My Way to Alaska

bob-nestor, I too like the works of Robert Service. I have his "complete works on my Kindle" One of my favorite things to do in either or both Whitehorse and Dawson town, is to sit on the Yukon River bank and read several of his poems. Then try to get my mind back to those days, when he lived in the area. That man sure had a way with words.

Think we need more forum members posting photos of their trips and or living in the north Country. Photos sure help a person's credibility at times.

There are some spooky and amazing things happen in the north country. Especially in the winter time, when you are all alone or maybe with one other person camping. One such trip, I was with my buddy, Alfred (considered himself to be Alaska Native by heritage) about 100 miles north of Tanana on the Allakaket Trail, going to retrieve a broken down snow machine for another friend. We set up our tent, started a campfire with wood we had picked up before we got above tree line, on the way there. Probably about 10 PM when we both noticed it was getting lighter all around us. No specific location for the light, it was just all around our area as far as we could see, probably 10 miles every direction. When Alfred started getting spooked, I decided it was time for me to follow suit. He grabbed his sleeping bag out of the tent and crawled under a near by spruce tree, about 30 or 40 ft tall. only tree for miles from what we could see, so I did likewise. After about an hour, the light started to subside and returned to normal. Neither of us had any idea of what had caused this to happen but we weren't going to sleep in that tent that night. LOL

So we decided to sleep under the spruce tree. The boughs were touching the ground and it was fairly snug looking. So we cut off a few of the lower branches, laid them on the ground for our bags. Alfred decided to start a small campfire under the tree with us. (not a good decision) We were as comfy as if we were in a snow cave when somehow a spark from the fire caught a branch on fire and quickly the entire tree was abaze. We grabbed out bags and were back out to the tent again as we watched the spruce tree burn totally. We looked at each other and both said, "hoclannie, atsa ghee" in Athabascan Indian, haunted area, scary. We decided neither of us was very sleepy anymore so struck camp, loaded the sleds back up and headed back south toward the village of Tanana (which is about 150 miles west of Fairbanks) After a run of an hour or two, we were back in the wooded area and stopped again to set up the tent for the night. We had picked up the broken snow machine and had it on a freight sled behind Alfred's machine.
Make it home, the next day we visited several of the village elders to see what they thought we had experienced, but no one knew.

Here is downtown Anchorage in 1962, a couple of years before the Good Friday Earthquake turned much of this area into rubble.



Here is the Alaska Hwy in 1962, best I can tell was in the Yukon as the mountains in the distance sure look familiar.


One more photo taken on my second round trip to/from Alaska in 1964. I have to believe this is the south approach into Teslin but that is not the current bridge as I remember it looking. The current one may have replaced this one. If anyone, sue, Murray, Pa12, Bob or anyone else has a better guess I would appreciate hearing it. Thanks