I woke up on my friend Bob’s couch just north of Seattle around 4:00 AM, and was wide awake by 5:00. Bob had just moved into a new place that can only be described as a compound hidden in the tangle of suburbs north of Seattle. (I told him he should have at least three wives living there.) His house is cabin-ish, and the room I was sleeping in has an awesome floor-to-pitched-roof window that lets in the morning light. I’d forgotten how early the sun comes up that far north, and considered that it was a mere preview for what we could expect on the way up. I don’t know if it was the sun or the excitement, but both Eric and I were up and ready to pack by about 5:45.
Eric had gone a little crazy at REI the previous day, so we had all kinds of new gadgets and camping gear to make our nights more comfortable. We’d also gone to Costco, where we stocked up on steaks, polish sausages, beef sticks, pub mix, Coke, and enough beef jerky to choke a yak. For vegetables, we got pistachios and sunflower seeds.
We got everything more or less squared away and ready to go by about 6:30, and hit the road. Our most excellent and generous hosts weren’t up and about yet, and so we decided to start the manliness early and forgo showers that might be noisy and too close to the master bedroom. We bungeed up the tarp keeping the stuff in the back dry, and headed out.
We weren’t quite ready – we needed to stop and get ice for the cooler, and have a good, balanced breakfast. That meant donuts and coffee for Eric, and Pringles and coffee for me. Excellent. But the truck also needed breakfast, and we needed to fill up our two five-gallon gas cans as well. The ALCAN isn’t like the interstate, where you go until the idiot light on your fuel gauge comes on and then just stop at the next station. We didn’t think we’d need the spares, but you can never be too sure. And besides – at $4.15 a gallon, it was the cheapest gas we would see for the whole trip.
With that, we hit the road.
Seattle area traffic was every bit as ridiculous as I remember, but at least we were headed against the bulk of the traffic. And it was the last time we’d really see any traffic on the trip. True to form, it kept raining the entire rest of the time we were in Washington.
It was Jenn and our pleasure to have you at our “compound”! I’m sorry that I had to be in court the next morning or else I would have been more of a party animal the night before. Regardless, your karaoke-ing was AWESOME, and I’m glad you were there for Eric on his trek across the wilderness. Seriously though, we need to talk about your gas….and I don’t mean the $4.15/gallon kind
Beef jerky will do that