To Fairbanks!

Hi again! Did you guys miss me? Thanks for the birthday wishes! :D

It turns out the drive to Fairbanks only took ten hours. But loading my car took four times as long as I thought it would... I anticipated about twenty minutes, not an hour and fifteen. Oh well, no harm done.

The drive up was WOW! Rye had told me to have my camera ready, and I thought "Yeah, meh, landscape pictures, big whoop." I've seen a million landscapes, and they're all beautiful, but pictures almost never do them credit. This trip was something else.

The first part was your typical "Oooh, aaah, mountains, pretty...." Then I started getting near Denali and saw some huge mountains. By "huge," I mean they were big enough that probably the whole top third of them was covered in snow... and it's barely September! I only caught glimpses of the mountain range through the trees, and then the road turned and there in the middle of the mountain range was Mount McKinley, easily twice the size of every other mountain in sight. It was like having a whole bunch of Corgis lined up with a Great Dane towering over them in the middle. Or... you know, something like that. It was pretty impressive, anyway.

Then I got inside Denali National Park. CRAZY! It was like being on Mars! Imagine the driest desert you've ever been in. Utah times about ninety-seven. I'd say it was a desert, but that usually implies sand and cacti. Definitely no cacti here, and I when I think of sand, I think of something yellower and fluffier. The gray stuff that covered the ground between all the rocks would better be described as dust, I think. But as I got up into the mountains (these were smaller ones, without snow), things got really weird. The trees, first of all, are turning yellow already. At least, the ones that aren't pines. The ones that are pines are the weirdest-shaped pines I've ever seen. They were too spiky. I mean, usually when you imagine a pine tree, you imagine something... well, fat and fluffy. These pine trees looked like giant nails sticking straight up out of the ground, and they were about the same color. The term "evergreen" would have to be used very very loosely if you tried to use it to refer to these trees. "Evergray" might be a better word.

As if gray trees isn't weird enough, there wasn't any grass in sight. Instead, there was scrub--small bushes that cover the ground thick enough that it looks like grass from a distance. Except like I said, the leaves are turning color, and these bushes all went red. Deep blood red. On top of that, the mountains were purple. In Virginia, the mountains were purple, but that's because they were distant, and the humid atmosphere made them just look purple. These mountains are made of rock, and above the scrub line, where the rock is actually visible, it's definitely and unquestionably purple. Indigo. Violet. Not gray or brown or reddish. Purple.

With the strange colors, the rocky mountainous terrain, and the insane dryness, I felt like I was on Mars. I found a place to park and pulled over to get a picture when I saw a lake. Well, a small lake. Or a large pond. I don't know where the line is separating those two. Anyway, there was a fairly-sized body of water that would have made an awesome picture, with the red ground and gray spiky trees and purple mountains, because the water reflecting pure silver, with black ripples. And in the middle of the pond, there floated two pure white swans.

...Swans.

Yeah, it was pretty cool.

I tried to get a picture, but when I got out my camera, the batteries were dead, and I couldn't remember where I'd packed the spares. Daggumit.

Also, I learned that my car can make it up to 90 mph. I'm never ever using the yellow-dotted lines to pass again. I was about fifty feet away from a 160-mph head-on collision (my 90 plus his 70). I don't think I would have had the opportunity to feel how bad that would hurt.

So anyway, I've met my roommates--they mostly seem nice. Their names are Brooke, Amanda, and Sarah. Brooke was the only one here when I got in, and she helped me carry in all my stuff. She didn't talk much, but then, I was kind of babbling like an idiot. Two days straight with no one to talk to (except a spider fern) will do that to you, I guess. She showed me around, "Dishes here, bathroom there," kind of thing, then she disappeared and left me to my unpacking.

Amanda was the next to show up. She poked her head in to introduce herself as I was unpacking my socks. She seems nice, but she didn't seem to get any of the jokes I made.

"Hi, I'm Amanda!"

"Hi, I'm Cathryn."

"Oh. The door says your name is Caitlyn."

No it doesn't, I thought. But it's not polite to contradict people, especially when it's your first time meeting them, so I just said, "Yes, well, the door is terrible at spelling. I heard it was even held back in fifth grade because it couldn't spell 'existentialism.'"

She stared at me for a moment, looking confused.

"That was a joke."

"Oh. So, will you be staying here the night?" she asked.

"Um... well, I was planning on it, yeah. And the next night... And the next night... and maybe a couple nights after that...."

Blank stare.

Well, honestly! How are you supposed to react to questions like that? I can understand questions like "Where are you from" and "What's your major," but "Will you be staying here the night?" No, I was planning on unpacking and then sleeping on the sidewalk tonight.

Then there was the third roommate.

She walked up to me and said, "Hey, what's your name?" By this point, I had taken off my vest and was wearing my work shirt, which has my name written on it in big gold letters. Also, my name is on the door of the apartment. Surely, since my name should have been glaringly obvious, this situation merited a comical response.

"Bob."

"Ha ha," she said without a hint of amusement, "Seriously, what's your name."

I guess I should have given up and just told her, but I couldn't stop myself. "I don't think I have one. Maybe I just lost it somewhere."

She snorted. "You need to go back to high school." Then she turned to her friend and said, "Why aren't I drunk? I need to get drunk," and walked off.

This will be an interesting semester.