Alcan Highway Adventure Day 8: Glenallen Ranch House Lodge

Saturday, August 6th 2022

Wake up in a bed under a roof that's not the roof of my car. Wake up early. It's light out. It's always light out lately.

I go for a jog on the pedestrian path that parallels the Glenallan Highway, the Tok Cutoff, the road I'll be traveling today toward my next destination. I pass the Tok School. Wonder what it's like to be a kid out here, to grow up out here. Small town but always tourists passing through. Hunters passing through. Slope and construction workers passing through. Do you stay here your whole life working the same jobs as Mom and Dad and Uncle Charlie or do you go off to college in Seattle and only come back for the holidays? Do you feel connected to the ebb and flow of the lush and frost of the land? Or do you hide in tiktok and videogames and all the screens like everyone else in the world? Does life in the land of extremes still give a person a stronger character or is that a thing of the past?

Or is that a concept I made up?

I don't run very far or very long. I feel tired today, and want to get back to the motel in time to ogle the continental breakfast, none of which I will be able to consume because a continental breakfast is always a gluteny starchy snobby delight of a party that both my stomach and colon are too unrefined and common to attend, but at least I'll be able to score some coffee that I won't have to make myself.

I walk the dog and take a short shower, second in a twelve hour time span, as if preemptive showering will keep me cleaner days from now when showers become scarce. I check out of the motel liquor store and get a bag of ice. No charge for the ice, the clerk tells me, since I stayed at the motel. I don't tell him how thrilled I am.

I stop in at a local arts and crafts store, where I learn that Alaska has a thing for moose poop decorations and jewelry. I buy some moose nugget Christmas ornament souvenirs for the people faraway back home, and talk to the woman at the counter for a long time. She's thrilled about my journey. When she was younger, many years ago, she used to adventure. Tells me her daughter is the adventurer, now. She stays put, here in Tok. Works at the store one day a month. Gardens every year. I buy one of her home grown zucchinis.

I'm headed for the Ranch House Lodge, an RV park where I can do laundry and take another shower and access the internet. Not a very rugged camp plan. It feels like cheating myself out of nature after getting a room the night before, but I've already made the reservation and I'm wearing my last pair of clean underwear.

The sky is pregnant with rain, her belly hanging low, ready to burst. I know that there are great vistas out there to be seen, and sometimes I catch a glimpse.

But most of the beauty I experience today is within a one-mile radius.

Off the Glenallen Highway is a road called Nabesna. It's well know for being frequented by bears, nearly a guaranteed sighting. It's a hefty side trip, about two and a half hours in and out, but I want fancy bear pictures, so I keep it on the itinerary.

After about twenty minutes of driving on Nabesna under the leaky sky I realize the only thing this road is frequented by is jagged potholes and lifted trucks with tires as tall as I am and that it's going to take me a lot longer to traverse this road if I want to get out with tires and axles and sanity still intact. I turn around. Head bearlessly back to the highway.

The navigation gets confused and takes me to one place and then another, none of which are the lodge, but eventually I think I find it. I stop on the highway and scrutinize the sign and the property for a moment before I pull into the lot.

Inside, a couple is sitting on a couch, their backs to me. In front of them a small fire burns in a large stone fireplace. As I open the door a woman jumps up, greets me eagerly. First words out of my mouth are:

"Am I in the right place?"

She and her husband are amused by this question, and I realize how silly it sounds in the context that exists outside my own mind. I explain that I'm looking for the Ranch House Lodge, that I have a reservation that I made by email with a woman named Karen. Karen tells me I'm in the right place. She checks me in, shows me the map, tells me about the homemade pizzas they make that I deeply regret not being able to eat. Explains the laundry and showers and reminds me that quiet hours start at 10pm so me and my little dog better not be partying past then. She tells me I can stay in either one of the tent sites since she isn't expecting any more campers.

I head to the tent sites.

Driving through the grounds I feel disillusioned. The lot is gravel and weeds. Construction-papered house in one corner and piles of busted up rock and cement scattered inconsistently throughout the property. The little road that leads down to the tent site looks like it's been recently bushwhacked, the yard debris in a pile across from the tent sites.

I don't want to feel this way, but I do. I wish I was in a quiet little campground in the woods. I park the car in a snug little space next to a creek. Get out and play with Pilot. He's head over heels thrilled with the location, and makes me chase him around the rocky creek bed and follow him around while he eats all the sweet grass.

I try to feel the thrill that he feels.

We walk around the grounds. Past some RVs. Take a seat on a bench that overlooks the creek. I pull Pilot into my lap. He's so happy.

A woman comes out of one of the RVs. Greets me. "Isn't this an idyllic setting?" she says.

