We humans have made some remarkable advancements to fight off old frosty, but I tell you this, there are some temperatures that we just shouldn’t have any part of. Man it’s cold out. When I got in my car for work this morning the temp was -2 degrees F. The windchill was -13. Getting near the Yakima records. My freshly showered hair froze stiff almost immediately until the heater finally started to kick in ten minutes down the road. The high today is supposed to be in the teens. At the very least, the one advantage Yakima has when it’s this cold is that it’s usually accompanied by sunshine. The better to see you with my dear.

I’m planning on driving back to Michigan late next week some time and have been keeping an eye on weather patterns and road conditions of my possible routes (90/94, 90, or 80). I’m almost guaranteed to hit weather no matter which route I go. I mean 196 just south of GR could be as bad as anywhere. It would be nice to at least minimize my chances of being stranded in a blizzard or freezing rain in the mountains though.

I’m leaning toward going the high route, I-90 to I-94, WA-ID-MT-ND-MN-WI, which may seem counter-intuitive, but I think actually provides more predictability than either of the other two routes that send me through Wyoming. I just get a bad vibe from that state. The I-80 route (lowest route of the three, WA-OR-UT-WY-NE-IA) especially, has hundreds of miles exposed to those gusting Wyoming winds. Too many issues with blowing snow and black ice, though really any of the plains states could bring that fun as well. I also could take I-90 all the way across (middle route, WA-ID-MT-WY-SD-MN-WI) which could be a fine option if the weather there looks better.

Really any of these states could have some spectacular winter event this time of year, so my plan is to check the forecast the night before and shoot for the least bad one. I’m anticipating that this trip will take a little longer than my standard two days. Shouldn’t be any worse than driving to Alaska though.

Continued from the last post.

Day 4: Whitehorse to Anchorage. Another early morning, fueling up near Whitehorse. Fas Gas, it rhymes. Also note the gas can strapped to the roof of the car, finally in use after a close call with an empty tank the day before.

Hey, traffic! Weird. Noteworthy as the only car we’d see for the next twenty minutes or so. Mountains ahead. In my head before we left WA this is how I pictured the Alaskan Highway looking. Near Kluane National Park Reserve.

The sun came out. We could actually see pavement. Maybe today will be alright.

The picture below-left was taken about thirty minutes after the one above-right. Gets gray and snowy pretty quickly.

The last gas station in the Yukon. Another Fas Gas, luxuriously outfitted compared to most of the other stations we stopped at. Almost to the Alaskan border. This was where I took over driving for the rest of the day.

And 11 hours later, Anchorage! Survived another blizzard and a 180 across the highway, but how to break into the back of the frozen trailer is another story. I was very happy to check into our well-appointed hotel suite. Day 5: And a picture the following morning of some of the peaks around Anchorage.

A few pictures from the Alaska road trip last month. Lots of pictures of road and snow. I would’ve taken more, but I drove the majority of the trip, so there are huge stretches of time without shots.

Day 1: Just across the border into Canada on the way to Prince George, sweet bus. Day 2: The roads were in great shape still. 185 km to Dawson Creek (and the start of the Alaska Highway), on the way to Fort Nelson.

The open road in British Columbia. Our first really steep grade of the trip (right picture), though it’s tough to tell from the photo. Overall, day two was by far the easiest day of driving we had. Nice weather, clear roads.

The 4-Runner and trailer (with overloaded front end that I had no part of loading) at a frozen gas station in BC. Day 3: Into the Canadian Rockies west of Fort Nelson. This was one of the prettier stretches of road, and exciting on the icy sections without guardrails.

Finally some wildlife, elk on the side of the road. See, I told you I’d get some blurry pictures of animals. And some gas station known for its boring hat collection. I walked in to take a picture of the boring hats and the lady at the counter give me the evil eye, so I pretended to look at their crappy souvenirs instead. Outside, some crows flew up and landed on the light post above the car, crowing gutturally at me until I fed them Wheat Thin crumbs.

Traffic had already been sparse, but it was really empty now, maybe one car every 10-15 minutes coming the opposite direction. Muncho Lake.

“This Means Watch for Wildlife Use Caution!” Well hey, the sign was right. Those tiny brown dots up on the hill are bison, I promise.

Okay, now you can see them a little better. Our guidebook gave us an Extreme Caution! warning about bison on this stretch of road and they were spot on. Bison everywhere, just lounging right next to the highway. The guy I was driving with had some gigantic lens for his camera and we stopped the car right in the middle of the highway (again, still no traffic) so he could zoom in for the picture on the right.

Definitely icy now, though in the daylight neither of seemed to be too concerned with zipping along at 55.

Welcome to Yukon! Look at that sign, classy. To be fair the highway crosses over the BC-Yukon border like six times in a twenty mile stretch, so maybe the Yukon Dept of Transportation doesn’t have the budget for a bunch of sweet signs. Yet another gas station, and it already looks like it’s getting dark out at 1 pm. Much of the rest of this day, the after dark portion at least, was spent whiteknuckling it though a blinding blizzard. If I hadn’t been driving the whole way, I would’ve shot some video for you. Oh well, next time.

I’ll get the last few trip pictures from the Whitehorse-Anchorage section up in my next post.

Well, it’s been a good run. When I started this site five years ago it was kind of on a whim to play around a little with web design that jived with my aesthetics, organize my photos, and write about nothing. I suppose could’ve had a free Blogspot page and connected it to a free picture-hosting site, but I liked having the total control of my content.

At first I didn’t have much to write about, but over the next couple years it was fun to be able to document trips and the great Oregon adventure. I thought a couple of time about stopping the site, but then Washington came a-calling and the site became a really good way to keep people back home updated on our new west coast life. Out here every weekend seemed to bring something gorgeous to share.

Now that’s all kind of winding down though. And lately I’ve also started to feel a little different about this Internet space. Maybe it’s the whole inane-detail-sharing Facebook movement that got me thinking, “wait, is that what I sound like?” I’m sure an undercurrent of narcissism is pretty normal in any self-story, but I finding just off-putting enough in myself that I wouldn’t mind pulling back for a while.

So, this will probably be the last month of slipperyamoeba.com (four more weeks or so). At least for a while. The last three years of playing in the mountains have got me completely hooked, so I’m sure there will continue to be adventures and I’ll probably keep something going offline. Maybe in a year or two, I’ll come on back and backdate some good stories and some better pictures. It’s been fun.

Mary bought me a surfboard off Craigslist to replace the broken one that I sold a few months ago. Merry Christmas! It’s a 6’3″ Superfish and should be a great board for the sloppy Lake Michigan waves (assuming I can make the transition from relative competence on an 8′ board to relative competence on a 6’3″ that’s supposed to catch water better than its size might lead you to believe). I doubt it’ll get any Michigan use until after the spring thaw, but it’s nice to have a board in my pocket again in case of spontaneous road trip.