I Drove A Boring Car 4,000 Mostly Trouble-Free Miles To Alaska And The Experience Changed Me

“Have you ever gotten the whole car to shake like it’s on rumble strips at around 50mph?”

“Oh yeah that happens. You diagnosed that for me. Something about not really switching gears or something.”

It’s been only three hours since I left home. I’m on the phone with a friend whose 2003 Honda CR-V I have borrowed for an ill-conceived solo road trip to Alaska — CR-V whose automoatic transmission seems ready, willing, and able to abandon me on some lonesome roadside near the 60th parallel in a remote part of Canada.

I am not a very smart man.

[Ed Note: Daniel Tsvankin is an Autopian member who told us on The Autopian’s member-Discord that he was doing an epic trip in a CR-V. We asked him to write about it for us. If you’re not an Autopian member hanging out with other members and us authors on the Discord, please consider joining the club! -DT]

How Did I Get Here?

Last summer, I spent a one-week vacation in Alaska, staying at a remote cabin belonging to the family of one of my best friends, Alex. Afterward I swore I’d find a way to spend a whole summer at that cabin. (Admittedly, a small part of the allure was an automotive project already conveniently located on the property; see below.)

For the first time in my life, I wanted to live unbound from any schedule, to give in to wanderlust, to cosplay as Henry David Thoreau, with a dose of occasionally waking up and saying “yep, I’m hanging out on a glacier today.”

This spring, I articulated the desire to Alex’s family and got an unequivocal yes. I could spend a long summer at the cabin, which is located near the former ghost town of McCarthy, a six-hour drive east of Anchorage. Even better, Alex (who lives in Denver) decided she was getting rid of her old Honda and accepted my offer to first add 5,000 miles to it by road tripping it from my home in suburban Denver to Alaska. Not that she quite gave my idea a ringing endorsement:

Terrific! It would happen this year. I’d drive Alex’s 2003 Honda CR-V from Denver to Anchorage, stock up on supplies, and then drive out to McCarthy to live at the cabin for the summer. At the end of this Alaska sabbatical, I’d sell the CR-V in Anchorage and fly home.

The Route

Over the course of almost 4,000 miles and 70 driving hours, the plan was:

– Head west to visit friends in Ogden, Utah
– Head even further west to drive up the Oregon coast. I’d somehow never set foot in Oregon before!
– Spend a weekend in Seattle visiting more friends.
– Beeline to Anchorage, first through British Columbia on the Steward-Cassiar Highway and then linking up with the Alaska Canada (ALCAN) highway in the Yukon.

It’s my first time driving a long enough distance that Google Maps has to zoom all the way out to globe view.

America to Canada feat. Swedish Death Cleaning

Grizzly bears. Poisonous plants. Big scary bears. Falling into an abandoned mineshaft. Dying of boredom. No, really, bears.

Whenever I shared my plan with someone, their first instinct was to ask if I was concerned about some grave danger, either on the road or over the long summer at the cabin. It got to me. Maybe I needed to acknowledge that risk, and prepare for its consequences. I needed to confront my mortality.

First came Swedish death cleaning, the practice of getting rid of your extra belongings so the people you love don’t have to deal with them in case you suddenly can’t. Like many gearheads, my extra belongings were mostly cars.

Goodbye Ioniq 6, commuter extraordinaire. I hope someone appreciates your 5 mi/kWh efficiency and Tatra T87-esque curves.

Goodbye Datsun 280ZX project car, back to your original family. I can no longer pretend your blown head gasket is just a cooling system problem, and I hope your L28 naturally aspirated straight six gets the rebuild it deserves. In the meantime, at least my dad was finally rid of the “eyesore” I’d parked next to his house for a year.

Next, I got medical power of attorney forms notarized, designating my brother. Then a few nights before departure, I was in his living room, having a conversation about death. About how I would want to be treated in the event of incapacitation, my minimum standard of living, and if there was no chance of recovery to that standard, how I would want to die. Really cheery stuff. But genuinely important, and serious, and scary, and yes, sometimes awkward.

I finally had to confront the mortality of my loved ones and experience some grief. My grandparents’ health decline accelerated from rapid to precipitous this year. I genuinely didn’t know if they will both be around when the trip was done.

The Saturday before departure, I wasn’t chasing vacuum leaks. I was spending time with my grandparents, telling them I loved them with some extra vigor, and finally driving back home with the twisting, nauseous feeling of maybe having told someone goodbye for the last time.

