Today we celebrate the Summer Solstice. It is the day with the longest daylight in the northern hemisphere, and the official first day of summer. Starting tomorrow, each day’s light will be very slightly shorter, a process which continues until roughly December 21, the first day of winter.
Back in 1979, I think it was, we were in Fairbanks, Alaska, on this date, having driven north from the “lower 48” on the then-unpaved Alaskan Highway. I went outside our small motorhome in Fairbanks at 1 a.m. and it was so light my young eyes could read a newspaper with ease using only ambient light.
In those days there were three seasons on the Alaskan highway: snow, mud, and dust. We went north, and a couple of weeks later back south, during the mud season of late spring and early summer. At some points you could hardly tell what color our RV was, for the mud coating.
The roads in Alaska were paved so it was worthwhile getting the mud off after arrival. I remember northbound going into a car wash in Tok, Alaska, and spending a fistful of quarters spraying off sheets of Canadian mud. Underneath, the hot exhaust had baked mud onto the muffler and tailpipe like ceramic and it was probably still there when we traded the RV four years later.
That trip was an adventure, no doubt about it. For about 3 days southbound we were trapped at Muncho Lake with the road ahead (and behind) washed out from spring rains. Tired of eating fried Spam and listening to rain on the roof, we were literally the first vehicle through headed south, having ‘skirted’ the barricade without permission.
When we drove south into Fort Nelson it was overrun with vehicles and people trying to get north. Shelves in the grocery store were literally bare, and folks were camping on the streets and parking lots. It looked like scenes from a disaster movie.
Good times, great memories.
