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First stop in Calgary, of course, is my hostel, which is fairly conveniently located, by hostel standards, much more convenient than the hotel I originally booked in fact. They’re a mixed bag, by definition, but this one seems to be redefining a thing or two on its own. It’s a party hostel. Those exist elsewhere also, of course, London UK and Tallinn, Estonia, come easily to mind, but if some hostels have a problem of over-active partiers being tossed into an otherwise sober mix, here the party seems to be the main mission. The staff are the main imbibers, and the frat party metaphor seems appropriate.

All of this may just sound like sour grapes from the vineyard of a fifty-something self-styled intellectual who is slightly sober and irrevocably balding, but still the fact is that such a display is well out of the norm of the world standard for hostels, and worth noting if you have an early morning flight to catch. Still it’s all just good clean fun until some a**hole kicks a football into your laptop or some drunken yob wakes you up at four in the morning. You’re at the mercy of the random forces of humanity here. Many are left over from the Calgary Stampede, so that probably explains something, but I’m not sure what.

So I go check out the Calgary Folk Festival and related ticketing websites the night before opening day and it doesn’t look good for finding a ticket. It’s definitely a seller’s market. I respond to a seller’s offer within the hour of posting and by then it’s long gone. Buyers’ posts outnumber sellers, by far. So I guess I’ll show up at the site itself around opening time and see if it’s any different. Meanwhile I buy a day pass on the LRT and see whatever that gets me… which is not much. I DO go to a major mall down on the south side, but it’s nothing compared to Edmonton’s famous one, the one with artificial surf and beach inside. That’s a trip, maybe the furthest extent of the ‘mall culture’ that once defined us, best parodied in Kevin Smith’s ‘Mall Rats’. But malls don’t define us anymore, do they? Internet does.

Other than that, Calgary is fairly predictable, a city in the mold of Denver maybe, sprawled out along the plains with mountains rising along the horizon. I’m tempted to compare Calgary and Edmonton with Denver and Dallas or one of the other western cities, but I know the analogy would quickly fall apart without adding much to the discussion, though there must be some continuity to be found along the east slope, cowboys and Indians, mostly, I suppose. What do you expect from a city known for its rodeo?

The Calgary Folk Festival offers no quick thrill, nor solution. The only buyer/sellers are the pro scalpers, doing both simultaneously. They’re charging about double, standard retail markup. I assume they have paid and are willing to pay face value. I hang out for an hour to see if anybody else is selling, but no luck. Opening day is hardly the artistic highlight of the show anyway, but I definitely don’t want to do this every day… so I enact Plan B, rent a car and head to the outback.

The only question is: which outback? There’s nearby southern Alberta, with its hoodoo badlands on one hand and towering peaks on the other, or there’s Banff again and maybe on to Jasper National Park, for extended mountain excursions and sublime views. Or there’s Montana, a bit farther away, but only an extra day, and hey, it’s Montana! That’s the USA! Or if I really get a wild hair, I could drive hard and fast up to Fort McMurray, home of the infamous oil sands and the part of northern Alberta that I haven’t seen yet, ugliness in all its glory. Decisions decisions…

The day dawns bleak and gray and blustery. That rules out the last option. And Budget R-a-C will charge extra for Montana, so I take the logical safe option, the southern Alberta badlands tour. That starts in Drumheller, aka Dinosaur City USA… oops! I mean Canada. You could be forgiven for thinking you’ve landed in Bedrock, Flintstone Country. Everything is dinosaur-themed, but the town itself is fairly nice, with a traditional downtown still intact. The museum out on the edge of town is the main attraction, and it is quite vast and comprehensive, with many dinosaur bones and reconstructions on display… for a price. Dinosaurs are long gone, of course, and field work doesn’t mean much to the uninitiated, so this is about as good as you can do. The funny thing, of course, is that dinosaurs DID leave descendants, though hardly recognizable as such, in the form of birds. If that particular path of evolution is hard to believe, it’s almost even harder to believe that there was ever a non-aviary world that preceded it.

Not far from Drumheller, there’s a so-called ‘hoodoo trail’, so I decide to tentatively venture into that, for closure if nothing else. The world’s premier hoodoos- soft eroded rock capped by hard rock ‘hats’- are in Cappadocia, Turkey, around Goreme, and the last time (only time in fact) I was there, my computer- the same one that’s with me now- took a dive during the night and hasn’t been the same since, despite several surgeries and some major TLC. I haven’t slept with a computer since. So I’m hoping for a little closure and sympathetic magic in the sense of putting all that behind us and starting a new era of cybernetic cooperation. I’m not sure these hoodoos count, though. The ones I see are babies in comparison to the ones in Cappadocia where Christians lived for centuries in hiding. Since it’s starting to drizzle pretty heavily I don’t even bother to get out of the car. I think I’ve seen enough. I could swear I heard a little giggle coming out of my laptop.

