The Alaska Highway

The Alaska Highway can be categorized as a series of 40-, 50-, 60-, or 70-mph bumps. There really are no 70-mph bumps. But sometimes you might hit a 40-mph bump at 70-mph. And when this happens, it’s not pretty. We had kids and pets bouncing around the back of that van like pinballs. Donald probably took the brunt of it, his head being only 2” from the ceiling to begin with.

Sometimes they’d post signs saying “Rough Road” or “Bump”. More often, they’d stick some orange flags along the shoulder to indicate a dip of some sort. The dips seemed to be clumped together not unlike rapids on a river. If you were alert enough to spot the flags, you had just enough time to slow down to below 50-mph. If you were not quite this alert, chances are you were soon to be airborne and the Kid/Pet Pinball game would ensue. Surprisingly enough, we made it through about 800 miles of Alaskan highways without either throwing Stephen’s back out or sustaining any concussions.


We have arrived in the vicinity of Anchorage, AK. For the next month, we’ll be camping out in our rental house. We went to Sam’s Club in Anchorage and purchased 3 air mattresses. So now we’re all set! We also have the laptop on which we can watch DVD’s. Tonight we watched Season 2 of Survivor on DVD. This was the season in The Outback….