Alaska to Florida- A Sister Adventure
And all the mini-adventures in between.
I lived in New York City for eleven years, long enough to know that leaving in August was the secret to happiness and fulfillment. The city empties out, and the only ones left are a few Trader Joe’s cashiers, some waiters, and millions of waterbugs. The wealthy go to the Hamptons to compare Botox with Gwyneth Paltrow and Kelly Ripa. And the ultra-wealthy spend August diving off yachts anchored near the Amalfi Coast. I hated when the city felt like a ghost town. I moved there specifically to be surrounded by millions of strangers everywhere all the time. Since nobody invited me to the Hamptons or Yachting one August, I flew home to Alaska to see my golden retriever Madison. And my family, too, since he lived with them. I planned to be in Alaska for two weeks, which was about twelve days longer than I usually lasted around my family.
I grew up in Fairbanks, the second-largest city in Alaska. The population was around eighty thousand people, well, seventy-nine thousand nine-hundred ninety-nine once I moved to Manhattan. More people lived on my block in the West Village than lived in the entire Fairbanks North Star Borough.
In the winter, temperatures get down to sixty below zero, the type of cold that forms icicle daggers inside your lungs. Summers are just as bad because the stupid fucking sun never sets. The mosquitos are the size of hummingbirds, and they will completely drain you of blood in your sleep. I wouldn’t recommend being born there, although I had no say in that decision.
My parents spent summers in Alaska and winters in Florida, just like god intended. One morning, I walked in on them talking about shipping my Mom’s Yukon XL to Jacksonville, which was much better than the time I walked in on them having sex. Since I’m always up for an adventure, I offered to drive it there myself. I had to return to the East Coast anyway because my roots were growing out, and there was no way in hell I’d trust anyone in Fairbanks to paint my scalp with a vat of bleach. My little sister Jordan wanted in on the road trip action, and I was thrilled to make it a sister adventure. Door to door, we’d drive forty-eight hundred miles, and it would take us about a week to complete.
Our parents gave us money for food, gas, and hotels along the way. I loved spending my parents’ money; I really missed it when I moved to New York. Jordan and I devised a plan to spend as little as humanly possible so we could pocket whatever was left. I personally didn’t need food to survive. I could live solely on sugar-free Red Bull, coffee, and cigarettes. God, I loved smoking; I can’t believe I quit. I see it as a form of self-care; light up a cigarette the next time you feel hungry or angry, and I promise you, it will make everything better.
Jordan and I loaded up Mom’s suburban and embarked on our cross-country voyage. We took the Alcan highway, which stands for Alaska/Canada; it’s the Ben-nifer of roads and the only way out of Alaska by car. I’m a control freak and an incredible driver, so I took the wheel first. Jordan and I would switch off whenever I needed a break to look at my phone.
I never appreciated the beauty of Alaska when I lived there. I would walk into the dining room and see Mount McKinley glowing off in the distance, but it didn’t do anything for me. I’d rather look at my iPad. I also didn’t like trees until I moved to California in my early thirties and took mushrooms for the first time. Now I know that trees have faces and bodies, and their leaves are their hair.
We made it to the Canadian border ten hours after leaving Fairbanks. The Mounties were fully inspecting each car in front of us. Sweat dripped down my face as if the suburban was filled with a thousand bricks of cocaine. I always think I will be arrested, no matter what I’m doing or where I am. We didn’t even have anything illegal to confiscate besides some wooly mammoth tusks we buried in the backseat. We found them on our property in Alaska, and my parents wanted to use them as decorations in the Florida house.
We made it through security without any problems and found a hotel in downtown Whitehorse for the night. Whitehorse looked like an old-timey movie set, with saloons and outposts lining the streets. I probably could’ve challenged someone to a duel very easily. We went to the cutest coffee shop in the morning, bought a couple of blue cheese quiches, and hit the road.
The second day of our trip was filled with wildlife. We saw foxes, coyotes, moose, bison herds, and several bears. I’m more afraid of bumble bees than I am of large predators. We pulled over every time we saw a bear because I wanted to see how close I could get while Jordan took pictures from the sunroof. She hated this game.
We crossed into British Columbia and stayed in a small German town nestled on the shores of Muncho Lake. We’re of German descent, so we were finally back with our people. We dropped our bags off in a cabin we rented for the night and went exploring.
We abandoned our plan not to eat food by the second day. We were starving and needed wine, so we had dinner at the Muncho Lake Lodge. I brought my iPad to the table because I wanted to edit and post a few photos of our trip, and Wi-Fi was only available inside the lodge. During dinner, a seven-year-old boy walked behind me and yelled, “She’s looking at porn on her computer!” Every head in the lodge turned to look at me. First of all, I don’t look like someone who watches porn; I look more like someone who stars in it. Secondly, it’s an iPad, not a computer. And lastly, those were photos of myself with clothes on. The dumb kid doesn’t even know what real porn looks like.
