Wowee!

I have added a new word to my vocabulary - wowee has overtaken wow. I noticed this affliction taking hold the further northwest we traveled through the Yukon Territory (anyone remember Sgt. Preston of the Yokon, and his trusted dog, King?) Wowee became the first word out of my mouth every time we took a turn in the road and feasted on the site of more snow-capped mountains, seeming to sit upon a frozen lake the color of blue ice. The mountains of the Yukon, and then in Alaska, are a strange shape, kind of like fat upside down ice-cream cones. Their fat, billowing bottoms come up to sharp peaks, pointing skyward. They don't seem to be connected, causing a fairly flat bottom across the sky like other mountain ranges we've seen. In a lot of cases, they were so high that banks of clouds circled just below the peaks.

OK, so much for mountains. Now, the roads. We have come to the conclusion that the ruts, washboard effect, and frozen ice mounds on the Canadian roads contributed to the breakdown of Montana's hitch. So, we really hoped the roads would get better once we finally left Watson Lake. No such luck. The ruts got ruttier, the ice mounds became moundier, and the washboards were still looking for a good washing. Every little creak coming from the new hitch made Ian and me freeze and quickly look in the side mirrors. After a couple days, we started relaxing and hitting the ruts again. (Not really. Well, really, but not at 10 mph any more - we upped it to 15.) Whenever we stopped for gas and mentioned the bad roads to the Canadians, they very proudly announced it was their ice heaves. One thing we found almost amusing was that a few feet before a bump in the road, there was a sign with the international symbol for bump on it. Well, sometimes there were. If not the sign, there were red flags put on the side of the road where the bump was. That didn't give you much time to slow down, but I guess it covered the Canadian DOT's you know what. If there wasn't a sign or a flag, there sometimes was an orange construction cone by the side of the road. Then, there were the bumps that came just about the time we were relaxing, relying on any of the three Canadian signs for bump. Yep, that's when the bump was there, but there was no warning! Slamming on the brakes ensued, along with "Ian, slow down!" on my part and *@#&#!+%@&$# on Ian's part. We decided in the end that it was a left wing Canadian conspiracy to see how many American vehicles could make it to Alaska with their suspension system still in tact. Let alone their campers!

Once we crossed into Alaska, the roads were considerably better. At least our tax dollars are being spent on the roads up north. Never mind that the roads in Pennsylvania and New Jersey
rattle the body's bones to slivers - the Eskimos have a good ride, whether it's on their roads or the ice.