These are the Chronicles of Famous Surf Writer Ben Marcus and his trip into the Wilds of the Alaskan Frontier.
Latest Update: September 18, 2000

AN RV PARK SOMEWHERE ALONG THE CASSIAR HIGHWAY

Oooh, scary, I'm in an RV park somewhere along the Cassiar Highway, listening to the Moody Blues and getting spooked. This is bear country, baby. I saw five in the last hour, and if that's not scary enough, I'm listening to the "breathe deep, the gathering gloom" soliloquy from Knights in White Satin. That used to scare the shit out of me when I was a kid, for some reason, when it came on the radio, late at night, and we were sleeping in the bunk beds. But I have Mr. Walther (still warm and freshly smoking) by my side, so neither bear nor spooky British 60s rock tune can scare me.

The Moody Blues are just the nightcap to a long day of Led Zeppelin. I have always known that there is a Led Zeppelin song for every mood and occasion, and this day proved it. Led Zeppelin is the best road music ever made, and it's even better for blazing down the Cassiar Highway with fall color along the side of the road, snow and clouds up in the misty mountains and bear in the bushes. Today was a good day.

It began in Prince Rupert, at that Internet café. After checking mail and plugging the laptop into a fax line that was innocently nearby, I got out of there and tried to figure out my next move. I had half a mind to hop a ferry out to the Queen Charlotte Islands, so I drove down to the ferry office to see if that was possible. I arrived around 11:30 to find that the ferry had left at 11:00. I wasn't even sure what day it was. It was Monday. And the ferries leave for the Charlotte Islands at 11:00 on Mondays.

So that was out. I didn't really want to ride another ferry anyway. I want to go to Alaska

At the ferry building I saw a lovely innovation: a pay phone with Internet access built right into it. There were directions for plugging in a laptop and I was tempted to try it, just to try it. I wish they had one of those on every street corner. My life would be easy. I should try to find a website that lists all of the Internet accessible pay phones in Canada. Could come in handy. I wonder if they have the same thing in Alaska. I wonder when the tech world is going to invent the easy-access laptop, with a 50 MBPS satellite uplink built right in. That's what I need. That's what the world needs. I also need a 60 inch flat screen monitor that folds up to the size of a laptop, so I can watch my DVD's on the side of the van.

It's all coming soon.

Queen Charlotte was out, so I found Highway 16 and got out of Prince Rupert. Remember that old Cheech and Chong routine about Buster the Body Crab. "So you are from Can-ah-da?" "Ya ya, I come from Prince Rupert, you know, dere."

While driving out I saw a helicopter searching for three teenagers who drowned while returning from a party in a small boat. The story was all over the CBC and there was another story about three hunters lost in a boat on the Fraser River.

Leaving Prince Rupert, the highway runs along the Skeena River.

Now I quote Monty Python, and only David Wampler will get this one: Oh Skeena. Beautiful river. River full of fish.

The Skeena is a big, solid, powerful river that was running murky and brown today. I thought it was like that all the time, a glacial melt kind of deal. But I was told along the way that it had been raining hard the past few days, and that when the Skeena runs clear, they pull giant, 60-pound spring salmon from it. The Kispiox also flows around here, and I believe the Kispiox holds the record for the biggest steelhead ever caught.

Highway 16 followed the Skeena for several dozen K's. There weren't many people on the road, and the occasional cluster of fishermen launching boats into the clearer creeks and rivers that feed into the Skeena.

At ??? I saw a sign which pretty much summed up my mood (see attached JPEG). This is the turn-off to the Cassiar Highway, which runs all the way up to the border of the Yukon Territory. I bought a bunch of junk food and gassed up and headed north, north to Alaska.

The Cassiar Highway was happening this day. It is definitely fall up here. I was around 51 degrees north, which is about the same latitude I would have been at in Kamchatka. The colors are turning, and the trees along the Cassiar were spectacular: gold and silver and all like that. That put me in the mood for the perfect Led Zeppelin song. Ramble On, which talks about trees changing color and hitting the road: "the autumn moon lights my way." And all that.