So I decide to head south toward Brooks. That’s the closest major town to the ‘Provincial Dinosaur Park’, which sounds interesting. But first I’ll do a little backtrack at Hwy. 1, to go see the First Nations homeland of Siksika, literally ‘Blackfoot’, no explanation necessary. Unfortunately the rain’s starting to come down heavily, which requires me to slow down some in the process. It finally lets up, though, making an already beautiful landscape even more so. Most impressive are the vast fields of yellow flowers, which I think is canola. It looks surreal, as do cows sharing pastures with oil wells and pumpers, a landscape similar to the one I grew up with in Texas and Mississippi.

I make the detour to Siksika, but by the time I get to the museum/cultural center it’s almost closing time. It’s almost the same price as the dinosaur museum, too, so I blow it off. I’m starting to feel nickeled-and-dimed to death. I DO stop at the rez’s one real town, though, Cluny, at a little store/bakery/liquor store, just to get my sweet tooth juiced. It’s interesting that Native lands here do not proscribe liquor, as do most in the States. They didn’t get to vote until the ‘60’s, either, remember. Since most Natives, except for the Pueblos, were not really town dwellers, it’s just not easy to get an easy grasp of the culture… but I keep trying. Mostly I try to imagine Indian life in 1750, NOT 1850, and that’s not easy. That was the era BEFORE horses. The coming of the Spaniards was something of a cultural golden age for them, really, and good preparation for the battle with Anglos to come. But it wasn’t enough, of course.

By the time I get to Brooks I’m getting pretty tired, so pull into a motel for the night when I see one advertised for $60. That’s cheap for Canada, a fact worth advertising, especially when it’s half-way decent and includes WiFi and cable TV. So I get domestic and start washing enough clothes to last me the remaining few days of this trip. This is the first fully equipped private room I’ve had the entire two week trip so far, so take full advantage. It seems more like two years by now, though, doesn’t it? Whitehorse seems so long ago and far away. TV here sucks, though. ‘Cable’ means that and no more, no HBO or anything fancy like that, so nothing really to miss… so 70’s…

I fall asleep with piles of papers and clothes and books on the bed as usual, so next day when I get up early it’s all on the floor in a heap… but not my computer. The Acer is sitting wide open where I left it running beside the bed, ready to perk up and compute at a moment’s notice. I swear the thing’s smiling. So I eat a quick continental breakfast, gather up my things, and head out to the Badlands, socks drying on the dashboard. It’s pretty nice, and I’ve never been to the Dakotas, but these badlands don’t seem all THAT bad. I guess that sums up Canada in general for me, very very nice, but not spectacular. From there I have to backtrack to Brooks then start heading south. I had intended to go to Medicine Hat, but decide to blow it off, just to save time and gasoline. It IS the day of the big chili cook-off, but I doubt they have vegetarian options. I get the impression that that might be a good area to see Native culture if you show up during a festival, but that’s not today.

So next stop is Taber, where I pick up Hwy. 3, but the town itself looks pretty desolate, windows boarded up and storefronts vacant. There IS a Mexican/Mennonite restaurant there, though, so that sounds bizarre and interesting, maybe some decent cheese, something in which they specialize in the country of Mexico itself. I forego it, though, and start heading down highway 3 in the general direction of the mountains, the continental divide I assume, where the US Rockies and Cascades reunite. Lethbridge is the next major town, but I almost blow it off because I really need to piss. Then I see a tourist info stop on the western edge, so give it a look. Turns out it’s perched right above the dubiously named ‘Fort Whoop-up’ whose name goes largely unexplained, though speculations run rampant. In Canada fort/trading posts were frequently known as ‘whiskey posts’, so go figure. The terrain is starting to get hilly, though, so it’s the edge of a different region.

Lethbridge is actually one of the larger towns in the province after Calgary and Edmonton, and serves as a transportation crossroads in the south, being the intersection of highways 2, 3, 4, and 5, if I counted correctly. Highway 4 is the one that continues on to the US border at Montana and there becomes I-15, which will pass through Great Falls and Butte before heading on down to Salt Lake City and then finally dumping its human cargo somewhere down in the great sea known as Greater Los Angeles, the area that I somewhat tentatively now call ‘home’. I guess that means that somewhere down at the other end of that highway, someone is waiting for me, little by little, knowing that one day soon I’ll show up again and life will resume its familiar rhythm. That’s not today, though, and I won’t be using I-15 either, couldn’t even if I wanted to. No Greyhound bus crosses that border. Buses from Calgary to Missoula go through Vancouver and Seattle, the long way around. You might be able to go TO the border and pick up another onward bus there, but I didn’t investigate that far.
Fort McLeod is next down the road, and is maybe the nicest yet for a well-preserved traditional city center. I consider spending the night but the cheapest place at $65 is not pretty, so I decide to continue on, prepared to ‘car camp’ if need be. I want to press on to the high country at Crow’s Nest Pass, but decide to veer north on Hwy. 22 with hopes of getting into the high country farther north. Those connecting roads are all gravel, though, so I forego it, since I’m in a rental car. I need to make sleep arrangements, too. The only park with campsites I come to wants $25, so I figure the bed back at the hostel at $35 is a better deal than that. I don’t really want two more nights there, but figure I can handle it. I finally pull in at 6pm. It may be the hostel from Hell, but it’s MY hostel from Hell. There isn’t much choice for budget accommodations in Calgary either, just the one other hostel. Budget ‘transient’ hotels don’t exist here any more, like they do in Edmonton, at least as recently as five years ago.

