An Alaskan Adventure

Alan Adaschik’s lifelong dream was to visit Alaska; America’s last frontier and a place that abounds with wildlife and unspoiled wilderness. Upon retiring, Al and his wife, Gayle, sold everything and bought a motorhome to make his dream a reality.  An Alaskan Adventure, is a narrative about Al and Gayle’s trip which highlights the places they visited and the wonderful things they experienced along the way. The adventure begins in Indiana. After negotiating the traffic jams of Chicago, Al and Gayle traveled I-94 across the Northern Great Plains visiting Minnesota, North Dakota, and Montana along the way. Heading North, they toured Glacier National Park and continued on to visit Yoho, Banff, and Jasper national parks in Canada. Afterwards, Al & Gayle picked up the Alaskan Highway which took them to the realization of Al’s dream. 

The remainder of the book is about Al & Gayle’s travels around the Great Alaskan Triangle, a circuit of 900 miles defined by the cities of Tok, Fairbanks, and Anchorage. While negotiating this triangle, Al and Gayle’s primary goal was to find gold in one of the many streams they crossed.  However, they also hoped to find a Wooly Mammoth frozen in a glacier. Toward these ends, they took side trips to the White Mountains National Recreation Area, Denali National Park, the Top of the World Highway, and the towns of Homer and Chicken. An Alaskan Adventure is not just a book about touring Alaska. Al is an environmentalist.  This being the case, a theme evident throughout the book is that the beauty we find around us is fleeting and if we, as a species, continue to over-populate our world, what we see and value so highly is sure to go away.