stuck behind the truck on the road leading to Alaska
Sign Post Forest is a collection of signs at Watson Lake, Yukon and is one of the most famous of the landmarks along the Alaska Highway. It was started by a homesick GI in 1942. He was assigned light duty while recovering from an injury and erected the signpost for his hometown: Danville, Ill. 2835 miles. Visitors may add their own signs to the over 80,000 already present.
Finally, the last day of our journey arrived! We were all pretty excited as we got ready to leave the cabins we had stayed in. They were really nice little places on the edge of a beautiful lake. And we had stopped asking about the dog after Wonowon and just brought him inside, so he was well rested, too. The one dark cloud was one of the tires on the U-Haul, which was looking pretty worn, but since there was nothing we could do about it, we just got ready to leave.
Our first stop was at a general store a few miles down the road. It occupied half of a building with a truck/car/RV repair shop in the other half. We wanted to pick up a few things, but mainly some bread for lunch. Walking around the store, we looked in vain for the bread. Nothing. We tried again—a general store would surely have bread, we thought, but we weren’t seeing any. Suddenly, Helen pointed toward the freezer case—“there’s some!” Bill pounced on it, and searched in vain for a price tag. He brought it up to the counter and asked how much it was. Once again we got that wide-eyed response from this clerk, “ I can’t sell that,” he said nervously, jerking his head back toward the repair shop, “they’ll kill me if I sell you that!” Bill put the loaf back in the freezer case. As he turned around, he spotted another loaf in a case across the store. “What about that one,” he asked. The guy behind the counter shook his head, “I can’t; they’ll kill me.” Exasperated, Bill asked, “Is there any place between here and Fairbanks where I can buy a loaf of bread?” The boy thought for a minute and then his face brightened“ Annie down the road bakes bread,” he said happily. Then his face fell a little. “I don’t know if she sells it, though. But you could ask.” I was dumbstruck as I stood there thinking, “Yup, that’s what we’ll do. We’ll track Annie down and see if she’s baked any bread lately. If she has we’ll see if she’ll sell us some.” The whole conversation was clearly pointless, so we bought a couple of things and left. A couple of hours down the road we stopped at another store. Bill went in and after a few minutes he emerged victorious holding the loaf of bread high above his head! We would be able to have lunch!
The text is written by Shari and the photos were taken by me
