Alaska, and Didn't Bust!

Kluane Lake, Yukon Territory

I thought you'd enjoy this email note I received from Ben yesterday.  He, and Mai, and Charlie left for Alaska a week ago.  They actually arrived on Sunday.  I drove the Alcan with my family back in 1978.  Back then it wasn't paved.  Because of the frost heaves, which Ben mentions, we had four flat tires and broke the axle on our utility trailer which contained all our camping gear - Ben, Mai, and Charlie made it just fine!  Thank you, Lord.  The Alaska Highway has some of the most spectacular, breathtaking scenery in all of God's amazing creation.  Kluane Lake, which Ben also mentions, has a blue hue that is just incredible!  (It's from the glacial silt.)  Anyway, enjoy!

Hi Mom and Dad,

We survived our first day in Fairbanks.  The weather was partly cloudy in the morning, turning to showers by evening, above 50 all day.  We tooled around town today.  Went to Wal-Mart which is a Super Wal-Mart I might add and then over to Sam's Club to get info on a membership.  Pretty much the same deals as Costco but a bit different.  Garrett and Hannah are showing us amazing hospitality as usual.  Mai made some awesome baked chicken tonight and we are ready to get caught up on some more sleep as well.  We decided to do Whitehorse to Fairbanks overnight because the cost of lodging was getting to be way too expensive and it was way too cold for tenting with our equipment.  Mai kept up good conversation with me and we stopped every two hours for a potty and eyeball break.  I was surprised at how alert I was.  I've had worse tiring commutes just to home from work at night.  Unfortunately, we did Kluane at night but the outline of the mountains were breathtaking in the twilight and you could see the moonlight off the still frozen lake surface.  We saw four black bears, one grizzly, about a dozen elk and caribou, some ptarmigans, two eagles, some deer in BC and I almost ran over a porcupine in the Yukon.  He's fortunate I've got good brakes and I had no oncoming traffic so I spared him his life.  The frost heaves were thankfully marked by little red flags on either side of the road which made navigating them very helpful, although a few jumped up and bit us.  Sometimes they are much worse than they actually look.  My shocks got a bit of a workout on a couple, but nothing to be seriously concerned about.  We did the Stewart-Cassiar to the tail-end of the Alcan into Delta Junction in just under five days, with a baby.  Gotta be a record or something!  It is much warmer here in Fairbanks than anywhere else on our trip.  Tomorrow is another tool around day and then we take a trip out to Healy on Wednesday.  We'll spend a couple of days there to situate a place to stay and then head back to Fairbanks to haul all of our stuff out to our cabin.  The sooner we can get into a cabin the sooner we can take a little vacation before the summer season starts.  Thanks for praying for us.  We are happy to be back up here and ready to get to work!  Love you guys!  We'll send some pics of our trip soon.

Love,

Ben, Mai, and Choodar