John Rachal's Blog

DAY 30 June 20, Thursday

Tonight (I use the term advisedly) sundown is at 12:46 am, and sunrise is at 2:56 am, allowing two hours and ten minutes of alleged darkness. If you peek out the window about 1:45, you’ll still see blue sky. So here we are in our night simulators we bought at Wal-Mart.

Yesterday we concluded that reservations for Denali (the only dates available when Val reserved them months ago) were so far away—July 24, over a month—that we needed to see if we could move them up. Yes we could, surprisingly, by a little over a week; so we made a new booking for three nights beginning around July 16. Today we decided even that was too far away, a month, which would have necessitated our in effect killing time driving around Alaska to places we are pretty sure we can cover, including non-travel days, in under two weeks. Nor is it like there are all that many places to go, given the fact that there are only eleven highways of any length in the whole state. So we changed our itinerary altogether, and instead of heading down toward Valdez first, we decided to continue our way north to Fairbanks, then to Denali—an easy day’s drive between the latter two—on the 23d, where we have booked a private campground for three nights. Unfortunately, it is supposed to rain the three days we are there. Then from Denali down toward Anchorage and the Kenai Peninsula, and then probably an out-and-back to Valdez, then back up to Tok and then, finally, back down the Alcan. As Val said, she’d certainly rather not have to kill time in one quadrant of Alaska (the one with roads) and then have to shortchange ourselves in the lower 48 when we know we want to spend time in Kalispell, Yellowstone, and probably elsewhere. So basically we are doing the Alaska loop backward from our original intent, losing our in-park reservations at Denali, but not spending about five full weeks here, when it took us a full month to get here in the first place.

So here we are in Fairbanks at a city park. Actually we are in the parking lot of the city park, along with a handful of other larger RVs and the first other Casita we have seen on the trip. We covered 217 miles on a pretty day and are at 5,404 for the trip.

I am still mulling over the differences among tourist, traveller, and wanderer. When I was thumbing around parts of Europe at 20 with no itinerary and my trusty Europe on $5 a Day, which was that? But today I did get a pretty good idea of what a full-fledged tourist is when three different tour buses pulled into the Visitors’ Center at Delta Junction, about halfway between Tok and Fairbanks. First, they tend to travel in clumps; they make no specific decisions about their itinerary and are herded about; they seem to wear name badges; and they are not youthful. Their tendency is to see what is conventionally seen. I suspect the three terms—tourist, traveller, and wanderer—overlap considerably, but a defining characteristic of the tourist is that other than making the initial decision to make the trip, they have little or no control over the specific places they are visiting, except perhaps free time within a pre-determined city. I do not wish to disparage this however. Older people (and I am now officially one) have more time and often more affluence; and they sometimes hear Time’s winged chariot hurrying near. So good for them for getting out at all. Muir, I think, may have been the best-known of the wanderers, but also Johnny Appleseed (whose real name I have forgotten) with their absence of agenda except to see, explore without guides, and lay their heads wherever they happen to end up that day—those who almost find “home” aversive because too tame, too familiar. Among probably fictional wanderers, I nominate Odysseus. I mean, really, ten years to cross the Aegean?

DAY 31, June 21, Friday

There is a 10K race here tomorrow night, and some 4,000 crazies are entering. It starts at 10 pm and ends up here at the park around midnight, which of course will still be virtually broad daylight. What is this absurd fascination with entering contests? Is it to salve battered egos? To assert one’s physical prowess? Are these poor, pathetic individuals so devoid of self-confidence that they must conquer mere physical challenges to prove themselves to others, but mostly to themselves? Why so much work for a $35 T-shirt? Or for the older ones, how much is it staving off disability or the cunning encroachments of age? How much of it is the fact that the race is in Fairbanks, maybe America’s most northerly actual city, and contestants—especially non-Alaskans—want to participate in the esprit and glory of that? This ludicrous striving, this need for self-congratulation—well, it’s really rather sad.

So of course I sign up for the race, and am the proud, smiling owner of a charming little T-shirt. I’m hoping to walk it in two hours since I haven’t run two miles, much less six, in twenty years. Apparently there will be quite a crowd of walkers.

We spent most of a hot day visiting civilization, including Lowes, Petco (in our ongoing pursuit of dog toys), an REI, and a delicious little soup and sandwich shop. At six we went to a small gathering of other folks from the lower 48 traipsing around Alaska up through the Yukon.