We woke to snow swirls yesterday morning. The grins on our faces were big and gawky as we looked out our window and took in the snow-top covered mountains. The day looked ripe with promise and we were on a mission: We invested in a 22′ enclosed trailer for training this year and we needed to start working on building the interior — so we thought a trip to Anchorage was in order
. There is something magical about the Seward Highway, no matter the time of year, but fall is my favorite: the mountains caked with fresh snow, the grasses and leaves shimmer yellow and red – nature’s sunset as we prepare for a long, cold winter.
Of course when you own sled dogs, nothing is simple. You can’t hop into the truck and just leave. You’ve got to feed dogs — we’ve been feeding mostly fish and kibble — and make sure things are in relatively good order before you leave, even if it is just a day trip. We had to get antifreeze and coolant. We had to check oil. We had to get gas and food. We had to put the house dogs out.
Finally, we were in the truck and on our way. Grayson was driving. Travis was reading an old issue of Mushing Magazine. I was simply excited to be on the move. The trip was slow. Just outside of Seward there is road construction and we were stuck for a half hour, waiting. Once we finally got moving, we crawled.
But it wasn’t long before our slow crawl came to an abrupt halt.
Our engine started over heating and we had to pull off to the side outside Summit Lake. I think it could have been really easy to get angry and frustrated at this point as what normally is maybe an hour long drive had taken us at least two hours, but instead we laughed and enjoyed the fact that it was a Monday and we were doing our own thing. We let the engine cool for a bit and turned home, afraid to trying going further down the road.
When the engine started heating up again, we stopped at a random trail head to let the truck cool down for awhile. It was the first walk we’d taken in a long time where I didn’t know where I’d end up. We hiked a short ways to a stream and watched the water run.
We never made it to Anchorage, but that was entirely ok; we got the adventure we wanted even if it was not the adventure we had planned.