Scalpers are still at the Folk Festival site, so that’s that, but I attend a Latino ‘Fiestaval’ for free, better than nothing, even quite nice hearing northern Mexican corridas coming off the north country stage. Still it’s been a good trip, even without the major music festival. As much as I love the aspects of culture, I love the Earth even more, like my lover in fact, every fold of her skin dear to my touch. The fact that ‘stuff’ even exists never ceases to amaze me in a world where light is the main player. The fact that that ‘stuff’ gets evolved into multi-celled life and intelligence to boot is almost too much to even imagine, the foundation of all religion. Yes, it’s been a good- if short- trip. There’s nothing left to do now but catch the plane, go home, and start planning the next one. C U then.

Then the rains came, and my last day in Whitehorse was something of a wash, literally, a slog through the bog. I resolved not to let it ruin my schedule, though, so dutifully got out there to see anything remaining to be seen. That includes the world-renowned salmon ladder, which during the spawning season must be a real riot to watch, fish fighting the forces of Nature to get upstream merely for the sacred purpose of reproduction. When they get there- IF they get there- they’ll drop trou, drop eggs, and then go limp till rigor mortis kicks in or some enterprising homie decides to make fish stew while the sun shines. This makes shooting ducks in a pond look difficult. Too bad the meat is not much good by that time. At least the ladders give protection from the bears, who KNOW to hang out at the cascades and catch the fish during those long flying leaps of faith upstream.

Long Lake is also not far away and nice enough- especially on a sunny day I’m sure- but other than that, there aren’t many sites left to see… except the log cabin three-story ‘skyscrapers’. Okay, so that’s that, but that’s okay. It’s better to stay in a place a day too many than a day too few, especially a place you’ll likely never see again. Then you can start to act and feel like a local, finding a coffee house to call your own and a cute little barista to chat up. There’s even ‘Art in the Park’, featuring stellar musicians for lunch, in this case one Lawrence Graf doing classical guitar versions of such standards as ‘Hot ‘Lanta’ and ‘Rock ‘n Roll Hootchie Koo’. It doesn’t get much better than that.

There’s a lot of nice visual art here also, so I go scour a couple thrift stores and pawn shops looking for buried treasure, just in the remote chance of finding some interesting native artifacts, in a place where ‘Indian pawn’ is not a standard commercial lure… all to no avail. The sun finally comes out late in the day for one final appearance, so that’s a nice send-off. I’ve got a 7am flight to catch on a day when the sun never really sets, so… catch sleep as catch can. Everybody comments on my funky flowery shirt. Have they never heard of Hawaii here, or have I worn it too many days?

For once my Air Canada flight seems to be operating on time and on schedule. I wish I were, these long interminable waking hours something like jet lag without the long flight or time change, just the inability to feel in sync with myself. From Calgary’s international airport I catch a shuttle straight to Banff town in Banff National Park, where I’ve allowed myself a couple days, and then several more days right outside the park at Canmore. I might have allowed more time in Banff itself, except that Lonely Planet and others have lambasted its commerciality so thoroughly, somewhat unfairly I’d say. I was expecting golden arches galore along with all the barkers and colored balloons, but it’s not like that at all. It’s mostly a numbers game, the numbers being some four million a year touring through for their nature and northern fix. It’s not distasteful, though, nor are people processed unmercifully. The locals are nice as they can be, and to criticize it for merely being what it is seems somewhat elitist. It’s no more of a zoo than Berkeley, CA. Would you bash Berkeley for having too many students?

These same LP guys probably go straight to Khao Sarn Road in Bangkok, then Koh Samui down south, then Pai up north… and think they’ve found the Promised Land. Don’t get me started… Truth be told, Banff is probably no more my cuppa’ tea than it is the LP guys’, but I don’t see any need to cop a ‘tude about it. If it’s paradise for some people, then more power to them, no reason to piss on their parade. It compares favorably to many places in Colorado, and Europe, too, for that matter. Go a block off the Miracle Mile and you’re back in a 50’s neighborhood, and go a half hour and you’re alone in the forest; don’t forget the bear spray. If you still don’t like it, then go to Jasper. You’ll probably be back. Some people LIKE crowds, you know? Ni hao; ni hao ma? And don’t forget a highway runs through it, too, Hwy 1 from coast to coast, and a railroad, too, not to mention a river.

