With a shiver Helen said, “They must be advertising an all-expense tour to Florida.”
But later we found that it was not a vacationer’s dream nor even a window decorator’s error. It was March 1952, and they were showing the latest mode for Alaskan summer.
With the honking of wild geese, branches spread forth their green shoots and the first iris of spring appeared. By the time the eighteen-hour days of summer came and the purple iris were crowded out by the magenta fire flowers, our illusions about Alaska had undergone a complete reversal. We joined the after-work crowd at nearby Lake Spenard for water-skiing—and its resultant involuntary swimming. But it soon became apparent that there was much more of Alaska than we could see trailing behind a motorboat, so, since Dinah refused to pull a sled, we bought a station wagon. Weekends that followed we spent driving along the jagged coast of Cook Inlet or Turnagain Arm, or camping in the spruce forests of the Kenai Peninsula. And each payday we deposited in the bank anything over our minimum living expenses and payments on cameras and the car.
Although moose occasionally invaded Elmendorf Air Force Base or chased cars through the streets of Anchorage, we wanted to see wildlife in its natural habitat. Our first vacation we spent in Mount McKinley National Park, pitching our tent in the shadow of the highest peak on the North American continent. In the valleys whistling marmots signaled our approach, and porcupines ambled clear of caribou that thundered over the hills. Loaded with cameras, we climbed to dizzy crags where white Dali sheep stood like bearded patriarchs. And we stalked the golden-and-black Toklat grizzlies that padded over the spongy tundra. With no guns allowed in the park, we armed ourselves with a coffee can filled with rocks and followed a huge male that was courting an only slightly smaller female. I had the cine-camera leveled on the tripod and was just ready to release the shutter when I heard the rocks rattling furiously in the can. Angrily I turned to Helen at my side. “Stop shaking that thing. You’ll scare the bears.”
“That’s the idea,” she quivered. “Look behind you!”
Less than twenty paces away, and standing upright, was a third bear. Our big male had competition for the affections of his girlfriend and we were right in the middle. We concluded our story of the three bears with a rattling good exit.
Winter came, the hoarfrost turned the trees to crystal, and the wind piled the snow in demon shapes. Strapping on snowshoes, we floundered through the white forests to some now deserted trapper’s cabin. Dinah adapted herself readily to the deep snow, but I can’t honestly say she took it in her stride. More often she took it in ours, and her attempts at hitchhiking on our snowshoes always resulted in our being pitched forward on our faces.
Time passed quickly until one gray overcast Sunday in January of 1954. When any sensible novice would have been at home with a book, I was skiing on the slopes of the Chugach Mountains near Anchorage. A combination of drifts, flat light, and overenthusiasm shattered my aspirations of becoming an Emile Allais overnight. After a month in the hospital I returned to work encased in plaster to my hip. Although I was hardly in the executive class, thereafter I enjoyed one of a boss’s privileges—I could put my leg on the desk with impunity. But this was little compensation for the dragging months that followed.
At night I occupied myself with books and records, but Sibelius’s Finlandia brought visions of snow-covered hills and Beethoven’s Pastoral the green fields of summer. The skis in the corner, the sleeping bags and packboards on the rack near the ceiling, the piece of glacial driftwood, and even Helen’s paintings on the wall were sad reminders that our outdoor activities had ceased.
But there was one kind of music that brought me from the past and cheered me with thoughts of the future—the gay guitars of Trio Los Panchos. One evening, about five months after breaking my leg, I was studying a map of the Western Hemisphere. Two places repeatedly caught my eye, Circle and Ushuaia. I wondered why I hadn’t thought of it before. Excitedly I interrupted Helen’s concentration on her still life. “Why don’t we drive north to the little town of Circle and then all the way south to Ushuaia?”
“To where?”
“Ushuaia,” I said, pointing to a tiny dot at the tip of South America. “The world’s southernmost town.”
“But it’s on an island,” Helen countered.
