Promaster – Wildlife and Flower Photography by Melissa Burovac

The Eagle has Landed! Back to Tok, Yukon, and British Columbia

September 15, 2026

Now that we’re finally done with the worst of the roads, frost-heave wise, I did a quick inspection of the interior van construction. Lucy’s bed is directly underneath mine, and it would be fairly tragic to squash her one night. The frame is built on 9 2×4 legs, with 6 steel brackets riveted to the van skeleton, 3 at the head (passenger side) and 3 at the foot. I think it’s safe to say that it was overkill. And the shelves are holding up fine.

The exterior of the van is a whole different story. I don’t believe I’ve ever had a filthier vehicle. It’s like a geological experiment: a layer of bugs, a layer of dust, another layer of bugs, a coating of mud, more bugs. The rain didn’t make any noticeable difference, except when I climbed on top to check the solar panels and they seemed pretty clean. I can’t decide if Dad is rolling in his grave, trying to manifest himself in my head to force me to stop at a car wash.

I say I can’t decide because I checked the prices at a couple places and just laughed. One was $2/minute, and I’d need at least 30 minutes minimum – and then I’d still have to do all the work myself – not the drive through kind of car wash (which wouldn’t get all my bugs off anyway). Bah. As dad was somewhat thrifty (“money doesn’t grow on trees!”), he may be in agreement with keeping the filth, maybe as a sort of travel badge of honor. Or – more likely – he’d buy a bottle of Windex and a case of paper towels and spend 6 hours washing by hand.

(Several day later update – I stopped in Kitwanga for an oil change. Shelves and cleanliness don’t matter much if my engine dies. The guy let me borrow his hose to wash my solar panels).

An inspection of my person did not yield as good results as that of the van. I am sore and achy everywhere, especially my neck. After an analysis of my general driving position, leaned back yet slumped forward, often employing the white-knuckle driving technique, I’m surprised I don’t feel worse. The past few nights I’ve been woken up by my neck or shoulders hurting. Every 15 minutes while I’m driving now I have to remind myself to sit up, shoulders back, head up, loosen my fingers, etc etc. And maybe firmer pillows (update so you don’t worry – all good now! 3 days and back to normal, except now my knee hurts).

Lucy failed her inspection as well. She still won’t sit or lay down while I’m driving, and is usually standing with her two front paws on the seat in the back so she can bother me. She can’t get into the front – a cargo net spans the gap between the seats so she can just poke her head over. But it’s thick elastic, so when she’s angry (quite often) she presses her neck against it as hard as she can and jams her skull into me until she cuts off her breathing and I have to elbow her back. When I get my pillows, Lucy will get a hard plastic barrier. And my too-soft pillows. She is also covered in small blobs of dried pine sap from the forest. She was taking a nap in the soft needles and now has clumps of hard sticky goo in her fur. What a pair we are. Old. And in need of a spa day.

This photo is from last year – that’s why Lucy looks so happy. Just showing her cargo net

I am aware that our aches and pains do not make for exciting reading, but an update now and then is necessary for a whole picture of this trip. Same with my obsession with tidiness. If I let two hours go by without putting stuff back where it belongs, total chaos. I’ve generated a long list of ways I can make the van more efficient, stuff-wise, but that’ll have to wait until I’m in one place for more than a couple days.

Geography-wise, I left Valdez (the -ez is like “cheese” not “fez”) on September 10 and took the Tok cutoff road back to Tok. I could have spent a month camping along that road if I wasn’t in a hurry. The fall colors were blazing, yellow aspens with red wildflowers and ground covers. I stopped so many places to take pictures and had to pass the same slow drivers over and over.

I stayed twice at the Tundra RV park, super mellow place with a bar (my companion for an afternoon beer was a 6 year old boy with a large plastic angler fish that lit up and frightened Lucy). We stayed two days to do laundry and relax before tackling the frost heave roads again through the east of Alaska and back into the Yukon. In Valdez, a man said “The Canadians don’t take care of their roads very well,” but after driving the bad parts of both nations, I think I like the Canadian way better. They have a low speed limit, and put orange flags on the side of the road near worse than shitty areas. Speed, you get what you deserve, forewarned. The United States part of the frost-heave section has smooth, cared-for roads with a high speed limit – but that lulls you into a false sense of “this road is awesome” until the bottom absolutely drops out with no warning, Lucy flails off her perch, and everything in the van takes flight for a brief moment. Then when I am scanning the roadsides for moose or bear and start daydreaming, I’m going 70 again before I realize where I am. And am severely reminded. Dukes of Hazzard style.