Actually I pretty quickly got a WTF attack myself , as in ‘WTF am I doing here… in Jellystone Park… me and a bear named Yogi and a dog named Boo?’ The Yukon is one thing- that’s otherworldly- but this is not. This is all TOO worldly and I’m wishing I could drink, maybe even get drunk, or at least cop a buzz… but my doctor- ME- won’t let me, not yet anyway, so that’s that. And THAT is what there is to do in the Americas, for me as tourist anyway, without the thrill of exotic culture to get lost in. In some exotic cultures you don’t dare drink- not alone anyway- for fear of what might befall you in your drunken reverie. So I start re-shuffling my schedule to cut my time here in Banff and lengthen it in Calgary. There I’ll try to find somebody selling off their 4-day music festival pass, or… maybe go home early. Even the daytime tickets are long gone now, and somehow it seems silly to sit in Calgary for five days, by some accounts the most boring city in the world. Till then, though, I’ll see what the park has to offer, got a tour to lakes Louise and Moraine today, no more $ than the cost of a Greyhound, really…

And they’re nice, two of the nicest smaller lakes that I’ve ever seen in the world. Actually my first introduction to the Canadian Rockies was in the Cindy Walker song, singing about Lake ‘La-weez’, and that’s not a bad place to start, nor is ‘Four Strong Winds’ by Ian Tyson a bad way to go for the region in general. The region DOES evoke that long lost lonesome feel, man yodeling his way through Nature with not much more than a guitar and a song. The Natives are strong around here, too, one of the main groups apparently a remnant from the Little Bighorn, ‘fleeing a cholera epidemic.’ I bet they were fleeing more than that. Still it’s nice to see the Plains style in all its glory, beadwork and buckskin.

Canmore down the road just may be the Goldilocks resort town of Alberta, not too touristy, not too boring, juuuuust right, something like Flagstaff to Banff’s Aspen, the place where locals come, those who don’t care about shopping, the rarefied atmosphere of exclusivity, or the picture postcard poses with Nature. Apparently ‘Canmore’ is a Scots Gaelic name meaning ‘Big Head’ so that leaves some room for linguistic speculation. So there won’t be as many foreign languages here or Asians taking pictures of each other, but that’s okay, isn’t it? This is hiking and biking country, more trails than there are streets, more animals than there are cars. If you want to look at snow bunnies styling and profiling, looking at themselves while they’re looking in your eyes, then go back up the road to Banff. This is a place to talk trash over lattes, compare high country notes, maybe plot a revolution or two. And here we’ve got REAL bunnies, more later…

Unfortunately Canmore’s second-tier status as a high country resort doesn’t necessarily guarantee lower prices, though you might save a nickel or a dime over Banff. I don’t stay in fancy hotels- not when I’m traveling alone, anyway- so can’t really speak to that. The hostel’s more or less the same, except less crowded, so less gridlock in the kitchen. Bunk beds are nicer, too, real 2x heavy lumber, none of that squeaky creaky aluminum. Actually I don’t mind some random nighttime squeaking. It’s when it becomes regular that I worry. Milk prices here are as high as gas. So now I know why they confiscated my cheese at Toronto airport earlier this year. There’s a golden opportunity here for cheese smugglers, could be the biggest thing since cigarettes. At least the cherries are cheap, and good, too, around two bucks a pound, must be right in season, much later than the US. I haven’t eaten so many since Lupita and I picked them semi-professionally down in Hood River, OR, back in ’82, I believe it was.

Unfortunately my laptop doesn’t like the router here at my hostel in Canmore, so that’s good in a way, get off the Facebook intravenous injection for a change. So I take a long hike in the countryside, along the Bow River. I’m worried about running smack into a hungry bear, one accustomed to Twinkies, but that doesn’t happen. I DO see an elk doe, though, so that’s nice. The most interesting ‘wild’ animal here, however, are what seem to be feral bunnies. That’s bunnies, not rabbits, that seem to have found themselves a little evolutionary niche here. It must have been one lonely Easter… and the moon was full… and the rest is history. They escaped and just started doing what they do best. By the time I return my feet are killing me, my foot issues not helped by cheap-ass hiking boots.

Still I could use a beer. That’s what’s missing and the main difference since my last real North American travel some years ago. The micro-brew and brew pub movement is one of the happier events in American culture over the last twenty years, not to mention the entertainment that goes with it. Could you imagine going to Ireland and not drinking? Just imagine one of those thick black stouts, with a foamy head that’ll slide up to you for a kiss on the lips while you drink, then go right back to cover the goods and keep them fresh while you wait…

As it is I’ll have to make do occupying myself with mental character sketches of all the characters here in the hostel, including many Quebecois, the cute little one on Skype all day, the girl on skates, and guitar-boy, leading the pack in old Beatles songs until the wee hours. Who’d’ve thought kids would still be learning by heart and taking to heart these old songs that meant so much way back when? Leave it to the Quebecois, and their huggy-kissy lifestyle derived from the French. They’ll survive the Apocalypse that we Germans have been working on for a millennium or so. They cluster-flock so tightly that you can’t move around the kitchen. Don’t they know that too many cooks spoil the broth?

So now it’s on to Calgary, the big question being whether I can find a ticket to the Calgary Folk Music Festival or not. It looks pretty grim. Trying to finagle an early return to the US doesn’t sound much fun either. So I’ve got the classic Hardie K travel solution- book a rental car and head to the outback if all else fails. You gotta’ be creative. Now where are those dice?