“That’s all right. If we can get through the Pacific to Panama, and the Caribbean to Colombia, we can surely cross the Strait of Magellan.”
Helen put down her brush and sat beside me. “It does sound like a wonderful idea, but——”
Before she could finish I continued, “No one has ever driven the full length of the Americas under his own power. What a thrill that would be. Let’s give our notice now. Our contract has been up three months, our car and cameras are paid for, and we have almost six thousand dollars saved.”
“But, Frank, you’re still in a cast.”
“But I’ll be ready for a brace next month, and I can work on the jeep while my leg is getting strong.”
The small town of Circle was as quiet as the broad Yukon that flowed silently beside it. As we watched two Indian children play in the lines of a river boat moored close to the bank, we found it difficult to imagine Circle as it had been at the turn of the century, a roaring tent city bursting with a conglomeration of men from all parts of the world, all after one thing—gold. When the madcap flurry was over, Circle settled back to enjoy the only distinction left to it, that of being on the Arctic Circle. But it was deprived of even that distinction: a later survey showed it to be slightly south of the polar meridian. Now nothing remains but a cluster of Indian huts, a few caches, and a Northern Commercial trading post. With the opening of the Alaska Highway, however, a new distinction was given it—Circle became the farthest north point in the Western Hemisphere that can be reached by connected road.
On June 21, 1954, from Circle, our second attempt to drive to South America began. At Eagle Summit, a few miles south of Circle, the longest day of the year was drawing to a close. The rolling treeless tundra was bathed in a pink mist, crimson streaked the sky, and the orange sun arced down in a long sweeping curve. Near the horizon it moved horizontally. Briefly the giant ball touched the rim of the world and then began to rise. Twilight, night and dawn fused into one; yesterday became today without the separation of darkness. When Alaska’s midnight sun rose again, it was the twenty-second of June, our seventh wedding anniversary. Helen was twenty-eight, I was thirty, and Dinah was seven years old.
South from Circle the Steese Highway to Fairbanks followed the route of the early mail run, when dog teams were the only means of communication. Old log roadhouses, where prospectors once rested on their way to the gold fields, now had a sixty-year growth of grassy whiskers on their sagging sod roofs and served hot berry pie to the tourists. Near Fairbanks gold dredges sat like giant toads spreading warts of tailings on the virgin landscape.
From Fairbanks the Alaska Highway led through greener country, the yellow red of tundra gave way to stands of shimmering birch, and in marshy ponds moose splashed among yellow water lilies. When we crossed the Alaska-Canada border, nearly twenty-eight months had passed since we had stepped from the transport plane and pulled the GI parkas up around our ears. In that time we had come to love the wildness of Alaska and to feel its strength, and had developed an almost chauvinistic attitude that rivaled any Texan’s love for Texas.
At Whitehorse we saw the great Yukon River again for the last time. Below the rushing Whitehorse Rapids faded unused stern-wheelers were pulled up on the banks. Once the lifeblood of the Yukon Territory, they now lay eclipsed by the float-equipped planes that landed on the water beside them.
Signposts were common along the road, but at Watson Lake there was a concentration of them, a reminder of the days when the Alaska Highway was new. During World War II thousands of men working together had opened it in a record eight months. Someone, perhaps a bit nostalgically, put up a sign pointing to his hometown, and others had followed suit. The one sig
n grew to a wild pincushion of boards pointing to all parts of the world. We added ours to the scores of others—a bright red-and-yellow sign that said “Cape Horn 17,000 miles.”
While I reveled in the pleasure of bending my knee and timorously flexing my ankle, Helen dodged chuckholes in the wide gravel road and moved well to the side to allow other cars and trucks to pass that were in more of a hurry than we. On the open stretches I spelled Helen at the wheel, but for the most part I sat watching clumps of alder and aspen and scattered tamarack roll past—what I could see of them between passing cars. When Uncle Sam transplanted the Dust Bowl farmers to Alaska he must have brought all the dust with them and used it to surface the Alaska Highway.