The road from Tok is the Alaska Highway, and I drove it all the way from the start at Dawson Creek on my way here. This time, it was so empty I could stand in the middle of the highway and take photos (but I still won’t stop if my van won’t fit entirely off the side of the road, that’s just poor decision making).

The eagle has landed – and I can’t tell you how happy I am about that. I pulled off to the side of the road somewhere in the Yukon next to a river, surrounded by mountains (omg I love the Yukon), and almost immediately saw an eagle fly by. It was fairly far away but I could see it perched in the one tree that towered above the rest. Lucy and I ran over as close as we could, but a boulder field and river were in the way of getting closer. I proceeded to take about 7000 photos. Even though it just sat there. It was like at the aquarium, tap the glass, “do something.” At some point, I heard a lot of squawking and saw another eagle flying over, a juvenile. The poor thing flew right into the tree trunk and flapped and flapped to get to a branch. The adult eagle sat right above it, watching the progress without moving a muscle. The baby hopped across a gigantic nest and tried to get on a branch on the other side, completely failed, wings flapping, feathers ruffling, talons scrambling, screeching the whole time. And the adult just patiently watched. I may have detected a resigned look of “that’s my idiot child” from the eagle, maybe a heavy sigh. I captured a funny progression of photos from the whole debacle, but again, I took like 7000 so it may be a while before I get to them all.

I really wanted a photo of the eagle flying since the backdrop of mountains and mist was so dramatic. I had to put Lucy back in the van because she let me know she was tired of sitting there, she may as well be in her comfy bed. I crouched on the rocks for hours. At some point, this ridiculously cute weasel (I think) got suspicious of me and kept trying to get close enough to check me out. But every time it poked its tiny head out from the rocks, I’d look, it would dart back in and reappear around a different rock. It was kinda unnerving since crouching down in the place to take photos gave me a definite plumber’s butt, and I didn’t want the little guy sneaking up from behind. And he’d pop out, startle me, jump back in, over and over, and was getting very close to me. As I was turned around shooing him off, that is (of course), the only time the eagle flew. So I’m happy I finally saw an eagle, but I hope I can get closer to the next one. I would have camped here much longer but with 35 degrees at night I didn’t dare.

See the one tall tree in front of the mountains? That’s where the eagles were. A little far away.

We made it through the rest of the frost heaves to the east side of Whitehorse, and I couldn’t find a good place to sleep. Pulled into a campground and it was packed (now, though, it’s Canadians out for the weekend, not tourists). And getting grumpy because I really wanted to stop driving, I found Marsh Lake. Oh, Canada, how I love you.

The Alaska Highway crosses between Yukon and British Columbia a few times, and we spent the next night in the very last section of the Yukon (where I forgot and stopped at the same gas station that charged $10.40/gallon, but I didn’t have a lot of choices). The aspen trees were as bright a yellow as I’ve ever seen, total fall glory, the leaves tinkling in the breeze. These were interspersed in a spruce-pine mixed forest, with mountains and water. I cannot begin to describe how AMAZING the scenery of this trip has been. Every time I think I’ve seen the most beautiful thing EVER, I round a bend and “are you fucking kidding me?” It’s never ending postcard views – snow-capped mountains surrounded by forested foothills, lakes and rivers everywhere, each scene better than the last.

I finally saw stars this morning (I wrote this section a few days ago, so when I say “this morning,” it’s not). I’ve been trying, but when I first got up this way it stayed light far later than I could stay awake. Fast forward a couple weeks and it’s darker, but cloudy and rainy. But this morning I woke up at 2 am, my neck was bothering me, so I got out of the van to stretch myself out, and WOW the stars were brilliant. I’m miles from any town lights and a truck hasn’t driven by in ages. It’s about 28 degrees with totally clear skies (the coldest night I’ve spent in the van without a heater so far was 24 degrees, somewhere in Wyoming a couple years ago. I added more insulation to the entire ceiling when I installed the roof fan so it’s a bit better now). The big dipper was huge and unmistakeable, and I see why Alaska made it their state flag. I haven’t seen this many stars in a long time. Five hours later, while I’m writing this, I can’t see 5 feet in front of me for the fog. I generally get up early to watch the sun rise but I don’t think I’ll see that today. At least there was enough clear sky yesterday to make coffee indoors this morning.

