Sometimes you just need a random road-trip...

Every year my mother makes a trip up to visit us during the summer, and I squire her around the state.  This is convenient, because it gives me an excuse for a road trip down some random highway.

This year we went to Circle.  Not to be confused with the Arctic Circle, Circle is a small village where the mostly-unpaved Steese Highway dead-ends at the Yukon River.  Apparently original settlers thought they were on the Arctic Circle line and named the settlement accordingly…only for their descendants to discover they were off by about 50 miles—which might give some insight into how they ended up way out there in the first place.  Isolated is an applicable word. 

 We inadvertently chose the one week of the 40-Mile caribou hunting season for our little expedition; every turnout in the White Mountains was full of trucks and campers and caribou heads.  At one point we actually saw a pair of caribou, tottering shell-shocked across the road.  A white truck immediately pulled over on the side of the road and the driver jumped out, rifle in hand, to pursue them into the brush.  I still have mixed feelings about it.  

 The scenery was beautiful, though, as long as you didn't look at the road.

Up on some tundra around 40-Mile.

Low bush tundra cranberries.

Random flag, just in case you're unsure you're still in Alaska.

After four hours, we reached Circle, a handful of buildings on the southern bank of the expansive gray Yukon. The only public bathrooms were in the Washeteria, which also included showers and a couple of washing machines. The town store had RVs and airplanes next to the private outhouse in the parking lot, and a lone payphone in its own little shed off the side of the highway (a term which only loosely applies at this point).

I love that the instructions are on the side.  There were also knife-holes in the opposite wall where someone got bored while waiting for their knickers to dry.

So this hotel has been unfinished for years, and has become a landmark of the area.  It's even in The Milepost...but everything is in The Milepost.

We took a few minutes to take pictures and step in the largest river in Alaska.  The Yukon is 1400 miles long in Alaska, with an additional 580 miles in Canada. The couple of times I've seen it, the river has been calm and deceptively easy-going--but when you're the size of the Yukon you don't have a lot to prove, and just your size gives you some inertia.  It's a pretty impressive river.

In case you can't see it, the sign clarifies "NOT the Arctic Circle."

It's not a real road-trip unless someone throws a fit.

After a quick stop at the Washeteria, we drove home.  There was a brief stop in the creatively named Central, an equally small town with a mining museum.  We saw some grouse (or ptarmigan, I have no idea) and surprised a moose in a marsh.  It wasn't an exciting trip by most people's standards, but it ticked a lot of my boxes.  Hours spent with people I love on a road that most people never travel, with beautiful country and a couple of laughs and a moose...it doesn't get much better than that.

Because when your shoes get dirty of course you take them off.