The Letter Continues:

My First Ride On a Jet Plane...

... So much for Pine Pass. It was enough to put a nervous person in the hospital. All day Monday, I was nervous and couldn't eat very well. We reached Dawson Creek Monday night, and bought some regular truck chains, which were [very difficult] to put on the truck because the weight of the gasoline made the fender wells set down too close to the wheels. Anyway, Monday night at Dawson Creek, we decided I should fly on from there because I was getting too sick to continue, and there probably wouldn't be any airport of any size between there and Whitehorse. And... it was getting colder, so cold I was afraid to expose Rachel, even to change her diapers, though I had to, of course. That night in Dawson Creek, I started throwing up--just nerves. Dave checked with the airlines and found there was no airport in Dawson Creek, but one in Fort St. John, a few miles on up the road, where the gravel road, the Alcan*, begins. So we went there Tuesday morning.
[*Remember, in 1970 the Alaska-Canadian Highway, or Alcan, was a gravel road from Fort St. John to the Canada/Alaska border, 1200 miles.]

At the airport they told us there would be a Canadian Pacific flight out of Ft. St. John that afternoon at 2:45, which would arrive at Whitehorse about 4:00 pm, where I could get connections to Anchorage. Canadian Pacific Airlines, however, doesn't fly to U.S. cities, even in Alaska, they told us, but in Whitehorse, I could get a Wien Consolidated plane to Anchorage. The only trouble was that the W.C. plane would leave Whitehorse about 15 minutes before I would arrive there, and I would have to wait in Whitehorse 2 days for another WC plane to go to Anchorage.  But, they said, maybe I could get my pilot on the Canadian Pacific plane to radio ahead to the Wien pilot before we reached Whitehorse and ask him to wait and hold his flight for me because I was sick and had a little baby, etc., and they didn't legally have to, but they might do it if my pilot would explain the circumstances. That way I would get to Anchorage that same night, Tuesday.

So on that small hope, (and a lot of praying) we got me a ticket, and David drove away and left me in that airport. And that was the loneliest, scariest feeling I've ever had when he walked out and drove the rig away.

When I got on the Canadian Pacific plane that afternoon, I started telling the stewardesses about my situation, and they were so nice and went and told the pilot, and when we neared Whitehorse, he radioed ahead. As we were landing in Whitehorse, the stewardess came to me and told me the Wien plane was on the ground and waiting for me. I started crying. It was like a miracle unfolding in front of me. I just knew the Lord had touched that pilot's heart and made him hold that flight for me. But when I stepped off the plane, a man met us at the ground and told us that Wien plane had not specifically waited for me, but that flight had been cancelled because an engine had failed. The agent in Ft. St. John had misinformed me; the Wien flight had been scheduled to leave not 15 minutes before I arrived but an hour and a half, and I would have been out of luck if the engine hadn't failed. As it was, I could get a flight out the next day. Well, I thought, that's better than waiting here two days. (And, after all, what else could I do? I was hundreds, even thousands of miles from anyone I knew.)

It was bitter cold in Whitehorse, but the terminal was warm. I tried to get something to eat that I could keep down, but the coffee bar was closing and the woman running it looked angry at any last minute customers. She didn't have any milk or soup. I settled for a greasy grilled cheese sandwich I couldn't bear to look at for a couple of hours. When it was cold I ate a few bites. I drank coke out of a machine (25 cents, can you imagine?) [When I wrote this letter in 1970, I think bottled drinks were a dime.]

I talked to the Wien ticket agent there and he told me their airlines was sending another plane from Fairbanks, Alaska, down there with another engine for the one that was grounded there and that plane would take all the first plane's passengers and me to Fairbanks where I could get connections to Anchorage. That plane was due to arrive at 9:00 pm or so, and they would call me when it came. So I settled down with Rachel in a little room where the pilots get their briefings and flight plans. It had a couch, and I just made myself at home. Rachel went to sleep. Whitehorse is just a little nothing town in the bush and the last flight out was to have been at 7:30 pm, and after that the terminal building cleared and there was no one there but the watchmen and us. The other passengers on the Wien plane that had been grounded were in a hotel that the airlines had provided for them, but which the airlines wouldn't provide for me because my connection had not been a legal one and they weren't responsible for me. (In fact, if they had known I had prayed down that engine failure, they might have tarred and feathered me.)