I was hoping for a nice sunrise over the lake and forest at this rest stop because I was thinking about putting together an album of photos only taken from the places I’ve slept on the side of the road. So much beauty just feet from the highway.

This afternoon we finally turned south onto Highway 37, or Cassiar Highway, into British Columbia. I believe most of this is tribal land. The road is a winding, narrow, gravel/asphalt lane without lines, with steep ravines on either side. It passes through several mountain ranges and is similarly covered with pines, firs, and aspens. The extreme fall colors of the Yukon are receding, and I was happy about a possible warmer night temperature here. Our sleep spot is on the side of Simmons Lake in a pull-off, and not many cars are on the road so it should be pretty peaceful. The lake is enormous and blue and has a nice walk down to the shore. Walking down a hill, Lucy stopped for a drink in a giant puddle which was covered in broken ice. The couple hours south we gained was apparently offset by the gain of 1000 feet elevation. I prepared for a colder night be enclosing Lucy’s bed in a towel canopy to keep her heat in, and she can wear her coat to sleep. She probably doesn’t need it all, but I worry.

September 16, 2026

After a longer driving day, we are camped on Mehan Lake in British Columbia. I pulled into a random rest area and found a trail that led to a small floating dock and fire pit. I’m always a little skeptical about driving the van on dirt inclines, but I took a chance today because the town of Bell is only 2 kilometers away and it would be easy to walk there and get some help if I’m stuck. Plus, I got those badass tires before I left (but I need to remind myself that new tires do not make this a high-performance cargo van). I haven’t had phone reception in a few days so I have no idea what the weather forecast calls for. I haven’t had a proper shower since Tok (oh, boy, how long ago?), so I set up my camp shower to wash my hair. The little things, like clean hair, make me so happy now. I stayed up late to watch stars, and heard owls and wolves hooting and calling to each other across the water.

The fall colors are receding more, and it’s getting warmer, so I’m taking my time again. Lucy will appreciate that. We stopped in Prince George to resupply at Walmart and Petsmart, and I found a shop with a dog bath (which Lucy definitely did not appreciate, but suddenly the van doesn’t smell so bad). I scrubbed, but she still has clumps of dried sap in her fur. We pulled into 10 Mile Lake campground, and the park ranger is a retired dog and horse therapist. Lucy just got her spa day, a bath and a massage, and I am anticipating my turn.

Omg, I’m finally caught up to where I am. I know I should write more often to keep the dates of this trip straight in my head, but some days I’m so exhausted I just want to lay in bed and read. So I do.

September 21, 2026

Spent two nights at 10 Mile Lake, and now I’m sitting at a laundromat in Williams Lake. Now I’m caught up.

Another end of the line – but with glaciers

September 14, 2026

I left you last in Mat-Su Valley, thinking that I was going to head back to Canada and down to Washington. But that wasn’t to be…

It has been raining and my solar is down. For the most part, I can live without power. If it’s not pouring rain, I can make coffee with my camp stove (but reminder to myself, I need a good coffee pot for use on a fire. Using a drip system with boiling water yields lukewarm coffee when it’s this cold out, when you want it hot the most). But since it’s been pouring rain, I haven’t had coffee in two days. Caffeine, yes, but nothing warm, and I’m not quite right without coffee. But worse than no coffee would be to let Kristie’s salmon go bad. She gave me some beautiful, fat cuts, and that would be tragic. I snuggled them into the ice cube trays, so it’s okay for now.

I spent the night on the side of the road, which is not as bad as it sounds. Except for a highway, I’m surrounded by nature. A rushing river and a forest, pretty good deal. Whenever I’m stopped for the night, which is early due to my crazy dog, I notice that most travelers start pulling over or into campsites or RV parks between 5-7. So the upside of the curvy, narrow mountain roads is that very few people drive at night and it’s dead quiet, especially far away from a town. Then I got a good look at a downside of curvy, narrow mountain roads the next morning.

Just a random fall color pic – who knows anymore where this is.

