Oh, my goodness, can I tell you how excited we were to see the Alaska Highway, we had so much anticipation. We were told we were going to see moose and bears and eagles. I was so excited. Starting out the day all fresh with a coffee, a shower and a good night sleep. To drive almost 6 hours with no Internet, no radio, and no animals! Yes, no animals. I actually started praying to God saying,” please will you give me some animals?” I cannot continue on this path without seeing something. The kids were restless because they were used to the Internet, we played. I’m going on a picnic, we played making up our own stories, I brought some coloring books and crayons. They told me, "No way they were too old for that”, we sang to each other, and we did everything we could to try to make the best of this opportunity that we were having.
We wanted to get through British Columbia and so we drove 13 hours and slept in our car and there were no bathrooms along the path, so I had to do something that I haven't done since I was a little girl, I had to pop a squat and go pee behind the U-Haul. I don’t know if you need to read that again. My daughter told me that I’m supposed to take one leg out and hold that pant leg and then pee. Well, I couldn’t do that. I ended up having to take all of my pants off and my underwear off and start peeing. The problem was, I also stood up, so pee was splashing all over my legs. I was mortified and humiliated and then I started to laugh because I couldn’t believe at 55 years old, I am popping a squat. We finally stopped at 11:30pm but not before we finally saw two herds of Buffalo, and we saw two moose and a fox, and some porcupines. I can’t tell you how joyful I was as we were driving beside these amazing bison, hearing my grandson in the back with his window down just so excited and trying to take pictures with his phone.
We saw the most incredible scenery. It was breathtaking, I just couldn’t believe how beautiful it was. We had to go through windy mountains that were a little sketchy and you were wondering who was on the other side. One of the saddest things we saw was all of the bushfires that took place, acres and acres and acres of devastation. mountains look like they were charred because there were no trees, just burnt branches. We wondered if that was the reason why we didn’t see many animals. Maybe they relocated? When we stopped that night, we wanted to stop so we wouldn’t sleep very long. I ended up with three people that were snoring, my daughter was laughing hysterically as she was listening to her sons because she couldn’t go to sleep. They were snoring so loud, I saw this incredible moon that I had to take a picture of, but I was afraid to get out of my car because I didn’t know if we were going to see a bear or a moose. But I was brave and determined to get those beautiful moon pictures. I woke up first because I was sleeping in the driver seat, trying to maneuver my knees over the steering wheel. When I woke up, I had to pee and again I went outside and I took all of my bottom half clothing off and I pee again behind the back of the U-Haul, this time I squatted closer to the ground, and I realized that was how you’re supposed to pee. I didn’t get anything on my legs this time. Everybody started waking up and we finally drove off. My grandson wouldn't pee outside, so we had to find a rest stop fast so my grandson went to the bathroom. He is very picky about bathrooms, so when he decided to go into those Porta potties, I was so shocked I couldn’t wait for him to come out. I thought he was going to come out screaming,” I’m not going in there”, but instead he went to the bathroom, and he came out and he said Nona , that's a cave! He thought the Porta potty was a cave because it had a wooden door and he said, it stunk so bad, but it was cool going inside of the cave. From the mouth of babes!
I am totally exhausted, but my oldest grandson decides to tell me. You need to learn to sleep at night. If I could’ve strangled somebody at that moment, I would’ve.
I ended up with a huge mosquito bite on my cheek because the mosquitoes are the size of nickels and I’m not sure why because it is 40°. We are on our way now going through the Yukon Territory enjoying the beautiful sites, we were told we probably will see no animals because they are on higher ground because there is grass there. But onward, Christian soldiers we must go! We are1000 miles from the final destination. What more will we learn? What more will we do? What more will we experience? Let's find out.
