Serious reasons to keep the contents of your "city" purse with you, even in the wild: BEARS!

When I informed my co-workers I was off to Alaska for my annual Fairbanks to Yukon getaway the response was so predictable: "Don't get eaten by a bear!", "Are you going to stay in an Igloo?", and "Better like salmon, it's going to be your staple.".

First off, no one in Alaska resides in an Igloo; people do live "off the grid" but their houses include all of the normal components like foundation, insulation, glass windows, fireplaces/stoves, wood, etc.
Second, I would love for salmon to be my daily staple - salmon scrambler for breakfast, lox for lunch, red salmon on the grill for dinner, and maybe even salmon sushi for dessert. So maybe consuming all of this salmon in one day is not ideal, but Alaskan salmon is truly divine. It is some of the richest, most flavorful fish I have ever tasted; no seasoning required.

Reflecting on my response to the bear comments, well, the whole foot in mouth thing definitely applies.


There she is, in all of 200+ lb. glory - we named her Ruina as she broke up our beer and reindeer sausage dining fest.

We were about seven hours away from our final destination: Whitehorse, Yukon. It was about 9pm and someone suggested it was time for beer; we became all Homer Simpson-like and made our fearless driver pull over into the first camp-able roadside pull-off. This was probably our first mistake. It's not that we didn't want to support Canadian campgrounds, it's more like we wanted to get out the car at that very moment and nothing was going to stop us.

Like the good and experienced campers that we are, we began to set up our tents and the hospitality/bug tent, so we could cook without the constant nibbling by the Canadian skeeters. We threw together a feast of spaghetti, broccoli and reindeer sausage. The smell of the meat cooking was quite sharp - but we weren't focused on what others (creatures, that is) may have thought, our goal was to quell our growling tummies.

We dug into our dinner like the grubby little campers that we were and we ate heartily. All of the sudden we heard some guy screaming, up on the road. "GET, get - GO, go - NOW! NOW!". We were on the Alaskan Highway, literally, in the middle of nowhere. This was not normal. We soon discovered the very reason the driver was yelping, hooting and scaring us shitless. Her picture is posted above. I could have been the polar fleece, long-john wearing queen of the day if only I had smuggled the contents of my "going out" bag across the border.

To be on the safe side, we let Ruina have the campsite and we vacated our drunk and full little asses out of there so quickly, we had to rely on my photos to prove this incident actually occurred.