The inspiration for this trip was a PR blurb about a music festival scheduled in Dawson, Yukon Territory, Canada, scheduled for right about… today. Well, combining two of my favorite things- music and travel- in one sentence, one idea, one plan, naturally got my little brain synapses firing. Add to that the fact that at some sixty-four degrees north latitude, Dawson is one of the continent’s most northerly towns, and there’s a strong attraction there, I having something of an obsession with the Great North. The realities are not so easy, though. For one thing, Dawson is tiny and a long way from anywhere. The capital Whitehorse is not much better, and it’s over three hundred miles away to the south. Air Canada is the only major airline going there. I looked through my frequent flyer statements and decided that my BofA credit card miles might be my only hope. Fortunately I saw a connection there to Aeroplan, which is Air Canada’s frequent flyer program, and bingo, they’ve got a flight to Whitehorse from LAX for only 25,000 miles! But the dates don’t match, bummer, no free seats available during the festival period.

I then realized that Calgary has a much bigger festival only a week after and all flights to Whitehorse connect in either Calgary or Vancouver, so… I try for a multi-destination flight- stranger things have happened- and BAM! I got it again, still only 25, 000 miles, this the equivalent of $250 (almost any credit card will rebate you 1% for your loyalty), for a flight that would normally cost $1000! There’s only one problem. I can’t get the points to transfer correctly online. So I call BofA card services. They say I’m not eligible for Aeroplan. Then why is it on the site? I call Aeroplan. They say, “Mais, oui, monsieur, we will open an account for you and then you can transfer the points yourself, easy, non? I cross my fingers, try again, then BAM! I got it. I even lost sleep knowing that flight would disappear while I deliberated. But how can I be deliberate if I don’t deliberate?

Going to Canada for me is hardly adventure travel. It feels more like going home, as in Oregon or the Pacific northwest, which I certainly consider a spiritual home, if not necessarily the. That’s my peeps up there, brothers in arms, raised in hippie insurrection and left with a lot of time in the wilderness to contemplate it. Still, it’s enough of an adventure to keep the rust from forming on my travel-burnished exterior. Travel is a discipline that requires constant re-training. I still get a bath of fear before every trip, something like baptism by fire, a renewal of primal energies within. I’ve had an obsession with the Arctic Circle for years, too, not too different from an earlier obsession with tropics Cancer and Capricorn. I know it’s just a line on the map, but that’s like saying sex is just fill-in-the-blank. It means something, corresponding exactly to the tilt of the earth and the passing of seasons, not to mention the earth’s plunging tree line, which gives out right about there.

The Arctic is another world, or so I imagine, since I’ve never really gotten there, it now more like elaborate foreplay that will be sadly missed if I ever actually succeed. Though I’ve been at or above sixty degrees north latitude many times, I’ve never made it up all the way to sixty-six and a half, which is where the fun begins. The closest I’ve gotten is sixty-five at Fairbanks, AK. That was several years ago. These new flight plans are now several months ago, and as the date actually approaches, I’m less and less certain that I even want to do go through with it, not a huge a deal since I’m only out for taxes on the flight. For one thing, Canada is more expensive than the US, and it only gets worse ‘up there’. For another thing, I’ve got work to do ‘down here’, and getting up a head of steam to write can suffer a serious disruption on a two-week trip. Also the Calgary Folk Festival never came through with the media pass I was hoping for, and the four-day passes are long sold out. It falls short of the stellar lineup I’d experienced a few years ago in Edmonton anyway.

So on the day of lift-off I’m somewhat half-assed about the whole affair, especially given the free entertainment on tap in LA during the summer, something of a music festival in itself, so when the first flight delay (‘trying to re-boot the computer’) is announced, I’m half-way expecting it. When the second one is announced, I’m losing patience. When the third announcement is made that my noontime flight will be awaiting a replacement part due in at 7pm from Vancouver, I’m ready to cancel the whole thing, so call my wife and tell her not to be shocked if there’s another body in bed tonight. Nevertheless I go through the motions of re-booking, just to get the free meal voucher, hardly expecting a free flight to remote Whitehorse to go very far in negotiations. When the nice man finally tells me that I can go through Calgary instead of Vancouver and arrive within an hour of my original time, I can hardly believe it. And I get a meal voucher, too! Things are looking up.

So I go eat a pesto provolone and dried tomato ciabatta (or something like that) and get another brilliant idea. I decide to press my luck and see if I can get my flight from Whitehorse to Calgary postponed a day to maybe give me a day of the Dawson music festival. I explain that the schedule change has shortened my time in Whitehorse (though only one hour, mind you), blah blah yata yata >sniff sniff whine whine< and they buy it. I’ve got an extra day up north at no extra charge. I should be an actor, or a businessman, or… hey, wait a minute. It should be noted that the re-booking line was like a Sunday church sing-along, no shouting or shoving or anything Hong Kong-ish or New York-ish, people becoming friends and exchanging Facebook addresses.

But that only gives me an hour or so to clear Customs and change planes in Calgary, not helped by the fact that the new plane, too, is slightly delayed to reshuffle baggage, not helped by the fact that signs there warn of migra delays, this being Stampede season, you know, Kate and William and all that bull, uh… roping. But hopefully this should be the eye of the storm by now, like Christmas day, empty and vacuous. It is. So I make my flight to Whitehorse with no further delay (thank God!). My original flight from Vancouver wasn’t so lucky. They were still waiting on it as I booked my rental car. How’s that for the flight from Hell? I guess all’s well that ends well, but I’m still not sure about Air Canada.