This was the kind of scenery I was hoping for. A mostly empty highway. Lots of trees changing color close by the road, with big, snow and cloud-capped Misty Mountains stretching up and off to the horizon. Ramble On at eye level Immigrant Song beyond that. It was just about perfect

Along the Cassiar Highway I kept seeing little tent-houses advertising "mushroom depot," and there were a number of little tent camps along the way which looked like the gypsies I saw along the road in Switzerland, a long time ago. Finally my curiosity got the best of me so I pulled into one of the mushroom places and got the full story. This is pine mushroom season along the Cassiar Highway. Fortune hunters come out and pick through the forests, looking for pine mushrooms that they sell to dealers for anywhere from $15 to $32 a pound. The woman I talked to worked for a wholesaler and she was offering $15 a pound. While we were talking another woman came in and said that another dealer up the road was offering $32 a pound. The woman showed me a big mushroom that weighed in at almost two pounds. "Righteous bucks!" as Spicoli would say. They sell the mushrooms for hundreds of dollars a pound to, you guessed it, our high-living friends in Nippon. The season is short but there are people who come out of it with thousands and tens of thousands of dollars. "It's like a never-ending Easter egg hunt," the woman said. "And you can make some bucks."

I saw more tent cities along the way and lots of cars and RVs parked here and there, making semi-permanent camps. Poking around for mushrooms sounded like fun and I was tempted to go off in the bush and poke around a little, and then I saw my first bear.

There it was on the side of the road, eating grass. Nature hasn't camouflaged these critters at all. A black bear stands out like a laser beam in the gold and silver foliage. You can see them for miles, and I feel sorry for the buggers in bear season. They're sitting ducks. They don't have a chance unless they hide in their caves.

Yogi was just kicking it by the side of the road, eating grass, not too perturbed by the Led Zeppelin and me taking photos. He eventually ran off into the bush, and I pushed on.

The first many dozens of miles of the Cassiar is paved, but it turns to gravel after a while. Hard to believe that such a major highway could still be gravel, but it's also kind of cool. While driving on the gravel road "In the Evening" (another Led Zeppelin song) I saw Boo Boo the Bear, also by the side of the road, with mom or dad watching from the bush.

I walked over to Boo Boo with a candy bar which he grabbed and ate. Then we were rolling around on the ground, fake-wrestling and having fun, when mom came charging out of the bush. Fortunately I had Mr. Walther with me, and a few noisy rounds in the air kept mom at bay.

Psyche.

Nothing like that. Boo Boo ran off with mom, and I kept going. This all happened around 19:30, as the sun was setting and the sky was turning that deep blue I've been pining for.

There are rest stops and RV parks every so often along the Cassiar. At one rest stop overlooking a lake, I for some reason pulled out Mr. Walther and capped one off. It was a celebratory thing, but also kind of stupid. Frick, that gun is loud, it echoed off a mountain a couple miles away.

I stopped at an RV park for coffee and bragged about seeing a bear. While driving out, I saw another little Boo Boo frolicking in the grass, near the gas pumps. Some of these bear look small from a distance, but when you get close you realize they're all pretty big. They are also pretty timid. You'd have to be pretty stupid and unlucky to get attacked by one, I think, but it does happen. I wonder which is more common in North America: death by bear or death by shark. Anyone? Anyone?

Saw a fifth bear farther along the highway, still in the gravel. A good chunk of the Cassiar is gravel, it turns out, and it gets a little sketchy. Some big pot holes and occasional drifts through sand. I kept driving after the sun went down, because I like driving at night, listening to Led Zeppelin, stopping occasionally to get out of the truck, listen to the stars and scare the poo out of myself.

I hit one giant pothole along the way and thought I had broken my axle. Back in Lynnwood I was tempted to buy some floodlights for the roof racks. But what was a flamboyant affectation in Lynnwood would really come in handy at night on the Cassiar. The brights don't illuminate enough, and it would be nice to really flood the road for Boo Boo bears and potholes and whatever else. Trees and rocks and stuff.

Finally pulled into an RV park somewhere along the way. The guy behind the desk was a crusty old bugger who reeked of booze. I spent $18 for a spot, found it finally, worked on this dispatch then went to sleep listening to the Moody Blues.

Today was a good day.