Reflections on a memorable road trip

My good friend Hunter was down in Washington visiting family. Coincidentally, another good friend of mine who lives in Washington — Mike — had a two-door modified Jeep Cherokee that I had been eyeballing for a while. Problem was, shipping rigs up here costs like a million dollars or something insane. But with Hunter already down there, we worked out a plan.

I paid Mike for the Jeep and we did a last-minute booking on the Alaska Ferry, which brought the cost of getting it up here less than $800. Sweet! For $3,000 I was getting a Jeep that would command a couple thousand more up here, and Mike was throwing in all sorts of goodies he didn’t want anymore for my other Jeeps. I was especially happy to get my hands on a near-new GM 3.4 to swap out for the tired 2.8 in my old silver ride, “Mallory.”

So Hunter called me to say he had picked up the Jeep from Mike and it was apparently loaded to the top with Jeep stuff. I felt like a little kid waiting for Christmas. But now all the other Jeep guys learned that Hunter was down there and bringing up my new toy and suddenly the calls went out. Washington has far more Jeep accessories and for less money than we do. Wasn’t long before I was wondering how in the heck Hunter was going to get all that stuff jammed into my Jeep. Hunter himself purchased five new rims with 40-inch tires on them.

When the time came to head home, he drove my Jeep the 80 miles from Puyallup to Bellingham so loaded that there was barely enough room for him to sit in the driver’s seat and operate the rig. The roof was loaded and two huge tires were hanging off the rear. A strap ran from the front bumper all the way up and over the roof to the rear, in addition to the miles of rope holding what seemed to be several tons of Jeep toys.

As I mentioned before, my Jeep was fairly modified and apparently it was a struggle to get up past 50 mph what with the low gears, etc. With only three days until Hunter reached Alaska, we had to come up with a plan. The ferry isn’t running any farther than Haines this time of year and the long drive from there to Palmer was now out of the question. The problem was, neither myself nor any of our other friends had the passport necessary to travel through Canada in order to get to Haines. I knew for a fact you had to have one and yet, various people said I didn’t. I checked out websites, called the border offices and for every inquiry I got a different answer. But one officer said, “A passport is mandatory in order to re-enter the U.S. That said, we cannot deny entry to a U.S. citizen, but the burden of proof will be on you to prove you are who you say you are.”

Huh?

Time was up, Hunter would be arriving in Haines the next day, and so Jon and I grabbed Hunter’s F-250 and another friend’s huge trailer and headed out to try and make the 700-plus-mile drive. We headed out from Palmer on a wet, cold afternoon with Jon taking the first shift. It was, of course, necessary to stop in Glennallen for those amazing pizza pockets they sell at the store there. This is where I took over driving.

By the time we hit Tok, it was quite dark and Jon remarked that this was now the farthest north he had ever been (Jon only recently moved to the Alaska mainland from Dutch Harbor). As we continued our drive to the border, I mentioned to Jon how beautiful Alaska was around these parts. He looked through the dark window and said, “Yeah. I guess I’ll have to take your word for it.”

We finally came to the U.S. border office, pulled over and walked in. We wanted to tell them what our situation was before crossing into Canada.

“Can I help you?” asked the monotone robot-man. I explained our situation and he just stood there, blinking at me. For a moment I wondered if I had spoken in a different language.

“Why didn’t you call us first?” he asked. I explained I had.

“And what did they tell you?” he replied. I recited almost verbatim the bit about passport, U.S. citizen, etc. Again, he stood there blinking his eyes for a moment before saying, “Well, I guess you just answered your own question.”

Jon and I looked at each other. “OK, um, well … thanks!” (For what I have no idea.) We hopped back in the truck and headed into Canada. The Canadians were much easier. Driver’s license and birth certificate was all we needed. The Canadian border officer, bedecked in a Molson’s tuc and a parka simply said, “Good day eh! Take off!” as he gnawed on some back-bacon (OK, I may have made some of that up). The point is, it was easy crossing into Canada.

We arrived at the border again, crossing back into the U.S. and — the border was closed until 8 a.m. the following morning. Awesome. So we spent the rest of the evening watching movies on Jon’s iPad and trying to catch some rest. When they opened the border and we had to re-enter the U.S., we approached the man with trepidation. Would they let us back into our country?

“Driver’s license and passport, please,” he said.

“OK, here’s the deal …” and I started to state our situation. He cut me off, “Yeah, yeah, yeah … OK … give me what you got.”

We handed over our licenses and birth certificates and he smiled, told us we were good friends and waves us on our way. Wow. That was easier than expected. He had made it without passports, driving a truck that wasn’t ours and pulling a trailer that was also not in our name. Amazing.

We still had hours to kill until the ferry arrived, so we decided to explore Haines. Forty-five minutes later we were done. Beautiful city; big trees, mountains, eagles, historic buildings — very nice.

“Dude, I need to get out of this truck and eat,” said Jon. Well, Ben knows that you always look for wherever the old timers gather in the morning and soon enough I found the Bamboo Room, with several groups of old men drinking coffee and complaining about the government. Perfect — until the food arrived. I think the pancakes were made out of Elmer’s glue and sawdust. Note: when in Haines, don’t eat breakfast at the Bamboo Room.

The ferry finally arrived, off came Hunter in the overloaded Jeep and we were on our way within minutes. Several new-to-Alaska military men followed Hunter off the boat and asked if they could follow us to make sure they didn’t get lost.

“Sure,” I said. “I wouldn’t want you to accidentally take the wrong exit ramp.” Jon and I exchanged a smile.

While Jon and Hunter slept, I did the 750 miles back, in the dark, listening to ’80s music and drinking enough coffee and energy drinks to re-animate the dead. But we made it back to Palmer only slightly more than 24 hours after we’d first left. One of these days, I think I’d like to do that trip again — in the summer, during the day and without a trailer or a time schedule. Oh, and a passport.

Ben Compton is a Palmer resident and publishes his column under the tagline “Compton’s Corner,” the same title used by his grandmother, Phyllis Compton, a longtime Frontiersman columnist.