Five days late, Juraj and friends finally showed up to start the new year, and not a moment too soon while I've had it up to here and then some with Laura to the point that even she understood I could use a day doing what I want. I was supposed to help them out with a zombie movie for someone's film study class, but with only a day free I only got to do the location scouting and run through a few of my favorite Buffalo sites. I spent a lot of time waiting at the bottom of the…
I should be used to it now -- whenever anything is going well for me, it's only setting up for the collapse later on. I'd only meant to go for a quick early Saturday morning explore with Ian while Nate finished some bullshit at work, and we'd go off to the Catskills for the weekend, and by the time I was back my friends would be here for the semester, and we'd go spend a few days with them exploring everything and getting the rave space up and running again. At least, that's what I thought would happen. Of course…
Finally getting back underground again after a shortened summer with the parents... not so much that they're opposed to me exploring (they're not), as that it's just difficult to plan and do anything when I'm there. But I'm back at school for the fall now, and of course I'd make going on adventures a priority. Just about everything possible went wrong on this one - it was supposed to be one of many places I went with Nate, but I started out with bike trouble and missing the first few places, and finished up with camera trouble, as in the…
Day 25: Banff, AB to Regina, SK (879km, 15929km total) As we left the Rockies, highway 1 treated us to just a few final sights, perhaps even the best mountain views in all Banff. There was even an elk, the last of the northern wildlife we'd missed up until this point, as if it knew we were one short of completing our menagerie. Unfortunately, after a traffic-ridden stop and go through suburban Calgary, the road led only to Saskatchewan, a land of flat boring nothingness interspersed with ghost towns and these. This particular one, unlike most, is not abandoned yet.…
Day 23: Prince George, BC to Banff, AB (659km, 14670km total) Finally, a beautiful wilderness I have no desire whatsoever to climb all over... these mountains are just too much! This was just a first glimpse coming into Banff; before we spent a whole day wandering around the Canadian Rockies today... Day 24: Banff, AB to Lake Louise, AB/BC to Radium Hot Springs, BC to Banff, AB (380km, 15050km total) This has to be one of the most beautiful scenic routes on earth, going for a day's drive through giant mountains filled with exotic wildlife, it felt more like a…
Day 20: Lake Laberge, YT to Sbekagway, AK (221km/137mi, 13293km/7638mi total) Most of this route was on roads we'd already seen back through Whitehorse. On the branch toward Skagway, though, there was one of the most bizarre landscapes in the entire north: the Carcross Desert. This tiny true desert, created by a mountain rain shadow, looks spectacularly out of place at best in its climate. The crossing back into Alaska, on the same mountain pass once traversed by the dreaded Chilkoot Trail, was still snowy even in late June. It's easy to see why so many 99ers' journeys ended here,…