Halfway down the Richardson Highway there was a “road closed” sign, but a barrier only halfway across. There was a trucker sitting in his rig and I asked what he knew about it.

He said, “You can probably go, the worst that can happen is they’ll turn you around, they can’t take your birthday from you.”

We continued on and when we met up with the plows a good many miles later we thought … if we have to turn around now we won’t have the gas to get back to Delta Junction.

A guy hopped out of one of the plows and I braced myself for the rebuke, when he said instead, “We’re just about through, just follow us at a distance, we’ll be blowing a lot of snow so stay back and we’ll get you through. Whew.

Then he came back and said, “Hey when y’all get to Mile 185, just move the barrier off the road, move our work truck into the driveway you’ll see there and we’ll call it highway open.”

Only in Alaska

Only in Alaska.