First Principles

I’ve always loved the road trip. I got my first driver’s license as soon as I could after I turned 14 (God bless growing up in a farm state), and I’ve loved to be on the road and exploring new pavement ever since.

I’ve done some great ones. In high school, I explored the Black Hills of South Dakota in my 1979 Honda Civic (to the eventual demise of the Civic). When I was in the Navy, I had to get my car to my next duty stations somehow. I drove from Minneapolis to Rhode Island, from RI to Charleston, SC and back for a Thanksgiving, did some side trips to Maine just for the fun of it, and then drove it from New England all the way to Hawaii – via Canada, South Dakota, and a shipping terminal in LA, of course. I’ve driven the entirety of I-90 and I-5, and a bit north and south of that in places where the money is different colors. I’ve driven across the stark deserts of Nevada, the rolling prairies of South Dakota, and the first time I ever saw the ocean was from a car window on the road across the Florida Keys.

But the drive up to Alaska topped them all.

In the next few days, I’ll be blogging about the trip, and posting a bunch of the 798 pictures I took along the way. I hope you enjoy it as much as we did.

There is something profoundly individualistic about a road trip. Although made less so by modern technology, it requires a sense of independence and a willingness to be self sufficient. Nobody is telling you what to do, where to stop, or what sights to stop and gawk at. If you run out of gas or make a wrong turn, you have no one to blame but yourself. You can sing along with your own music and eat your own food. In some places, if you get in trouble, there’s no one but you to get you back out of it. It is the perfect expression of both the grandness of freedom and the indescribable satisfaction of being responsible for – and to – yourself.

There is no better way to see the country (or countries) than by road, especially when you aren’t in a hurry and can get off the interstate. To drive across the US in particular is to connect with our land, our people, our heritage, and our history as Americans. When you drive across I-80, you follow more or less the same route staked out by Union Pacific and Central Pacific surveyors in the 1860s. Farther north, you can see the same mountains and rivers and shorelines that Lewis and Clark explored two centuries ago, and the awe is no less. You meet people of all kinds, and see the farms and the towns that matter so much and are remembered so little. You see stars and quiet and the vastness of our beautiful continent.

Most importantly, it calls to the spirit of the explorer inside of us all, that understands the need to try new things and to go new places, if for no other reason than to refresh and replenish our soul. It shakes the moss off the stone and blows the cobwebs out of life.

I’ve wanted to drive up to Alaska ever since I can remember. From the first time I got behind the wheel of a car, I’ve wanted to go as far and as long as I could, just to see what was around the next bend in the road. And going north promised unique challenges and an experience most people never get to try. Besides, a road trip across an interstate with gas stations every 5 miles just isn’t the same challenge. Plus, I always thought it would be cool if I could say my old Corolla had been in both Alaska and Hawaii for some reason, although I doubt that my little car is ever going to see the 49th State now…

The opportunity presented itself when one of my best friends, an officer in the Coast Guard, returned from a tour in the Persian Gulf, newly single and assigned to command the patrol boat USCGC Roanoke Island in Homer, AK. He had to come visit me after he got back to the States, after all, since I’d been taking care of his truck for the last year or so.

He needed to get himself and his truck to Alaska. He wanted to do the road trip as much as I did. We had some reconnecting to do. And I had just barely been working at my job long enough to qualify for a vacation. To not have made the trip with the planets so aligned would have been almost blasphemous.

The die was cast. We started making preparations to journey north.