It had been raining for a couple days, and fairly cold. Too much rain to make coffee, and it was tempting to fire up the propane grill inside the van. But without power my roof fan won’t work, and it might be weeks before anyone tows the van and finds our carbon-monoxide-saturated corpses. I should remember to research that later. Worse than the rain was the thick fog. The highway (Glenn Highway) was in a mountain pass at this point, so I’d drive up and into the impenetrable fog, rise above it, drive down and into the fog, drop below it, over and over and over. Add construction and a single gravel lane that didn’t have any markings or guard rails. The drop off on the right was steep (think Crawler’s Ledge steep), and single, sad, tiny orange cones dotted the cliffside every so often. And I was stuck behind a couple cars and a double semi. And no coffee. And my solar power alarm started screaming as I tried to make out the tail lights of the guy in front of me through the rain and fog, worst time for a jump scare. I had switched off my power for the night and put it back on for the freezer, but it wasn’t enough. Thankfully I could switch off the alarm with a switch I installed behind my head above the driver’s seat. I was starting to stress about gas and didn’t have any reception to find the next station on a map. And no coffee. It was just a complete shit morning. I’d chance a quick look out my right-hand window and see that I was driving above a glacier, and start to stress about ice on the road. It was a terror-filled morning drive.

Oh, and don’t forget Lucy – head butting me in the arm the entire time so I’d stop scaring her, but the road was too narrow for any rest stops. I think this was the only time I ever asked myself “what the fuck am I doing here?”

The only way I could deal with the driving scenario I found myself in (second to worst scenario, but only to snow) was to scream-sing with the stereo blasting. That is my extreme distress coping mechanism. So I made a short list of my favorite scream-songs from the playlist I was listening to (no radio stations).

Top 5 scream-song list: 5. Dream On – Aerosmith, 4. Hit Me Baby One More Time – Brittany Spears (but I only have the Travis version), 3. Whipping Post – Allman Brothers, 2. Bad – U2 (and if you don’t remember that great mullet Bono had during Live-Aid or whatever fest from the 80’s you should totally watch it on YouTube), 1. Oh! Darling – Beatles. Honorable Mention: Dry the Rain – Beta Band (in honor of the John Cusack movie reference, but also a good one). Second Honorable Mention: Bend – Middle Kids (because it’s too new to bump the classics). I’m listening to music as I’m writing this and I keep wanting to change my list. Led Zeppelin just came on.

I should have asked Santa for a better stereo when I was at the North Pole. Every time I hit a pothole, the music cuts out. I can’t figure out why, because it’s the connection to my phone, not an internal wire. How does a bump in the road interrupt bluetooth?

Anyway, I had a decision to make at Glennallen: follow the Tok Cutoff north (ugh north again) to Tok and back to Canada for the road south? Or south along the Richardson Highway (along the Trans-Alaska Pipeline) to Valdez? I quickly went from what the fuck am I doing here?” to “I’ll probably never drive this way again so I have to.” I’m really starting to worry about the weather (Denali roads were closed last week for snowfall, and all tourist bus trips cancelled), and a side trip to Valdez would add four days at least. Now if I had been actually planning this, I would have known that a trip to Valdez does not mean seeing the Prince William Sound, which I want to do. I would also have known that I could have caught a ferry from Whittier, east of Anchorage, saved myself days of driving (including the terror-filled morning), and sailed across the northern part of the Sound. But alas, done is done. The drive to Valdez was stunning, but the tourists drove worse than the usual idiots – in proportion to the level of beauty, I guess.

(Roxanne – The Police)

I nearly had two accidents on that road: one was a sedan driving about 20 in a 65 with no flashers, just people leaning out the window taking pictures. That may not seem so bad, but coming up on them around a mountainy curve with cars in the other lane is enough to make Lucy jump up and head butt me when I had to slam on the brakes. The second was car stopped dead in the road – in a hairpin turn – in the canyon to take pictures of the waterfalls. At least I was only going about 30 at the time to navigate the curves. With the morning starting with a driving nightmare, then the afternoon filled with morons, I was glad to arrive in Valdez.

Bridal Veil Falls

Valdez is the end of the line, too, like Homer. Alaska has a lot of them. The camping in town is limited to parking-lot style RV parks, which I hate, but since the park was closing in two days I nearly had the place to myself (I made a note that it closes on September 10, just for my date references).

