The Forks Roadhouse, Present Day
The situation was interesting, needless to say, as I had the wonderful experience of living in the oldest roadhouse, still in use, in Alaska. Gold was found in 1898, in the Cache Creek Mining area, and serious mining began in 1906. The first miners took boats up the Susitna, Chulitna and Tokositna Rivers, a long and arduous journey that, surely, took it's toll of more than one human life. The Cache Creek Mining District is a gorgeous area, encompassing the southern foothills of Mt. McKinley and the Alaska Range. The Petersville Road was built in 1917 by a miner who was fed up with the excessively long boat ride to the mining district. Originally called the Cache Creek Wagon Road, this trail quickly became the favored route to Talkeetna.
Built in 1931, by Talkeetna merchant, Belle McDonald, the Forks Roadhouse was a stop for tired and hungry miners on the way out to the Cache Creek Mining Area. The miners were offered "grubstakes" by Ms. McDonald, whereby they were given supplies in agreement to pay back the debt once they struck pay dirt.
The Forks Roadhouse was a day's long travel into the journey, a perfect stopping point to rest and feed both the miners and their dog and horse teams. Another 30 miles up the winding trail and along a shear canyon cliff, the miners would reach the Cache Creek Mining District. To this day, one can still take a modern snowmachine up this winding and beautiful road and experience the breathtaking views and the heartpounding, cliff hugging engineering masterpiece.
Petersville Road - The Canyon in Winter, Looking Toward the Cache Creek Mining District
The Forks Roadhouse and its history was mentioned in depth in the book "The Mystery of the Cache Creek Murders" by Roberta Sheldon... this is an excellent read for anyone who relishes the adventure stories and historical accounts of these sourdoughs.
Cache Creek Mining District - Present Day
While living and working at the Forks Roadhouse, I had 16 dogs living in the lot out back, and I would frequently run them on the myriad of snowmachining trails that zig zag amongst the 250 square miles of unmarked wilderness. Although I no longer have the dogs and now ride an "iron dog," I still pine for the days when I toured this amazing area by the quiet and natural method of the sled dog team. I also had my German Shorthaired Pointer, Chuck, living with me. Chuck loved living at the Roadhouse as much as I did, and he would often be found sitting out front on a snowmachine, waiting for someone to give him a ride.
It was a snowy afternoon when Randy walked into the bar to take a break from fixing one of the Roadhouse's notoriously poor running snowmachines. I had met Randy a handful of times before, but knew his cabin partner, Mike, much better. Randy was always a polite and fun guy to have in the bar... never obnoxious or rude and one of the VERY few men who didn't feel the need to hit on the only female in Petersville. I had always assumed he was married. I poured Randy his usual Black Velvet Canadian Whisky and Coke and went back to my bartender / housekeeper / cook / entertainer duties.
After a few more cocktails, Randy was ready to go for a ride and I was getting off shift. We had just had an awesome snowfall and it was a crisp 0 degrees so I told him that I wanted to tag along. As usual, we got a good group together, including my good buddy Otis and Randy's friend, Sean. This was back in the day when I had a dog team, but not a sled, and instead of riding 2-up with Otis on his 2 person sled, I decided to hitch a ride on the back of Randy's sled.
MAN! That sled was screaming! Now, I had a few cocktails in me so I wasn't so worried about Randy's bold riding, never flinching when we took a sharp corner or when he'd punch the throttle and wheelie the sled. We navigated our way down Petersville Road to Jake Lake, where we rode wide open at somewhere nearing 100 mph, then hit the windy woods trail and Bonita loop. We turned left onto a short, narrow access trail leading to his cabin driveway and Randy punched the throttle up the little hill... home free!
BAM!!!!!
Before we knew what had hit us (or should I say, what we hit) we were flying through the air... we did a complete sommersault and landed exactly as we were sitting on the snowmachine, my arms still locked in a death grip around Randy's waist. It took us a second to realize what had just happened... we both started laughing hysterically! We had run smack into a tree stump, doing at least 50 mph. The snowmachine was hurting much more than we were, with a snapped right trailing arm. Now, anyone who has ever ridden a sled knows how much force it takes to break this big hunk of metal... we hit HARD!
We made it up to the Cabin and Randy was in a great deal of pain from smashing his thigh into the handlebar, as we went over them. We all decided to let Randy get to bed and we went on our Saturday night adventure.
That night was quite a doozey, including losing Sean off of the back of his sled multiple times (I was more sober, and still a little nervous about riding on the back of another sled), and also dealing with my friend, Tim, doing the funky chicken at Jim and Rhonda's cabin. Tim literally went blank in front of us... basically what I would call a passive seizure, where he slumped down in his chair, started breathing really odd and totally nonresponsive to our snapping and calling of his name. He snapped out of it after a couple of minutes, but by that point, we were all ready to call it a night, so we headed back to the Roadhouse for some shuteye.
It was not too many days after that night that Randy called the Roadhouse for a snow report and to see if I was ok... I was fine, and was definately ready to hang out with him again :-) Even after he tried to kill me. I was sure to get his phone number... it's still one of the only ones I know by heart.
After I left my residency at the Roadhouse, I was couch surfing and trying to find work. I went up to the Ville to go for a snowmachine ride, and had been given permission to use Jim and Rhonda's old 500. It occured to me when I was going through Wasilla to call Randy and see if he wanted to go on a beautiful spring ride... we ended up getting in touch, and were able to time it perfectly to meet at his cabin.
The ride was phenomenal... a gorgeous, warm sunny April day. We headed up into the Dutch Hills and the guys helped me get unstuck multiple times :-) I asked my friend to take a photo of me with the mountains in the background and as I stood there, I blurted out "Come here, Randy!" He jumped into the picture and I wrapped my leg and arms around him. That was the moment of no return. When we looked at that photo and our smiles, we both knew we had found someone to share life with.
This past year, in April, we went back up to the same spot where the photo was taken and the day was just as gorgeous as the previous year. I hope that this April adventure becomes a yearly outing for us.
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