North to Alaska with a No-Account Cat

With my wife and an eccentric, “no-account,” cat named Pickles (explained in chapter two), I drove a thirty-foot motor home on a light-hearted romp of 90 days, 5,000 miles up, down, and across the vast interior of Western Canada, the Yukon and Alaska. We found unique adventures in places such as Barkerville, a “living ghost town, Homer, “a drinking village with a fishing problem,” and Hyder, “a town of a hundred happy souls and a few s_ _ _ t heads.” With locals and travelers alike, we shared stories including those about Rosie the cow, a Hell’s Gate survivor; Mandy, a spell casting, haunted doll; an eighty-year-old condom; and about famous and infamous characters such as Jack London, Robert Service, Soapy Smith, Diamond Tooth Gertie, and “soiled doves”—the Belgian Mare and Molly Fewclothes.

With my wife and an eccentric, “no-account,” cat named Pickles, (explained in chapter two), I drove a thirty-foot motor home on a light-hearted romp of 90 days, 5,000 miles up, down, and across the vast interior of Western Canada, the Yukon and Alaska. We found unique adventures in places such as Watson Lake, home of a signpost forest; Anchorage, home to twenty-six glaciers; Barkerville, a restored ghost town, Homer, “a drinking village with a fishing problem,” and Hyder, “a town of a hundred happy souls and a few s_ _ _ t heads.” With locals and travelers alike, we shared stories including those about Rosie the cow, a Hell’s Gate survivor; Mandy, a spell casting, haunted doll; an eighty-year-old condom; and about famous and infamous characters such as Jack London, Robert Service, Soapy Smith, Diamond Tooth Gertie, and “soiled doves”—the Belgian Mare and Molly Fewclothes. We also tasted lots of local cuisine such as bean (“Caribou strawberry”) stew, galactic cinnamon rolls, and tried a “Sourtoe” cocktail. The trick was to down the mixture without swallowing the real human toe lurking at the bottom of the glass. Driving was sometimes hazardous: rock showers, pot holes, bug parties on windshield, and frequent encounters with itinerant, illiterate wildlife (they never crossed at designated sites) including caribou, moose, Grizzly and black bear (“bears” in Canada), and Stone (stoned) sheep. In the same humorous/historical style as Bill Bryson and Dave Barry, my travel memoir is a testament to the pristine scenery, colorful inhabitants, frontier-like towns and exciting adventures found in the land of the midnight sun.

For over fifteen years, Herb Williams wrote a humor column, titled “Life and Times” relating to topical subjects from adolescence to Viagra; published in three different newspapers: the Southeast Cities Tribune, in Norwalk, California; the Los Cerritos Community News in Cerritos, California; and the Redlands Daily Facts in Redlands, California. Many of the columns were memoirs of forty years of on-the-road experience, including travels throughout all of the United States and Canada, several excursions into Mexico and Europe, and extensive tours of China, the U.K, Ireland, Australia and New Zealand. He has also published in national magazines: Trailer Life, Motorhome, and Trailblazer. He is a native Californian, who grew up and went to high school in Bell and Huntington Park near Maywood, California, his birth place. After serving in the U.S. Marine Corps, he attended Los Angeles City College and later California State University, Los Angeles where he was awarded a bachelor’s degree in English and two master’s degrees: English and education. Over a period of thirty-two years, he taught English, psychology and humanities at Montebello High School, in Montebello, California. In addition, he served as chairman of the English department, director of student activities, and assistant to the district’s superintendent of secondary education. He now lives in Redlands, California with his wife, Sharon, and a cat named Pickles.