Valdez is charming, a port town with docks and a ferry and seafood and cute shops. But covered in giant, nearly-empty RV parks. As scared as I am of the snow, I would have hated this place in high tourist season. It was a perfect time to visit (also, very few bugs now). The town is overrun by the cutest fluffy bunnies, cartoon-type bunnies, in all colors: black, white, gray, brown, some a mix of all colors. They lived under the buildings and hung out under the RVs and Lucy thought she had died and gone to heaven.

(Thunder Road – Bruce Springsteen)

Valdez has a ferry, and my map shows a line connecting Valdez to Haines, another town I would love to see. A ferry would cut off the entire drive back north to Tok and put me near the road in the Yukon. So Lucy and I walked down to the terminal and there is only a ferry going to the place I came from, not the way I’m going. I have no idea what the dotted line connecting Valdez and Haines means. So if I’m going to see Haines I’ll have to add another four days along the Haines Highway, down and up. I could do it much quicker but that doesn’t sound like fun.

Since I didn’t see the Prince William Sound, I booked a glacier trip to get on the water. It only covers a teensy portion of one arm of the Sound, so technically maybe it’s not even considered “the Sound.” Lucy wanted some time apart, so I got up the next morning and made it to the boat. It was so foggy I could barely see the van. The boat captain was required to blow his fog horn every two minutes since no one could see anything.

On the way out

On the way back

The trip visited the Colombia Glacier, arrived at by a speedy motor to a bay filled with icebergs, which slowed us considerably. A couple was getting married onboard, so the captain was trying to get as close as possible and it was COLD! The guy I bought my ticket from told me I’d be fine in “what I was wearing” the day before, when he should have told me to pack my winter coat and gloves. Jerk. But it’s a glacier tour, so my bad, too, I guess.

Columbia Glacier

We saw a mama and baby humpback whale, otters relaxing on icebergs, seals on a giant cement marker. The glacier was beautiful, the floating blue icebergs carved into crazy shapes by the wind and water. Ice chunks everywhere in the glassy water. It was a nice tour, but I’ll never need to do it again.

I was adopted by a couple families with adult children and we stood on the top deck and made fun of a group of women below with their backs to the ocean and mountains, posing for selfies. Hours of selfies. I don’t recall seeing them actually look at the scenery. But it was cold, so they had to go inside and edit pictures until they warmed up to take more. The wedding was short and sweet, possibly because the bride wore a sleeveless gown.

(Fire Woman – The Cult)

The captain mentioned that we would not be anywhere near the Exxon oil spill of 1989, which spilled about 11 million gallons. He said you could barely see damage anymore. Most of the wildlife is back to the previous populations, but if you dig on the beach you’ll find layers of degrading black oil. So still not great. He further mentioned that two men were at the helm at the time of the reef collision, and although they later testified that they turned off the auto pilot, neither of them did. All their course corrections were overridden by the auto pilot and they didn’t notice. The sophisticated radar that could have prevented the reef collision had been broken for two years, too expensive to fix, apparently. The ship ran aground in 35 feet of water and no one started the cleanup for days as they argued about who should do it, then a late-winter storm blew in and no cleanup was possible at that point. I read later that Exxon sued both the Coast Guard and the State of Alaska for making it too hard for them to do a cleanup. Corporate greed and negligence certainly haven’t changed since then. What has changed is that two boats are now required to accompany tankers in and out of the Prince William Sound, along with the pilot – a tug and a boat capable of beginning an oil spill cleanup.

(You Oughtta Know – Alanis Morisette)

Otter family on icebergs

I haven’t caught up yet to where I am IRL, but this is getting kind of long. More coming very soon because I have wifi right now! (Sept 18, 20206)

And hurray, it’s warm again (but this is where I’m sitting right now, about a week or so after the events above).

Damn it’s cold.

August 25, 2026

It’s been a couple days since I’ve written and I think we left off at Watson Lake. I was driving away when I remembered what it was known for – the SignPost Forest. It contains something like 100,000 signs that travelers have left. It was started in 1942 by an Illinois Army guy who was working on the highway, and was designated a Yukon Historic site in 2013. Kinda neat, look it up. I was so disappointed by how dirty the town was that I didn’t bother to stop again to go into the forest. I’m not much of a “tourist” traveler, anyway. I’d much rather hang out somewhere quiet than have to deal with crowds of people at the popular spots.

I went through seemingly never-ending mountains again. Everything is so ridiculously beautiful. I feel like every five minutes I’m oohing or aahing at a lake or river.

