The British Columbia Wilderness

Until you reach the mountains there aren’t too many landmarks. It’s sort of like crossing one of the great deserts of the West, except that everything is green. Endless green, with a blue to infinity sky above.

Here is where you slip your rig into the perfect horsepower to torque RPM range, and actually drive, for the pure pleasure of doing so. Traffic is light; warning signs are few, mostly about animals crossing the road.

Here is where a driver can actually feel an engine purring as a contented cat. Your fingertips, light on the steering wheel, tingle with the excitement of actually moving down, or up, the road.

Perhaps my excitement, my contentment at floating along on a magic carpet through a perfect wilderness is generational.  As a pre-war baby, rationed gas and tires, and unreliable old cars, curtailed traveling just for the fun of it. Our post-war excitement of each model year — be it a Studebaker, a Kaiser-Fraser, a Hudson, etc.— really wasn’t about fins.  Every schoolboy could tell you what engine/transmission combination they felt best for getting over “Dead Mans Pass,” without boiling over.

I’m not ashamed to admit that I enjoy the reliability of an American built engine, as my GM 8.1 liter Vortec, with a Banks System, and a smarter than I Allison electronic automatic transmission.  I don’t see anything unusual about filling my long range (600 mile) seventy-five gallon gas tank with petrol that really costs the same as when I cruised Broadway in my baby blue ’50 Ford convertible. Then the price of a gallon of gas was that of a good hamburger. So what has changed?

Here is the difference. In the past I traveled the wildernesses of the West by packhorse. This, fifteen miles a day mode of transportation is unfortunately no longer politically correct. Then I traveled a dusty, wash boarded, slow going Alcan where heavy truck traffic hauling oil pipeline north, that made anything over 100 miles a day, hectic.

So, as a pioneer have I earned the right to enjoy the freedom of this magnificent Alaska Highway? My oversized windshield was whacked by a rock, a trip or so ago. So what, I haven’t repaired this ding. And, so far so good, I have made it through seven years of not carrying a spare tire, or getting out and getting under.

Wow! Those worries behind me open up all sorts of other things.  As cranking up channel 4 — big band music— on my XM Satellite receiver, and programming a steady 55 MPH into my cruise control.  Away I go, blending wilderness travel (that I have also done by outboard motor, and bush flying) and the best that today has to offer.

One of the questions I ask, “concerned citizens for the environment,” is why nobody seems to be concerned about over-population anymore. I know from observation that nature has ways of thinning a herd. Mankind, for most of his history, has used war and pestilence. 

My problem is that I happen to like people. Especially motorhome travelers, my age, not afraid to talk to one another. Want to escape to the excitement of living? Then turn the key, brother.  Do the Alcan, or if you need a full hookup to support your onboard washing machine and dryer, the Alaska Highway.  Give us a wave when passing by.