One of mine;
Over the Pacific and past the moose, to Mopars On Ice we go!
Ok, ok, I know it is my fault. Being born and raised in Alaska, and into Mopars since I was sixteen I always read the magazines and wished the big shows were closer, or that we at least had a Mopar Show in Alaska to call our own. I started hanging out on the Alaskan Mopars web board and it did not take me to long to get into trouble. When I was a kid, my friends gave me the nick-name “Instigator” for getting things started, usually trouble. So, I proposed that we do our own Alaska show on the site, we batted it around, came up with the name and the T-shirts, found a location, got a permit and away we went. No sponsor’s per se, I paid for the award plaques and the t-shirts and artwork because no one else was interested. I almost broke even too.
My good friend Ann was flying up to share the driving and expenses. From here to Anchorage as the crow flies is 1420 miles, but I live on an Island, so the plan was to put my ‘71 Challenger on the ferry as far as Haines, then drive up through British Columbia Canada and the Yukon before crossing back into Alaska and on to Anchorage.
It was a good plan, but the Ferry we were on broke down in Juneau. Big time. The reduction gear went out, so here we were, stranded and I had the show permit, awards, show t-shirts, judging forms and pre-registration forms in my car. We were still 2000 miles from the show. We were able to get on a ferry the next day and get to Haines only 27 hours behind schedule, so all was not lost!
We hit the road and drove hard, made it through customs at the Canadian border after about 45 minutes and we drove for 11 hours straight, spending the night in Tok, AK. We saw a grizzly bear, a few moose and bought some of the lowest octane gas known to man in the Yukon. On the way into Tok, we experienced the never-ending-sunset, the sun barely set just over the horizon and hung there, just barely out of sight for hours, but still lighting the way, slowly working it’s way north. We did not need the lights on at 1am in the morning, it never really got dark. It was eerie, but awesome to see. The scenery in Alaska is like nowhere else on earth, you just have to come on up and see it to believe it.
There was a lot of road construction along the Alcan (Alaska -Canadian Hwy), we made it through with maybe 100 or so rock chips in my new paint, I should go out and actually count them one of these days. We made it to the show in Anchorage five hours after it started and it was raining! Hooray! Everyone was glad to see us though, we had called ahead to let folks know we were running late due to the ferry breaking down.
At this point, I was quite happy that anyone had showed up at all!
There were about 20 cars there, (including one T/A) Some cars had left already, but the die-hards just huddled together and stuck it out, this is Alaska after all. I got busy handing out the judging forms and collecting fees and selling the t-shirts. It was great to put faces to names and meet everyone. It was great to stand up after two days in the car too! I was very happy with my car, it has a transplanted 440-6 that my brother rebuilt and we averaged 11.6 mpg and did not have any car trouble at all. I also won the Long Distance award!