The wildflowers are wonderful, and I would like to do this drive in spring sometime. Lupine is everywhere – I think that might be Alaska’s state flower? And wild roses, I think I saw an Alberta license plate with that on it. Also yarrow, which was unexpected. I’ve never loved yarrow, but it is blooming everywhere like a weed and is very pretty. For all the folks in Ohio who complain about the deer – lupine and yarrow survive with grazers like bear, moose, caribou, bison. I also saw a great planting of the really prickly perennial with the spiky ball flowers – maybe sea holly? I’ve never seen anyone with that in their garden in Ohio (although everyone sells it), but again, no one wants to eat it.

Dragonflies seem to be everywhere, and they are enormous. Same with the ravens – they’ve been a constant since Montana and are the size of small dogs.

Canada does a great job of putting informational signs in all of the rest stops and roadside pull-offs. History of the highway, famous people the towns are named after, local native tribes, animal species. My favorite one was a black and white photo of a couple men in suit and tie and hat (mud covered), leaning on a car (mud covered) that wasn’t much more advanced than a Model T. The car tires were on huge wood planks and a trickling brook and mud was the foundation. I don’t remember their names, but they were scouting out a path for the Alaska Highway and using the wood planks to make tracks for the car. Can you imagine being that kind of explorer? It’s crazy enough driving on already-paved roads.

Speaking of, I’ve hit the frost heave section of the highway. It’s kind of fun, but slow going. The heaves are like giant mounds in the road, but they run pretty evenly across the entire road so as long as you go slow it’s no big deal. Not like potholes. But I can’t seem to remember to drive slow. I start daydreaming while staring at mountains and trees and all of a sudden I’m going 70 (mph, not kph) and the van drops out from below me and all the stuff on my shelves bounces and Lucy angrily headbutts me and my seat becomes a trampoline. And then I drive slow for about 45 seconds until I start daydreaming again.

It’s not hard to daydream; very few cars are around now, and most are heading south. I stopped at the Caribou RV campground last night and the guy told me that school started this week and if I had shown up three days earlier I wouldn’t have gotten a space. This campground was pretty odd. The proprietors were (maybe) German, and the big sign on the highway boasted that they can greet you in five different languages. A French chef and an Austrian chef were there working and the restaurant had wine tasting menus and much fancier stuff than I’d imagine in a camp. An outdoor bar had TVs, and at one point Lucy and I walked by and a bunch of people were playing bingo.

Possibly I could have been social, but this was the first time in over two weeks that I got wifi inside my van, and all I could do was catch up on crossword puzzles and veg out with Netflix. I didn’t do laundry, didn’t clean the van, just laid in bed and watched reruns of Community. Lucy refused to get out of bed so I didn’t either. It felt good to do nothing productive for an evening.

They also had a weird bathroom system, unlike any I’ve seen before. Four bathrooms in a building, and each had a toilet, sink, and shower. Which sounds good at first, but if four people were showering or peeing, I couldn’t brush my teeth in a sink. I feel like it would be a disaster when the camp was full. They had some pit toilets, but who would use those if you could help it?

There was also a motorcycle camp, and each space had a hard-sided tent with a bed and a big covered porch so people could work on their bikes under shelter. I don’t think I’ve gone 10 minutes during the entire Canadian portion of this trip without seeing a motorcycle on the road. I’m surprised how many there are, strapped with giant bags of gear, spare tires, gas cans, tents, and wow does it look like hard work.

While I had internet I was able to look a couple things up, because I had a feeling that the tiny Yukon towns were crushing gas prices everywhere else. So here it is:

1 liter = .264172 gal or 1 gal = 3.78541 liter

1 usd = 1.38 cad

So the highest I paid for gas was $2.75cad/liter. Which is $1.99usd/liter, multiplied by 3.78541 gives you…

$10.40/gallon usd oh my god.

I do not want to see my credit card bill this month.

Now that we’re nearing our destination (meaning hundreds of miles, not thousands), I’m gonna start slowing down. I pulled into another campground for tonight, very quiet and nestled up to a river. Lake Creek campground, one of the province-run sites. These are beautiful sites with lots of nature and space, quiet and cheap ($20cad). This one has giant piles of free firewood in little shelters, and zero trash on the ground. The downside is no running water, laundry, shower, but I much prefer these. Also no campground host, so if people are assholes you have no one to go to. But these provincial sites are everywhere, either parks or camps or hiking trails. Canadians must really love their camping.