And Whitehorse seems nice, too, at first glance, reminding me a bit of Flagstaff. Doesn’t everything? I decide to press on to Dawson City the next day, though, leaving my intimate encounter with Whitehorse for the back end, since I’ve already rented the car, and feel somewhat pressed to justify the expense. If I actually DO stay for the festival, that will leave little or no time for Whitehorse itself, but that’s the breaks. I may get inspired to take the Dempster Highway on up to Inuvik, remember, since that’s where the Arctic Circle is. I’m having the feeling that I won’t stay till then, so play that hunch. So I stock up on food, since Dawson’s so small, less than two thousand souls in the winter season, less than the small town I grew up in. We’re going car camping, one section of the back seat becoming fridge, another trash, etc. If I find nothing better, I’ll even sleep in it. That’s the advantage of having a car. So that’s what I did, though it got a bit c-c-c-cold with only a towel for cover.

That hunch was correct, too, since Dawson City itself is a bit of a disappointment, though the drive up was very very nice, not spectacular, mind you, let alone mind-blowing, but very very nice. Dawson City’s selling point is authenticity (‘dirt roads, plank sidewalks’), and that’s a tough thing to sell. The minute you advertise it, it ain’t so authentic any more. Did they leave the streets unpaved just so they could pretend to be “ol’ timey”? That doesn’t count. Or does it? Obviously it can become something of a circular argument, authenticity becoming that je ne sais qua, the search for it subject to scrutiny itself, i.e. is it authentic to seek out authenticity, or is that the phoniest bologna of all? You get the idea. Nevertheless Dawson is very nice, if not spectacular, splayed out in that Great North frontier style, not jammed in a nook up a cranny like Cripple Creek, CO or Jerome, AZ. It’s more akin to its cousin Talkeetna across the border in Alaska. What makes Dawson genuine, though, is the fact that what made it famous is still there, gold, and people still pan for it.

Dawson flourishes more on tourism these days, though, but that’s still pretty low-key by modern standards. There are more motorcyclists there than anything else, going places where RV’s find it difficult. You can head across to Chicken and Tok in Alaska from there, in addition to Inuvik. So Dawson is NOT the end of the world… but it’s damn close, something like the northern equivalent of Timbuktu. A half day’s enough for me, though, since accommodation is dear, and there’s yet no buzz from the coming festival. I decide to use the time saved to go the other direction from Whitehorse down to Skagway, only a few hours away.

It’s still a long way back to Whitehorse first, though, but Sirius XM helps, it only cutting out in the northernmost reaches. So I cruise through the northern boreal forests listening to the 90’s channel, aka ‘lithium’, Nirvana and Pearl Jam, etc., Cobain crooning “with the lights down, it’s less dangerous” while Vedder one-ups him with “I’m still alive”, the Lennon and Jagger of a another era each trying to claim his turf. It doesn’t get much better than that cruising over the moonscape, the towns unfolding in reverse order from the way up, a little cluster of people wherever a river crosses or a road divides, anywhere a need might arise, Stewart’s Crossing, Pelly’s Crossing, Carmacks and Moose Creek, going places where until 1955 only a sternwheeler could go, that’s 1955, mind you, NOT 1855.

I learned before in Alaska that the northern reaches were less spectacular than the southern, and the same holds true here. The drive from Whitehorse to Skagway starts off splendid and becomes spectacular approaching the US-Canadian border. The lakes there are a color that I’ve only seen previously in the Caribbean, due to the rocky bottom no doubt. The border crossing itself is about as exotic as anything I’ve seen this side of Kosovo, too, and I’m sure that in the wintertime it’d be only more so. I’ve delayed buying gas for a while in hopes of better than the $5.50-$6/gal. prices extant in Yukon, and I’m rewarded with $4.50/gal on the US side, a price that would send normal state-siders in search of a new President, as if gas prices were his private domain.

Skagway is more of a typical tourist trap, if that’s where the line of ‘authenticity’ gets drawn. Ferries and cruise ships daily disgorge passengers here like floods fertilizing the banks of the Nile, leaving dollars in coffers and lives enriched along this little strip of America connected to itself only by water. To go from Skagway to the nearby town of Haines, an hour maybe by boat, you’d have to drive through Whitehorse and back down another route to Haines, a good day’s drive. Still Skagway is nice, bucolic and serene, notwithstanding the store dedicated to Sarah Palin, and other such curiosities of existence. If any thing, it’s almost just a bit TOO serene, though I’m sure you can find what you’re looking for if you look hard enough. After all this WAS one of THE places to be in the world not much more than a hundred years ago as gold was discovered up around Dawson City and this was smack on the route there.