Well, the plane didn't come in at nine, but at three a.m... But finally, about four o'clock I was on my way to Fairbanks, eating wonderful potato soup and crackers and milk, the first substantial food I had had all day and night, while we bucked 100-mile-per-hour winds (no kidding) and holding Rachel, who had slept peacefully all night. We had to stay in Fairbanks about three hours and the airlines provided a motel room and breakfast in a restaurant. Boy-oh-boy! the prices of things in Fairbanks are way beyond reason. The room was just rather ordinary, and I saw the price on the bill I signed, $23.00. My breakfast (hotcakes, a slice of ham, and glass of milk) was $2.50. Things, I find, are only a little cheaper in Anchorage. [Again, remember this was in November 1970.]

It was about 9:00 when we got to Anchorage. It was beginning to be daylight, and I could see huge flat hunks of ice floating around in the Cook Inlet as the plane flew over it. The city of Anchorage is very nice and clean, and most of it is new or rebuilt since the earthquake of 1964. They have had a very mild winter until right after Christmas. It was raining as we got off the plane, and wasn't too cold--nothing like Whitehorse or Fairbanks had been.

I had to get a cab out to the Coveys', my friends with whom I stayed till Dave came. Kathy was home very sick with bronchitis, and a little later her mother and father both came home from work really sick with the same thing. Thursday, Thanksgiving Day, I just rested and rested, and all the Coveys stayed in bed, too sick to eat their turkey. They were all better by Monday, but then Rachel was running a high fever and vomiting and coughing and stuffed up all at the same time. First time she was ever really sick, and it scared me. The pastor of the Church here, Brother Sullivan, and his wife, came over and prayed for her, and after that she got a little better. She hasn't had fever again since then, but she isn't rid of the cough or runny nose yet.

Dave came in the Thursday night a week after Thanksgiving. After I had left him at Ft. St. John, he had traveled only 400 miles further in seven days, and the going had been very rough. Apparently, from the things he told me, our little sliding in Pine Pass had been zero compared to the ones he had had after I left. He said he was so glad I wasn't there or he'd have been so worried he wouldn't have known what to do. Anyway, after the fourth attempt to climb one slippery hill, the axle on the truck had popped in two, and it took two road graders hooked together to haul him over that hill, after which he hitch-hiked to a little town, bought an axle, returned and put it on the truck, drove five miles further, and on the next slippery hill broke that axle. So another roadgrader hauled him to a level field behind a lodge and he left the whole rig there and caught a ride 150 miles into Anchorage (an army man just re-stationed here who had decided to drive the Alcan for once just to say he'd done it).

When Dave came in, he was covered with a black curly beard and six inches of hair in the back, and so dirty--oh, me. He hadn't slept for 36 hours straight, and the coat he'd worn from San Diego he had thrown away because it was torn to shreds from crawling under the truck so many times to put on the chains.

We didn't know where to start to straighten out the mess we were in... Everything we owned was sitting over there in Canada, 1150 miles away, except a small suitcase and two small boxes of clothes, mostly Rachel's. So we bought a car on Saturday morning, a fairly decent '60 Chevy sedan for $300, the cheapest we could find, and Dave started looking around Anchorage for the axle and some tires which needed replacing.

Sunday morning Sister Covey looked out the window and said, "Dave, did you park your car on the street in front of the house?"

"Yeah."

"There's no car out there." We thought she was joking.

But sure enough, someone had stolen our car. The police found the car Monday morning at four o'clock, abandoned in the middle of the road and out of gas. Joyriders. But they had hot-rodded it and now the transmission clanks and pops every time we stop. Oh, well, another minor mishap.

[...To be continued... maybe tomorrow...]