pretty dumb, but I tried not to make him feel any dumber.

We made it to Banff that evening and decided that we need some good sleep. And since it had just snowed, we booked the cheapest room we could. Early the next morning, we continued along the 21 hours we had left to drive. Highlights along the way included visiting Lake Louise which is perhaps the most beautiful lake in the world. Cale and I took a short detour to visit (because I boasted about how green it is). However, forgot one important detail until we crested the hill and our eyes fell upon Lake Louise: it was frozen! I felt like such a schmo!

Another highlight was this haybale.

And of course there were tons of deer and elk (we lost count after about 50). There were so many deer jumping in front of us at night that we had to pull over for a couple hours until it was light. And there were moose and a big ol' grizzly bear that came about 20 ft from our car! We finally made it to Alaska Tuesday morning at 11am.


Now I'm working on the WP&YR railway and it's white hot. And the weather is just turning into summer!


So that's it! Come visit me!