I don’t Wanna Drive it all Night Long

It’s Monday morning, Day One of the trip and my first time ever behind the wheel of this loaner CR-V. Alex has dropped it off at my place in suburban Denver with a gas tank half full. Time to load up and head north.

Turning on the stereo cues up the CD that’s been left inside.

Ridin’ down the street in my CR-V
Picking up my homies in my CR-V
Kick it with my boo thang in my CR-V
Ridin’ down the street in my Honda SUV

Alex has left behind a CD comprising the rap song “CR-V” burned ten straight times. Our longtime road trip rule is that once a CD starts, it plays start to finish. No skips. I am by myself, but I am a man of honor and integrity, so the CD keeps playing.

I start to wish every modern car interior was even 10% this tactile and this richly brown.

I’ve been riding down the street in my Honda SUV for a good three minutes when it first happens: the whole car starts convulsing and shaking at 45 mph, roughly 2,000 RPM. I mash the throttle a bit and the transmission ends its tantrum. Over the next four hours, I diagnose the transmission rumbling as a grumpy torque converter lockup clutch. On a phone call, Alex reminds me that she’s told me about this already, years ago apparently. I’d mis-diagnosed the issue without having ever driven the car.

I arrive that night at a friend’s home in Ogden to the slight smell of burnt clutch, probably from an overheating torque converter lockup clutch whose solenoid I’d felt banging and chattering its way through town. The housemates at least take pity on me.

I choose to solve my transmission problem by ignoring it and pressing on.

This Land

If you find yourself in the American West and are comfortable without amenities, you’re rarely more than 30 miles from a free place to camp on a beautiful patch of public land. And if you have something like iOverlander installed on your phone, many of those places have been marked and reviewed for you by helpful fellow travelers.

After leaving Ogden, I spend the following night camped on the Oregon side of the Snake River in America’s deepest gorge, Hells Canyon. I have a beautiful BLM land campsite to myself and begin a nightly routine called Taking Photos of the CR-V at the Campsite From Very Far Away.

The next day, still hundreds of miles from Portland, I pull up to a truck stop and notice that the EV chargers are bumping. Four brand new full-size SUVs are juicing up, people are milling around, and…beagles? Beagles! I’ve stumbled onto Operation Frodo!

That night, near the Oregon coast, I set up camp on a ridge in Tillamook State Forest. I regret to inform people that, despite Tillamook’s eponymous creamery, the trees are made of wood, not cheese.

I ultimately detour to the Tillamook Creamery for a quick guided tour and tasting. On a solo road trip, the lingering taste of 10-year aged cheddar is a good driving companion.

After driving up the Oregon coast, I stay on Washington Department of Natural Resources forest land. I see and hear no one else that night, then wake up inside a cloud the next morning.

A quirk of these public lands’ multi-use nature, and of their origins in managing logging access (among other things), is that camping isn’t the only thing happening out here.

In Tillamook State Forest, I was woken up at 7:30am to the blasts of two guys sighting in their hunting rifles 50 feet from my sleeping location. In Washington, my morning alarm was logging equipment rumbling to life on the other side of my hill at the same hour.

I Did Not Stop for Timbits

On a Monday morning one week after I’ve departed Denver, I start the day on an air mattress in a friend’s spare room in Seattle after a weekend of catching up, ready to load up and start the Canadian leg of this journey.

I walk out to the CR-V, and nothing. No lights, no sounds, no response to the fob. The headlights have been left on all night, and the battery is dead.

A dead battery isn’t inherently a problem; I’ve packed a clearance-aisle lithium ion jump pack that just barely gets the CR-V back to displacing 2.4 liters of fuel-air mixture per two crankshaft revolutions. The real problem is vibes. I’ve managed to screw up despite being comfortable, well-fed, and well-rested all weekend — poor omen for two days from now when none of those things is true.

After crossing into Canada, my route snakes north hundreds of miles until reaching Highway 37, the Stewart-Cassiar scenic byway.

It’s a bucket list drive. Black bear cubs sitting next to the road, amiably watching traffic go by. Soaring peaks, fearsome rivers, sparkling lakes, towering trees. All viewable from the car window during the day and from within 50 feet of my campsite that night.