Right as I took this photo of the empty campground, Lucy grabbed a giant mouthful of something disgusting. I should have printed out ID photos for large animal poop, it’s everywhere. So gross. She is no longer allowed to lick me.

Lucy, as you may know, is a Plott hound. Brought from Germany to the US by a guy named Plott to hunt bears, also the state dog of North Carolina. She is in heaven with all these new animal smells, as she’s a type of scent hound. She might make me stand in one spot for five minutes so she can analyze an area. I’m hoping that this dog, who is scared of plastic bags, will remember her heritage and stand up to a bear if we ever come across one. But I bought bear spray, just in case.

I finally figured out a sign that had been puzzling me at the provincial sites. I don’t remember the exact wording, but it means that you cannot smoke pot in the campground – unless you have paid for a campsite. Then it’s fine.

When I pulled in here I was alone. I drove through the entire place (which took 30 minutes to walk around for an idea of the size – fairly big), and not a single other person. But I don’t expect that to last, everyone has to stop somewhere for the night.

It’s nice that I missed tourist season, but not nice that it’s getting pretty freaking cold. I haven’t gone digging in my van for long pants, but I’ll be forced to do that in a couple days. For now I’m wearing a sweatshirt and a jacket, wool socks, boots, and shorts.

I’ve started recognizing the people traveling in the same direction as me. One woman and I are like the tortoise and the hare. I drive crazy fast, but not for long. She drives slow, but longer time. We generally end up near each other every night, or I pass her sometime during the day, or see each other at a gas station. She camped next to me one night, and her RV was very distinctive. It had a black front with a boxy white body. And Swiss plates. Now I see her everywhere. Which is weird, in a way. I have certain pieces of clothing that are just super comfortable to drive in. And yes, sometimes I wear things longer than maybe I should. But I’m clean, so I don’t care. Anyway, one day I thought ‘this woman has seen me wearing the same skort three days in a row’ and I got very self-conscious. Chances are she didn’t notice.

I haven’t seen any new animals since my last post, except a furry brown squirrel-like rodent with a short tail that runs across roads as soon as I get close to them. Death-wish rats. And I found my rivet gun and fixed my shelf. Everything else is holding steady, even after catching air.

Bison are probably my favorite land-based animal, and I hope I see more. One pull-off had a few signs about bison, and how they were nearly extinct but are starting to come back. There are two types: Wood bison and Plains bison. And the Plains bison have the scientific name: Bison bison bison. That just seems lazy.

I should get to Tok tomorrow, my first Alaskan stop. I’ve heard a bit about a wildfire there, the Mukluk fire, but I don’t know what the current situation is. Tok is a town that you have to go through in most cases, both into and out of Alaska. With so many travelers leaving Alaska, I imagine it’ll be sorted when I get there. At least the roads near the highway. Lots of rain in the forecast for the next week, so I’ll see tonight, I guess.

As a side note, I absolutely love listening to Canadian radio when I can get a signal. Especially the news shows right now, all of which talk so much shit about our pedophile president. When Canadians decide not to be friendly, they do a good job.

Wildlife seen:

caribou

ptarmigan

bison

moose

black bear

roadkill bison

rocky mountain sheep

eagle

osprey

mule deer

garter snake

traffic bear

fox

roadkill moose

pileated woodpecker

black-billed magpie

raven

Books read:

Scythe – Neal Shusterman

Thunderhead – Neal Shusterman

The Toll – Neal Shusterman

Gleanings – Neal Shusterman

Dungeon Crawler Carl – Matt Dinniman (goddammit, Donut)

The Story of Little Red

My van’s name is Little Red, and she’s a Ram Promaster. I haven’t written a thing since my car accident, so telling her story is my first attempt at getting my brain back in gear.

Lucy and I are currently camped in the woods in Big South Fork NP at the Blue Heron campgrounds in Kentucky, close to the Tennessee border. My intention is to start my next book, which has been on my mind for a couple years now, and a change of scenery seemed like it was needed to get back to work.

