It was pretty cool, actually, once you discount the fact that I was traveling with my family. Dad's road-vacation style for the first half-to-two-thirds is whenever anybody sees anything, we stop and check it out, whether it's a roadside historical marker "On this spot on August 23, 1805, Lewis bitch-slapped Clark for That Thing He Said About Certain People's Navigational Skills. The expedition had to encamp for three days while the swelling around Clark's eye went down and the blizzard passed over." or an A&W stand selling root beer in gallon milk jugs.
Eventually, he'll realize that we've covered maybe thirty percent of our route, but have consumed ten days of our two weeks, and suddenly we don't stop for nothing nohow no matter what. I'd been through Yellowstone three times before I went there with M., but always on the return leg, so three visits translated to about forty total minutes outside the car.
Anyway. There's lots of cool stuff on the way up, so it isn't just a 2,000-mile slog through nothing. The detour to Skagway is a must-do, as the launch point for the Yukon Gold Rush. The salvaged remains of the original Tacoma Narrows Bridge were used to build one of the bridges along the Al-Can Highway, that was kind of neat to find out. (Dad's dad took pictures of the actual collapse; he was taking a photography class at Olympic College at the time.) Dawson is cool to see. The scenery along the Top-of-the-World Highway is pretty spectacular, if I remember correctly. And if you've never done Denali NP, what the hell are you waiting for? (Allow a couple of days in/around Denali; the mountain is hidden literally four out of five days, no matter the season.)
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Date: 2007-08-27 07:47 pm (UTC)Eventually, he'll realize that we've covered maybe thirty percent of our route, but have consumed ten days of our two weeks, and suddenly we don't stop for nothing nohow no matter what. I'd been through Yellowstone three times before I went there with M., but always on the return leg, so three visits translated to about forty total minutes outside the car.
Anyway. There's lots of cool stuff on the way up, so it isn't just a 2,000-mile slog through nothing. The detour to Skagway is a must-do, as the launch point for the Yukon Gold Rush. The salvaged remains of the original Tacoma Narrows Bridge were used to build one of the bridges along the Al-Can Highway, that was kind of neat to find out. (Dad's dad took pictures of the actual collapse; he was taking a photography class at Olympic College at the time.) Dawson is cool to see. The scenery along the Top-of-the-World Highway is pretty spectacular, if I remember correctly. And if you've never done Denali NP, what the hell are you waiting for? (Allow a couple of days in/around Denali; the mountain is hidden literally four out of five days, no matter the season.)