After almost 500 miles through British Columbia, the Stewart-Cassiar ends at the ALCAN, which takes me through the Yukon toward Alaska.

Canada Lesson #1: Range anxiety is not entirely exclusive to EVs. Five miles past the town of Dease Lake, I realize I’m on the Stewart-Cassiar’s longest stretch of gas station-free road: 247 kilometers (154 miles). I shamefully U-turn back to town to fill up, despite my tank being over half full.

Also: With enough patience and gumption, this whole journey is doable by EV. There are BC Hydro 50kW charging stations scattered along even the most remote chunks of the drive.

Canada Lesson #2: You can often find a vast cross-section of humanity within just two miles of home, but you can certainly find it 2,000 miles away from home. Indian college students goofing around in a Prince George convenience store. Australians whose working holiday took them to an inn partway up the Stewart-Cassiar. The Quebecois accents flying around a food truck park in Whitehorse, which is a shockingly charming city with a nice riverwalk.

Four days after leaving Seattle and one day before Juneteenth, I ride a highway built in part by thousands of African-American soldiers into Alaska. I’m on the ALCAN with a mission: to finish this last 12-hour leg to Anchorage today, with a night of sleep on a real mattress (my first in 10 days) at Alex’s parents’ house as my reward. My butt is numb and my legs seem to be permanently cramped. I’m scarfing down Scandinavian Swimmers with the vigor of a Katmai grizzly bear prepping for hibernation. I do not slow down or cancel cruise control for the tsunami-sized frost heaves or the hot tub-sized potholes.

About 240 hours after setting off from Denver, I reach my destination. I arrive in Anchorage to warm hugs and hot Thai food, collapse into a mattress, and pass out for 11 hours. Part 1 of this summer’s journey is complete.

OK I Guess we Need to Talk About the Picnic Table

Tell a group of gearheads that you’re taking a 20-year-old, beige-over-beige compact crossover with a four-speed automatic transmission on a camping road trip, and the crowd will go mild. But mention that it’s a Honda CR-V?

“OMG are you gonna use the table?”
“Hope you’re putting the CR-V picnic table to good use.”
“Show us your CR-V table.”

These are real quotes from three different, very real people.

Even the highly sophisticated strata of society known as Autopian Members apparently goes crazy when an automaker builds a picnic table into their best-selling compact crossover.

Fine. Here you go. Ugh.

But is the Picnic Table Good?

It’s perfectly cromulent! The picnic table forms nearly the entire load floor of the CR-V’s pleasingly cuboidal cargo area. It’s removed by pulling a handle up to unlatch it, then really yanking up and sliding the table out. Putting it back is the reverse process and is also unexpectedly hassle-free. The table self-aligns in its groove and latches back in snugly.

It’s also a packaging triumph.

In the back of this generation CR-V, you’ll find not only a picnic table snuck underneath the cargo area’s carpeting, but a deep spare tire well beneath it. A full-size spare is lashed to the side-opening hatch. In an era of “here’s a can of fix-a-flat, have fun”, this whole cargo area is a delight. And early 2000s Honda definitely knew what they had.

The drawback of a picnic table load floor is that you’re unloading the entire car if you have the audacity to try actually using your CR-V’s picnic table.

On my first night using the table, I tried to cheat and only unload the heavy items occupying the cargo area’s center while leaving perimeter items be. As soon as I pulled the picnic table out, the carpet on top collapsed into the spare tire well. Water jugs tipped and leaked. Cookware clattered. Nerves frazzled. You can see the implosion in the background of this photo, taken on Picnic Table Night 1 in Oregon.

Lesson learned: the CR-V picnic table is not to be used on a whim. You can’t just pull into a suitable field in the middle of a drive and have a picnic like you’re in a Chrysler Cordoba brochure or something. If you want to use the table, you must commit to all the unloading that precedes using the table.

But once you do commit, it’s pretty good! You get a shockingly stable cubic yard of real estate to cook with, and it’ll seat four in a pinch. I was doing little more than eating camp ramen and reading Annie Dillard’s Pilgrim at Tinker Creek at this table, but it clearly has the potential for greater things.

So What’s the Punctum of This Trip?

I face death before driving a single mile, awake to gunfire in the woods of the American West, and marvel at the beauty of both nature and the human condition in Canada…but you people just want table pics.

Top graphic images: Daniel Tsvankin; DepositPhotos.com