I am ashamed of my ingratitude. So angry at my expectations for not letting me enjoy this experience.

I try to see what she sees.

The RV lady is from Fresno, California. Pilot is from Fresno, too, I tell her. Snatched up from the kill shelter by a rescue group so that I could see his mug shot on the Oregon Humane Society web page two days later and recognize in that instant that he is my soulmate. RV lady likes our story. Asks how long we've been in Alaska. Asks about the potholes coming in. Says they hit a bump so bad her tv fell down and broke. She made her husband buy her a new one in Anchorage.

Their caravan is on its way back home. Taking it slow. They've already been all the places that I will be going. Been on the road since May.

I start a load of laundry and cook dinner. Pilot hangs out in his camp chair. Watches me with a contented look on his face. Suddenly he jumps to his feet. Looks urgently toward the car. He wants to go inside. Now. I toss him onto the bed and finish cooking. Break down my stove and get everything inside just before the downpour happens.

I eat dinner in the car.

The rain cuts me a break and lets up long enough for me to take my clean, dry laundry out to the car, then starts up again. I'm frustrated. I drive to the lodge. Sit inside where it's dry and I can use the internet.

Karen greets me by name, as though she's known me much longer than the few minutes it took to check me in. She's stringing up a happy birthday banner for a little boy she met once, a year ago. She says he looks exactly like Ralphie from A Christmas Story. His family has come here to celebrate. They'll be here soon.

The Fresno RV group is sitting at one of two long wooden tables. I take a seat at the empty one. They order chili and pizzas. One of them asks Karen about her book. Karen sells her a copy for $20. Tells her all the money from book sales goes back into renovation. I listen.

They were starting renovations when Covid happened. Business dropped out. Then lumber got scarce. Got expensive. So much has been put on hold when all she and her husband want to do is bring this little piece of Alaskan history back to life.

The lodge, she tells us in person and in her book, was built in the late 1940s to early 1950s by the Zimbicki brothers, Frank and Blackie. Of three brothers who came out from Michigan to start a new life in Alaska, two of them stayed in Tolsona, where they hand built the very lodge we sit in.

Over the years the lodge became a haven for travelers and locals alike. A place to eat, drink, socialize, have weddings, and throw parties all the way up until the 1990s, when the lodge's second owner passed away. It laid abandoned and in disrepair until Karen and her husband Andy, looking for a place to live in Alaska, bought it on a whim. Most of the renovations and remodeling have been done between the two of them, the process of which led them to discover several boxes of old papers and journals belonging to Frank. They also located Frank's old truck and moved it onto the property.

The party with the birthday boy makes its way boisterously through the doors. I spot the kid in question right away. He really does look like little Ralphie.

I move from the table to the couch so they can sit down. Karen and Andy greet them like old friends. Take their orders. Treat everyone to a hot sauce tasting. Andy takes "Ralphie" out for a ride on the UTV. A few minutes later out the window we see the kid at the wheel. Andy in the passenger seat. All kinds of laughs.

It's a big family. Loud and happy. When they eventually leave the place is too quiet. I get a rum and coke and buy a copy of Karen's book. Sit in the lodge until they close.

Andy tells me I can park in one of the empty RV spots close by so I can keep using the internet. I take him up on the offer. Do some writing. My laptop battery is running low, so I hook up the converter and charge it. I leave the car idling, then turn it off for a few minutes.

When I go to start it again, it doesn't. It doesn't start.

My car won't start.

Panic. Fear. Cold dread. But not bad. Of all the places one could have a dead car, this is about the safest. I'm not all alone in the middle of the Alaskan bush, I'm at an RV park owned by kind-hearted people and the nearest service center is ten minutes away as the tow truck rolls. I have a friend in Anchorage if it's something bad and I'm stranded. I have a dad who, as a last resort, I can get to bail me out in a heartbeat because he's convinced I'm on a wilderness trek with no other humans in sight for miles and years. I'm ok. It's going to be ok. Everything on the internet says it's just a drained battery.

I toss and turn for the rest of the night, that gut-hollowing, mind-vibrating sensation of being possibly stranded keeping me from the sleep I deserve. Yet I find comfort in the realization that my impression of Ranch House Lodge and RV Park has changed from one of judgment and sour disappointment to one of gratitude, appreciation, and admiration.

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_{Photos taken of book pages are from Karen Burnham's book, Ranch House Lodge Roadhouse on the Glenn, which you can buy if you want to help support their renovations and learn more about the lodge. Click the link.}

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Read Day 9.

Read Day 7.

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Check out my last post for this adventure here and god dammit do I look grateful enough??