Sporadic bursts of rain gave respite from the dust and restored the brilliance to the fire flowers that lined the road. In bustling wheat-belt Dawson Creek the Alaska Highway ended at Milepost Zero, and we turned south-west over the Hart Highway through pine forests to Prince George. Trees were larger, the country more rugged as we wound through the deep scar of the Fraser River Canyon to Vancouver and across the U.S. border.
Along the rocky coast of Washington, Oregon, and California the Pacific pounded the cliffs, its foam scouring every hollow. Though Helen had little to say, I knew what she was thinking. What would it be like out there? Would the jeep really be seaworthy?
The assembly of the jeep was somewhat more difficult than its disassembly—in the three years I had forgotten how it came apart. Beginning with the obvious, we dragged the hull from under the tree, where it had gathered three crops of walnut husks, and diligently flaked off the rust, patched the holes, pounded out the dents, had it sandblasted, and gave it an undercoat of red rustproof paint. Then, with the hundreds of parts and thousands of bolts spread out on the floor of my father-in-law’s well-equipped workshop, we proceeded to fit together the puzzle, which was akin to getting a ship inside a bottle or a jeep inside a fifteen-foot boat. As each part was bolted into place, the space inside the hull grew smaller, and I had to amend my optimistic statement that I could work on the jeep while my leg was getting strong. I should have added, if Helen was handy to extricate me from some pretzeled position inside the hull or under the hood.
At the end of six weeks the jeep was as it might have been when it came from the Ford assembly line in 1942. Designed during the rush of war, the amphibious jeep was strictly a compromise—conventional jeep motor, chassis, steering gear, and six-speed gear boxes set in a steel tub. With two differentials and four wheels hanging from springs outside, power was transmitted by drive shafts through holes in the hull that were closed by heavy rubber seals. A propeller and a bilge pump driven from the rear of the transmission, a rudder connected by steel cable to the steering wheel, and a power-operated capstan winch on the bow turned the jeep into a boat. To cool the engine on land or in calm water, air entered through a hatch in the bow deck, passed through the radiator and out through a smaller hatch on either side of the windshield. In rough water all three hatches could be closed from inside the cockpit and, by means of an ingenious system of ducts, air was taken from under the dash, passed through the radiator, and then out through a fourth hatch behind the windshield.
All in all, it was a very clever little vehicle, but it had certain undesirable traits. Originally planned as a command car for squadrons of its big sisters, the amphibious “ducks,” the sea jeep soon fell out of favor with some officers who objected to leading their troops from the rear. Not only was it slower than the “duck,” but it had the unpopular habit of sinking with no more provocation than a ripple. After only a few thousand had been built they were discontinued.
With a shape that would turn a naval architect green, the sea jeep plowed through the waves rather than over them, and, with practically no freeboard, a few buckets of water over the side was enough to swamp it. But if we enclosed the open cockpit with a watertight cab and counted on the jeep’s low center of gravity to keep it right side up, we felt—or I should say I did—that the jeep could take a moderate sea, which was the only kind I had any intention of being out in.
Making the jeep seaworthy and providing for extra fuel and water was only half the problem. Since our budget would allow us to stay in hotels only in the big cities, the jeep would have to serve as our home as well, and this entailed the additional requirements of sleeping and cooking facilities, and protection against heat and insects. Furthermore, we had but three months to complete the transformation. If we could leave no later than January 1, 1955, we could travel without hurry during the dry season and still reach Panama by May, the calmest time of the year in the Caribbean.
With oak and plywood we framed the cab, extending it a foot and a half over the rear. The stern of a boat was not an ideal place for a cantilever structure, but the extra length allowed room for two full-length bunks. To assure that the doors were watertight we wanted to make them as small as possible and still provide easy entry. After clamping wooden slats to the gunwale to form a mock frame, I called Helen, and we practiced getting in and out. We squirmed in feet first and crawled in head first, but the technique used for climbing on a horse worked best. After a half hour of practice we could swing smartly through the mock door, only seldom bumping our heads. But one thing still bothered Helen. The bottom of the door had to be above the water line, and since that was three feet from the ground how could she get in and out in a skirt?