So I find a nice hostel in Skagway- everything but the WiFi- and spend the night there. Again, a half day is about enough, especially since I don’t drink any more. It’s not like I’m going to get too chatty with anyone anywhere except a bar stool, and I just don’t go there any more, boo hoo. So I get up early next day hoping to find a bear up and at ‘em looking for breakfast, and sure enough, I find one, walking down the road as if it’s his. The borders are no hassle, either, out here in the long lost lonesome. Carcross is the only town between here and there, and it’d probably take the award for authenticity if they’re handing them out, people still living in the log houses they once built. But who spends more than a half hour in Carcross (‘caribou crossing’)? So much for authenticity.

So I resolve to spend another couple days peacefully in Whitehorse, keeping the car for good measure. It’s not so many blocks from my hostel to downtown, but the blocks are BIG up here, just like Fairbanks, in some reversal of island dwarfism. I won’t have a car in Banff, anyway, since changing my dates doubled the rental charge, *&^%$! Cherries are less then $2/lb and I’ve got brown rice cooking in the kitchen. I’m good. C U in Banff.

When I go back to Apia from Pago Pago to catch my onward flight next day to Tonga, the place is under water, worst rainy season in years, and there’s a major storm coming in Saturday. Hopefully I’ll make it out before the deluge. Hopefully I can find something to eat in Tonga on a Sunday. My cheap-ass taxi doesn’t show- you get what you pay for- but I make it up by talking my way out of the exit tax at the airport by explaining I’m in transit from American Samoa (but I didn’t tell them I spent five days in Apia before that). Airport security is a joke, kids running around begging for coins, while ex-pat palangis use the forex booths to do their monthly banking, cashing personal checks and walking around with thousands of dollars in cash. I feel like I’m tripping. How do you maintain security in an airport with no exterior walls? Not so very carefully…

We beat the rain out of Samoa and soon we’re flying in bright sunshine, same in Fiji, and same continuing in Tonga. But it’s too late, because I’m coming down with something, my self splitting gently at the seam, whether a continuation of that cough that I finally kicked or something new I don’t know. Even so, it’s nice to have to have some sunshine after constant rain for so long. Supposedly there’s a cyclone moving south after it does its damage in Samoa, but who knows how far or how fast? The owner of my guest house in Tonga makes it sound like the storm of the century, but then he’s full of BS on a lot of issues, typical Brit ex-pat, lived here twenty-two years and doesn’t speak a word of the local dialect (“they’re supposed to be learning English”).

Tanaka- the Japanese girl from Samoa- is on my flight to Tonga also, but she ends up elsewhere in the shuffle at the airport, even though I’ve recommended my guest house to her, so I don’t force the issue on her. Well, next day she shows up at my guest house with a nasty dog bite, and having stayed who knows where. I can only figure that the airport ATM- last point of reference- had no cash, and so someone took pity on her. She’ll be okay. I’m more concerned about my shoes, which are fast falling apart. Duct tape is really not an option, since they won’t let you take that on a plane.

The next day is Sunday, so someone should take pity on us all, out in the boondocks with nothing but crackers to survive on. Everything- I mean EVERYTHING- is closed on Sundays (by law! What is this, Iran?), so my airport driver stops at the local Chinese sh*t-n-git the evening before so I can stock up. How’s that for service? Fortunately I’m half-way prepared, so no big deal, noodles with egg in addition to what I brought from Samoa. What about the traveler for whom it’s not normal to get off the plane with a shopping list? At the guest house there’s no food, no TV or fan in the ‘living room’, no comp coffee or tea, nothing nada zippo zilch, fun fun fun. The guest house owner gets excited about being the master of kava ceremonies, but not much else. So what if the guests are starving. Let ‘em drink kava!

Fortunately the Finnish guy Sammy has already made plans to go to a nearby Mormon church, so we get together for that and end up making it a Sunday morning of church-hopping. Besides that there’s the local folk art par excellence to be surveyed- ready for this? Graveyards! Not only do the defunct get to rest in peace and symmetry, but they get special quilts to keep them warm (hey, it sometimes gets down to 15c-59f in winter)! This more than makes up for a culture and architecture somewhat less traditional than the Samoan. And if the sarong-like lavalavas are absent here, they make it up with a grass mat worn around the waist for ceremonies, i.e. Sunday. We even get to sit in on and observe a traditional wedding ceremony and feast!

Next day I get up early to go to town, since I’ve already spent half my time here and haven’t even seen downtown Nuku’alofa. So what if I’ve got flu-like symptoms? F*ck ‘em… I walk the five clicks to town and the loose collection of villages gradually coalesces into… not much. This make 1995 Vientiane look like Manhattan, no McD, no KFC, no Pizza Hut, so… pretty nice, if a bit boring. Nuku DOES have something that I’ve yet to see in this region so far, though, and that’s a couple of decent bars, where locals and foreigners can both hang out with some decent music and decent prices. Tonga is friendly, more so than Samoa I think, so somewhat intriguing. It might actually be more interesting to live in than to tour.

If this is less of a city than Samoa’s Apia, one can only imagine what it’s like on Tuvalu, an entire nation of 10,000 souls! If that seemed daunting at the outset, I think by now I’d find it interesting. I still lack Tuvalu and the countries of Micronesia- not to mention the Philippines- so future itineraries in the South Pacific are looming… or I may just wait for the sea levels to rise from global warming. Some countries have already made contingency plans. The quick stop at Kiritimati will be a little taste of that future trip.

