Outdoors

End of the road...

11/29/09, 7:59 pm, By D. Bunker

Dirt Bag for a Day - North Pt. III

By D. Bunker -

Editors Note: Yes, this is where Dirtbag was when you were staring out your window. Click here for the second installment. ...And yes, the last edition was about swimming (cavorting) w/bears... the Alaskan kind. Enjoy your final passage of Dirtbag's travel diary. To read it from the start— click here.

After the dip, it was back on the road, pedal to the metal, eyes boring holes through the vegetation on the edges of the road, hoping no large mammal decided today was a good day for a head-on collision with some California kids.

The Yukon, it must be said, is rather dull.

In fact, some of the place you would assume would be the most appealing as you stare at a map of Alaska and the Yukon, can be monotonous.

I remember cresting the Brooks Range on the way to the Arctic ocean in 2000, and being somewhat let-down by the endless expanse of flat permafrost, dull skies and featureless horizon.

It held it's own beauty, the way the desert can enthrall you, but it certainly wasn't what I expected.

The Yukon is similar. It's austerity and bleak beauty slowly grows on you, but never overwhelms. And that's one of the problems of driving to Alaska.

After driving by three herds of buffalo, the fourth herd becomes passé.

After driving by a cluster of 16,000 foot peaks, the gorgeous 12,000-footers flit by like background scenery.

For a small town in a far off place, Homer, Alaska has an outsized reputation.

For some it is "The end of the road," a reference to the fact that it is there that the road dead ends at the Cook Inlet, the farthest point west you can reach by road in Alaska.

To other's it is "A quaint drinking village with a fishing problem." Drive down the Homer Spit — a finger of land that juts out improbably into the Cook Inlet — and count the Halibut charters and fishing boats on your way to the Salty Dawg Saloon and the reason for this moniker will be self-evident.

And then there is a cultural tag line that Homer has earned — "The Little Cosmic Hamlet by the Sea."

This sums up the unique mix of hippies and fisherman, artists and hunters, back-to-the-landers and roughnecks that populate the town.

It's a gloriously ungentrified town addicted to coffee. A place where woman wearing Russian Orthodox head scarves walk by grizzled fishhands still clad in fish-slime-encrusted coveralls and rubber boots, and the local laundromat has an espresso counter.

We rolled into Homer late.

Slipping past a moose munching the neighbor's vegetable garden, and piled into my brother's house.

Soon fresh-caught salmon and halibut were on the grill. A beer or two were knocked back. The road trip was over. In the following days I took a boat across the bay to hike through bear-scat covered trails to a glacier-fed lake.

My sister and I headed as far up the inlet as the road would take us, and then began walking farther, passing remote Russian Orthodox communes, and large bear tracks in the tidal flats.

We stoked a bonfire on the beach and enjoyed several of the most glorious sunrises and sunsets I have ever seen.

But, after day after day of constant movement north, I somehow felt stalled out, immobile, sedentary. And even though my butt hurt and my legs were weary from dozens of hours cramped beneath a steering wheel, I had this insane urge to jump back in the car and drive.

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