Alaska Via Land...Part 1

Now that I was all packed up, there was nothing to do but say goodbyes, make any last minute route adjustments, get the cats in the car carrier (a process dubbed "cat rodeo" by my dad), and start driving.  One special goodbye was my sister coming over for supper.  She bought me a lottery ticket and said if I won I didn't have to go :)  I think we were both a little disappointed when I didn't even win $2.  Apparently luck is not mine in "The Game of Life."  It was hard heading so far away again when the time came to go.

 

 

 

My initial route was to be 3914 km.  A snowstorm coming through Alberta and Saskatchewan added an additional 100-150 to that as I skirted south through Medicine Hat to avoid the 10-15cm snowfall coming in the north. That did allow one more coffee stop goodbye at my brother's house in Medicine Hat that we weren't expecting to get.

 

I wanted to show a map with the stops along the way.  I had my trusty dusty MilePost Map, but no thumbtacks, so I used the next best thing at my disposal.  M&M's left over from the road trip.  The green M&M located on the far right of the map (beyond where it ends) was the starting point in Saskatchewan.  The reddy brown M&M on the left is Anchorage.  The blue M&M's in between represent the stopping points for the nights.  Clever and delicious.

 

 

 

Because I had driven south and avoided the blizzard, day 1 was a relatively easy 10 hour stretch.  At least for me.  The cats (who will be referred to collectively as The Panthers of course) had never been in the carrier except for short trips to the vet, or that one 3 hour stretch driving home from the airport, which I was pretty sure they had blocked out.  I had it in my mind that the car ride would be 5 days of intermittent cat protests, and that they would need to roam the car to stretch during the drive.  Following that, I expected to need an hour or two each morning of cat rodeo to get them back into the carrier at the hotel room.  What actually happened was far more difficult.  The Panthers curled into a solid ball at the back of their cage, went catatonic, and refused to eat, drink, move, or use the litterbox.  This made me a little nervous by the time I picked up my co-pilot in Edmonton, but i figured a night in the hotel would get them back to normal.  I even bought them KFC.  The chubby panther who loves chicken turned his head away and buried his face despondently in his blanket.  I was starting to get worried.

 

At the end of day 1, I noted the lack of litterbox and food bowl activity and decided they would certainly get hungry on day 2.  There was no cat rodeo required because the only movement out of the cat carrier was to momentarily hide in the hotel bathtub.  Abnormal panther behaviour indeed.

 



Day 2 saw more good roads.  Monique and I switched driver's every 2 hours or so, and passed through Grande Prairie, Fort St. John, AB, and crossed into Dawson Creek BC early in the afternoon.

Still great roads by Dawson Creek, BC

 The roads were fairly straight all the way to Fort Nelson, BC.  There was a noticeable increase in the amount of snow in the ditches, but the roads were still clear and dry.  It took about 10 hours to get to Fort Nelson, and thanks to the 2 bags of road food given to Monique from her hubby for Valentine's, we didn't even need to stop to eat.  He even included tuna for the cats.  Well, actually he wasn't too excited about the fate of the tuna, but there were 4 tins of tuna and 4 living creatures, so fair is fair.  Harry was quite happy to eat road tuna.  Aiden was still not having any of it.

We stayed at the Super 8 in Fort Nelson since Super 8's allow cats, and fell into bed surprisingly exhausted by 10pm, which is good because at 3am the kitty kids were calling out.  I managed to settle them down, noted some litter box activity, and crawled back into bed.