And what’s the verdict for this two month trip? Polynesia is cheaper than Melanesia. Even the grocery stores are reasonable- when you can find them- prices more or less the same as the US, which is good. Anybody who thinks the US is expensive has never been around very much. I suspect the current priciness of Australia- and Papua NG and Solomons- has much to do with Oz’s current strong exchange rate, likely the result of Chinese investments more than anything else, that and high interest rates, though I’d be hard pressed to say which is cause and which is effect. Not so long ago AUD traded at far less than the USD, down around $ .75 where NZD is today, or less. Now Oz and US and Canada are all almost equal, convenient for arithmetic, but a fall from grace for US. That’s okay; it’s lonely at the top anyway.

Melanesia might be friendlier than Polynesia, but the general lawlessness of Papua New Guinea, and the increased friendliness of Tonga vis-a-vis Samoa may cancel previous judgments out. None of the cities are especially pretty, but supposedly the nicest one- Frenchified Port Vila in Vanuatu- I didn’t even stop in. So if less is more for Pacific cities, then Nuku’alofa maybe ranks higher that way. All in all Fiji is not a bad mix of the region’s various aspects (and the easiest immigration policy: four months, don’t work- simple), and the cheap Indian cuisine is very welcome.

All of which brings me back to the question of pre-Melanesian people inhabiting the area, specifically Papua New Guinea, the subject which got me into a fight with a British ex-pat lawyer in Honiara, S.I. The existence of a myriad of non-Austronesian ‘Papuan’ languages makes the question moot, if still confusing. And Melanesians have a distinctly African appearance, while that of Polynesians is distinctly Asian (and believe me, I’ve looked at a few Asians). While the historians gloss over many details, there must have been a major migratory thrust from the mainland of Asia (fleeing Hans migrating south?) through Taiwan that splintered in the Philippines into two main groups, one of which went toward Borneo and became Indonesian while the other went toward New Guinea.

There these eastern ‘Austronesians’ must have mixed with native Papuans to a greater or lesser degree and became Melanesians while others remained on the fringes unmixed and eventually become Polynesians. The fact that Polynesian languages have cognates with Malay that are absent in Melanesia must be accounted for somehow. Some words cross over between Melanesian and Polynesian, but those are more cultural- e.g. mana’, kava, tapu (‘taboo’, which can mean ‘sacred’ y/o ‘forbidden’ BTW)- not so much core vocabulary. Language may not be an exact science, but it doesn’t lie… wait a minute…

So the 25th of January starts rather stormily, howling winds and rains lashing through the night in Nuku’alofa. By dawn it’s all died down, though, so we get away on time. My driver stops in town to pick up one other passenger, then lopes his way to the airport with one hand on the cell and one on the steering-wheel, always fun to watch the shifting of hands and gears (Polynesians are the world’s SLOWEST cab-drivers BTW). The Air Pacific plane even arrives on time and I have Wi-Fi in the airport cafe, so life is good. All’s smooth on the flight to Fiji, but they make me go through immigration, so I inquire about a day trip to Suva. They don’t recommend it. That’s just as well, because it starts pouring down rain soon thereafter. So I kill half a day reading an L. Ron Hubbard book, something I picked up in Pago Pago, and have never done before. It’s disjointed, chaotic, and non-linear… not bad! At this point I just want to get out from under the cyclone threat and back to the US, though the fifteen hour wait is trying…

As the calendar turns to the 26th we’re soon boarding the plane, but when we take off we’re almost immediately back to the 25th, courtesy of the International Date Line. From there it’s cop some zzz’s as cop can, little consolation that the flight I just watched take off from Fiji to LA will be arriving almost simultaneous with my arrival in Honolulu. That’s all so I can stop in Kiritimati (pronounced something like ‘Christmas’, no relation) Atoll, in the island country of Kiribati (pronounced something like ‘Gilberts’, no relation), not to be confused with the Christmas Island that refugees wash up on in their quest for Australia. My flight from Fiji to Honolulu makes a ‘technical’ stop there… so that counts, number 139 of 192 UN member countries under my belt. If that sounds tricky on my part, it’s more than that. Transit passengers don’t even get off the plane, but the view is priceless, one of the world’s most remote border posts, complete with VIP lounge! Some people DO get off, though, locals and surfers mostly. Beachcombers and castaways came before the conquistadores and missionaries in this region, remember. I log it in to memory.

Honolulu is a breeze, just a quick chat with la migra. “I see you made it out before the storm.” I heard about it. “It’s supposed to hit Tonga today.” That’s where I just was. “Welcome to Hawaii.” Then it’s another three hour wait, albeit with free WiFi, and then another five hour flight on to LA. By the time we finally pull up to the ramp at LAX it’s pushing 10:30pm, still the 25th. It’s too late to risk the Metro line, so I catch the Super Shuttle and get a quick tour of the rising new downtown LA before heading up to the hollies. I fumble with the keys… and finger-nail clippers and bottle opener, no stethoscope… it turns. I’m in, Trinity.
“Honey, I’m home….”
It’s been a long day.