I was concerned with more pressing problems, so I left that one up to her and concentrated on finishing the jeep. Stretching the days and working well into the night, we saw the jeep slowly take shape. For extra fuel and water, on the sides of the cabin above the water line, we mounted racks that held a total of eight five-gallon Jerry cans, two for water and six for gasoline. These, with the sixteen-gallon main tank inside the hull, gave us a forty-six-gallon capacity, enough for an estimated six hundred miles by land or a hundred and fifty miles by sea. While afloat, however, there was no way to transfer fuel from the Jerry cans to the main tank, and we would be limited to forty-five miles of water travel at one stretch. But since we planned to beach-hop, coming ashore each night to camp, we considered this no handicap.
For better traction we mounted oversized 7.60 x 15 tires on specially built wheels, selecting a conventional tread, which was more desirable for operation in sand than the mud-and-snow type. To reduce weight we converted the electrical system from twelve to six volts, eliminating one battery and exchanging the heavy generator for a lighter one. After a few miles of road test we decided that a heater would not be necessary even in the coldest Andean highlands. All we had to do was open the hatch behind the windshield to have all the hot air we wanted. It was more difficult to keep the cab cool, but insulating the fire wall helped some. The road test also showed the jeep to be underpowered, with a top speed of about forty-five miles per hour.
By the middle of December the jeep was complete. Inside the varnished cabin Navy-surplus blue-striped spreads covered the sleeping bags and air mattresses. Clipped over the windows and the emergency exit in the roof were detachable screens to keep out insects. Our main storage space was beneath the bunks, and above them were two cabinets that ran the full length of the cabin. These, along with the wedge-shaped space in the bow, comprised our ship’s holds. For mountain curves we installed a blasting horn and for crowded streets a less obtrusive doorbell. For navigation (although we never intended to be out of sight of land) we mounted a small compass. In the sandwiched roof deck there was a two-inch blanket of rock wool insulation topped by a sheet of aluminum and a station wagon rack to complete the confusion. With light gray paint and red wheels, and her name and destination clearly marked on her doors, our seagoing jeep was ready for her salt water test. Christened with a Coke bottle, La Tortuga, the sixty-horsepower, two-and-a-half ton turtle, was born.
Our awkward hybrid caused considerable consternation that day, a week before Christmas, when she rolled down the small-boat ramp into Balboa Bay. One old sea captain pushed his hat back and scratched h
is head in disbelief. “Well I’ll be damned!” he exclaimed. “It really floats!”
After three years of waiting for that moment, that was our reaction too.
While Dinah stood bewildered on the deck that was the cabin roof, we chugged around the harbor observing all the maritime rules of the road. We had little difficulty in keeping within the speed limit; when we clocked La Tortuga over a marked course, her top speed was just under six knots, and in reverse her progress was almost imperceptible. After maneuvering cautiously for a time we recklessly negotiated tight turns and deliberately ran through the wakes of the biggest cabin cruisers. Many skippers undoubtedly thought the side of a boat was a strange place for a spare tire, but one wag recognized La Tortuga for what she was. As he drew his launch alongside he shouted, “Why don’t you get a sea horse?”
Though the test was a complete success, we were by no means ready to leave. There was still the matter of packing, and the notebooks we had been keeping were brimming. It would have taken a dozen jeeps to carry all the things we had thought of in seven years. Helen’s great-uncle, a world traveler for fifty years, was contemptuous of all the paraphernalia we planned to take along.
“When I went over the Andes on a mule,” he said, “I carried nothing but a pocketknife and a change of underwear.”
“Yes, I know, Uncle Breck,” I replied, “but it will take more than a boot in the rear to get this mule running again if she quits in the middle of the mountains.”
20,000 Miles South Page 2