We moved outside to drink wine overlooking the lake; it was so peaceful, like a spa made of nature. I started to see why people liked living off the grid. We made friends with a few native men who had just performed a dance at the closing ceremony of the London Olympics. Not as cool as being an Olympic athlete, but I’ll allow it. The little narc who accused me of looking at porn was on a swingset next to our cabin; I looked him dead in the eyes and gave him the old “I’m watching you” gesture with my fingers. I didn’t like him. He made his first enemy that day.
The Canadian portion of our trip ended on day three as we reentered America through Montana. I hadn’t seen an unobstructed sunset in years. In New York, the sun sets over New Jersey, which is one of my least favorite states, down there with West Virginia. Layers of red, orange, and pink painted the Montana sky. Once it got dark out, we couldn’t see the landscape we were driving through anymore. I’m sure it was beautiful and would get a lot of likes on Instagram. We spent the night in a hotel in Missoula, and I wondered how much you’d have to pay me to live there. I don’t think there’s enough money in the world for that.
Jordan and I were averaging about six to seven hundred miles a day. We pulled over to stretch at the site of the Battle of Little Big Horn. I know we learned about it in school, and I think it’s where General Custard took his last stand in the library with a revolver, or maybe that was the game Clue. We walked through the cemetery whispering, “Thank you for dying,” as we passed each headstone. Which reminds me, I don’t want to be buried when I die. I want to be thrown into an outdoor pizza oven.
That night, we pulled into a Motel Eight in South Dakota. It was three in the morning when we got there, and they didn’t charge us for the room because we got in so late. Hell yeah, still got it.
Since we were in South Dakota, we stopped to see Mount Rushmore; it was the only thing they had going on. The mountain was incredibly small and underwhelming in person, kind of like Studio 8H in Rockefeller Center. I asked a tourist where Mount Rushmore was, and she pointed up to the mountain. I squinted my eyes and said, “I’m just not seeing it.” I’ was starting to go crazy from being trapped in the car for too long. I stood next to an elderly couple taking pictures of the Presidents. I told them it was so cool to see The Beatles engraved in stone like that and then walked away. I can get incredibly stupid when I’m out in the wild.
I started to miss Canada and wondered if I’d ever be able to marry my way into a dual citizenship. We went from driving through a herd of buffalo to driving past Buffalo WildWings in two days. We were officially in the mid-west. When we hit the Iowa border I realized it was the perfect state to take a nap through.
I woke up in Missouri when Jordan pulled over to gas up. I could practically hear the strumming of the banjo from Deliverance playing while several men with no teeth and uneven patches of facial hair started hobbling toward her. “Get back in the car right now!” I instructed her. Living in New York made me street-smart, even if I acted like an idiot most of the time. She jumped in, and we sped off. I wasn’t going to let a band of rednecks abduct my sister. I’d spend the rest of my life kicking down trailers searching for her, and that’s not how I wanted to spend my time.
Around two in the morning, I noticed Jordan driving like a maniac. It was pitch black out, and we weren’t familiar with the landscape, I didn’t even know what state we were in anymore. When the car went airborne over a hill, I turned to Jordan and asked why she was driving so fast. She shook her head and snapped out of it. She was in a trance and didn’t realize she was going one hundred ten miles an hour. We switched seats, but stopped the car first. We pulled into the the Hardy Hotel. It was definitely haunted, and I couldn’t tell if the blood splattered on the carpet in our room was fresh or old. The room smelled like a combination of Pine-Sol and black mold, and I’m sure I got cancer from staying there. We were pretty over the road trip at this point and running out of podcasts. All we needed was a place to crash for the night that wasn’t the car.
The next morning we loaded up the suburban and noticed a sign hanging in the window, “This is the site of a Gruesome Murder.” Yeah, no shit. And it would be the site of a suicide if I had to spend one more second there. We pulled into a McDonald's drive-through and ordered two large coffees and four egg McMuffins. The woman on the speaker scolded me, “Four?! You want FOUR egg McMuffins?!” As though this had never happened before. I responded, “Yeah, four. Is that gonna be a problem?” We needed to get the fuck out of Tennessee.
We weren’t stopping again; we were driving straight through to Jacksonville; it didn’t matter how long it took—no more murder hotels, no more gas station zombies, no more site-seeing. We just wanted to get to the house in Florida as quickly as possible.
We were starving to death, so we stopped at a Crystal Burger somewhere near the Alabama and Florida state lines. All we had that day were egg McMuffins; it wasn’t enough. Our appetites were insatiable. We ordered twenty-four crystal burgers, four double crystal burgers, and ten fries. We really thought we could eat all of it, too. We were so dumb back then.
A little after three in the morning, we pulled into our parent’s driveway. The Spanish Moss hung low and swept over the windows of the suburban as we drove through it. The house was pitch black; you’d barely notice it off in the distance. We drove more than forty-eight hundred miles. I’d never been so excited to be in Florida in my life. We celebrated our journey with a bottle of rose and promised each other to never, ever do that road trip again.
