What do you call a guy who sets off on a 3,600-mile road trip in the dead of winter to drive the Rocky Mountain chain from Alaska to southern Colorado? Bear in mind that this is the same guy who goes kayaking with his Australian shepherd - in the ocean.

Crazy doesn't quite sum it up, because there was a fair amount of planning up front. Adventurous is probably closer to the mark, because these are the undertakings that lead to stories - for your buddies and for your future grandchildren. "That's nothing. I once drove the Alcan in December with a dog and two cats."

Hey, it's got to be better than sitting in an office attending a budget meeting or deciding annual employee raises. Who's the crazy one now?

Day two: You wouldn't think that it could rain so much in Alaska in the winter. South central Alaska typically gets a few freeze, thaw, rain, refreeze into treacherous thick ice that ruins whatever skiing, running or biking that you may have wanted to do, cycles - especially in December. It rained most of the night and made for wet, freezing fingers the next morning when I took time out to readjust the load in the pickup bed and do a better job of tying down the blue tarp that enshrouded my belongings like a cocoon around a caterpillar... or maybe strips of gauze around Boris Karloff.¹

I finally gave up on my soaked gloves and just used my bare hands till my fingers went numb. The pain² was worth it as the tarp ceased to flap like a blue heron taking flight every time I got above 20 miles per hour. It bears mentioning that there wasn't enough light to work with until almost 10 a.m.

Over the course of the next several hours, the road conditions went from rain soaked to slush to hard pack and ice to several inches of fresh snow near Eureka Roadhouse. There are numerous curves on the Glenn Highway between Palmer and Glenallen as well as several steep uphill and downhill sections. The uphill, at times, slowed the truck down to 20 miles per hour in first gear, while the downhill required careful braking to prevent losing traction.

Speaking of....I was kind enough to use one of the turn outs to let a trucker go by and the overnight rains had turned the hard-packed snow on the turn out into ice. Fortunately there was only a mild uphill grade and I was able to get minimal traction back onto the road.

Visibility was limited close to the summit at Eureka. One truck had driven into a snow berm due to the flat-light conditions. Fortunately, the poor driving conditions kept many people off the roads and those who were out were content to drive 35 to 45 miles per hour. The 140-mile drive from Palmer to Glenallen took about four hours.

One option was to stop in Glenallen for the day as the Brown Bear Rhodehouse³, but the road heading north to Tok looked doable. Still, the drive took about three and a half hours with speeds ranging from 35 to 45 miles per hour most of the way due to diminished light.⁴ The highway was bone dry the last 10 miles into Tok, however, offering a luxurious 50 miles per hour sprint at the end of the day. 

No RV campground is open in Tok this time of year, but the Snowshoe Motel⁵ let me pull around back and plug into an outlet for my trailer and my truck. You'll need a 30-amp to 15-amp adapter to plug in an RV. Tok was a tad chillier than the previous night in Palmer. That is, if you consider 0.5 versus 40 degrees to be a tad.

Another impact the weather had was on the door and compartment locks of the trailer. The rain and high humidity in Palmer and Glenallen had allowed moist air into all the locks, which subsequently froze up upon reaching the single-digit temps of Tok. I had kept a small canister of lock de-icer in my pocket for just such an emergency. It was so cold, that the de-icer lost pressure that was needed to dispense the fluid. Preventative treatment of locks with WD-40 or a similar product is recommended.

The rain also caused the webbing on the truck-bed tie downs to lose pliability and grip. I needed to adjust the kayak sitting on top of the bed and had to manually force some of the tie down buckles to grab the webbing again, due to frozen spring mechanisms. After an hour on the road, the few loose tie downs were working fine again. Redundancy of straps can come in handy.⁶ 

On the subject of weather, I tried to get NOAA weather radio in Tok, but with no luck on 162.400MHz, 162.425MHz, 162.450MHz, 162.475MHz, 162.500MHz, 162.525MHz or 162.550MHz. Strange given that there is a small airport in town.

The odometer now reads 314 miles. But more important is that I am officially on the Alaska Highway. Next destination: Canada.

Day three
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¹ The original Mummy in the 1930s.
² It hurt so much when my fingers thawed out that it made me laugh.
³ Yes, the spell it Rhodehouse. It's owned by Dough and Cindy Rhodes. 907-822-3663(FOOD). Mile 183.6 Glenn Highway. Four miles west of Glenallen.
⁴ This area gets about four and a half hours of light this time of year. Notice I didn't say sunlight. There was no sunlight today. Just grey clouds. Which was still appreciated over heavy snow or rain.
⁵ snowshoe@aptalaska.net 1-800-478-4511 or 907-883-4511. Just east of Highway 1 on the Alaska Highway (Highway 2).
⁶ You'd kick yourself if a $10 tie down caused a delay in a cross-country trip.

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