Two weeks ago I was packing my car and bidding my friends and life in Boulder, Colorado goodbye. Today I’m at my strange new desk in Fairbanks, Alaska, writing a news story about a high school mural of fish. But I’m not 100 percent here.
Part of me is still on my journey, a 7-day, 3,000-mile roadtrip/ferry ride through a wonderland of cliffs, waterfalls, rainforest, alpine lakes, rivers and the Pacific Ocean. I saw six bears, 10 bald eagles, 20 whales, sheep, mountain goats, and countless mountain ranges and peaks. There were rough patches, too. Like the the notorious Alcan Highway we followed for hundreds of miles, a runway of speed bumps due to giant frost heaves that made me cringe every time my shocks groaned and squeaked.
The Canadian Rockies and coastal Alaska were so beautiful they made us numb. Fairbanks is less ostentatious, with soft rolling hills covered in birch and spruce and a full vista of the Alaska Range to the south, couched in the lush valley of the Tanana River. It’s light until midnight, and we’re getting seven more minutes of daylight every day. If I had any qualms about moving to Alaska (which I did), my trip wiped those away.
But the best part was my traveling companions–my mom and sister. They helped me drive–even though my sister didn’t know stick–and transformed the trip from a scenic tour into a joyride. We never stopped laughing, whether at my sister for almost stalling 10 feet from a big black bear or during border-crossing shenanigans or my mom’s insistence at doing “standing tree” poses in front of every picturesque view.
Now they’re back on the East Cost, and I’m here, as far north as you can go before you hit the arctic tundra. There’s more open wilderness, fewer people and fewer familiar faces than any place I’ve ever seen. It would be easy to get lonely here if you only focused on mountains and rivers and wildlife. But the closeness of my traveling buds is still with me and adventure is all around me. And so really, I’m right at home.