In March of 2021 I was sitting at a red light near downtown Cleveland and a guy (on his phone) smashed into the back of my pickup truck. He didn’t even attempt to brake, resulting in two demolished vehicles, years of doctors visits (for me), and stranding me in Ohio. That’s all I’ll say about the accident, since anyone who knows me already knows the details. The worst part for me has been the inability to do anything creative with my brain, being fogged from so much medication.

I only had a few weeks of rental car insurance and was under pressure to buy a vehicle, so I got a Subaru Forester, thinking it could be a nice adventure car. The main problem was how low it was to the ground, and every time someone got too close behind me I had panic attacks and had to pull over. Lucy and I had spent most of the covid time driving around the country in my pickup, and I wanted to continue by visiting my sister in New Orleans. I made it just over the Ohio/Kentucky border when I had to stop and turn around. Driving had become far too stressful. I hadn’t been working due to chronic headaches, so I went back to Cleveland and got a part-time job at a grocery store that was an easy 3-minute drive. And that was the rut I got stuck in for far too long.

I’m sure everyone saw pics and videos of people working remotely from vans and RVs during covid, and that’s where the idea of Little Red came from. If I was too low to the ground for comfort, I’d get a giant van. If I was super stressed from driving, I’d throw a bed in the back so I could pull over and relax whenever I needed to. I traded out the Subaru and bought a used, empty cargo van, and then it started to snowball. Why not install a refrigerator so I don’t have to keep stopping for food and ice? And how will I power that refrigerator? Let’s add some solar panels and lithium batteries. Since I’m adding power, I’ll get a microwave for cooking. Now I need to raise the bed off the floor and build cabinets for food storage, and give Lucy a place to sleep. A sink for washing dishes, and shelves for clothes and books and all the day-to-day necessities.

Besides making bird houses, I have never built anything. I searched Youtube to see how other people had designed their mobile living spaces, and with a table saw and cordless drill, I got to work.

I won’t say that the outcome will win any design or workmanship awards, but it gets the job done. I started with insulation, which was probably the most time-consuming part of the project. And in retrospect, I wish I had done a bit more. But with the addition of a floor and a ceiling, I wanted to be able to stand up straight in the back, so I kept it minimal. The only real mishap was the shelving above the foot of the bed, which came crashing down on an unexpected and very deep pothole on a trip to New Orleans (which I completed, unlike the last attempt). Thankfully, it only crashed on top of the bed, but I had to spend the next couple weeks sleeping with shelves occupying the space where my feet should have been. My microwave became load-bearing, since my cooking shelf sagged just enough in the middle to rest on top of it. When I got back to Cleveland, I reinstalled the shelf and added support brackets to everything, just in case.

I spent about a year building, with short trips to test everything out and get used to driving again. Lucy and I have recently been to all the Great Lakes, Canada, and oceans on both sides of the country, with visits to family and friends along the way. I’ve had trouble with the solar, and had to spend a day at a rest area in North Dakota taking it all apart to find the problem (which means taking apart a section of the bed since I thought I’d be clever and stash the inverter and batteries in an out-of-the-way spot).
The solar has been the biggest issue since it has so many moving parts. After an initial successful installation with my friend Craig, I found myself without power on several occasions during trips, and at least now I can service it blindfolded. Considering I almost burned down the van a couple times when starting out, that’s impressive to me. I added an extra inverter powered by the cigarette lighter to charge the batteries after some time in Portland with very little sun. When I first installed the solar panels on top of the roof I didn’t drive on the highway for weeks for fear they’d fly off, and now I’m finally confident that I’m not as bad at building things as I thought.

Little Red isn’t finished, though. Project burnout and lack of extra money have delayed the final two items I want to install – a ceiling vent fan and a side window in the sliding door. The window should be easy enough, and cutting a giant hole in the van roof doesn’t scare me (after ripping out my beautiful wood ceiling). Looking through the schematics of wiring the fan, it somehow seems more complicated than the entire solar system, so maybe when I’m stuck inside this winter I’ll give it a go.

That’s the condensed version of the story of Little Red. I could go into a lot more detail on the build and the side trips, but I’ve accomplished my goal of sitting and writing, and for now I’m happy.
Lucy and I are heading out now for a hike, and maybe a nap later. It’ll be a good day. I do wish we were at the ocean, maybe with some scuba diving, but that’ll have to be the next trip.
PS – I have very little reception so I’m writing as quickly as I can – please excuse the typos for now 🙂

Have a great day, everyone!