Been home a few days now and we are just starting to sort our photos. In doing so we are also beginning to sort out our memories of the trip. A journey lasting almost two months and involving over 10,000 miles in travels takes some time to digest. There is a lot we saw and there is just no way to tell it all. But we can tell a few stories. Like this one.

In 1942, Private Carl K. Lindley was helping to build the Alaskan Highway. Spurred on by fears of a Japanese invasion, the entire highway was completed in less than a year. The original road was almost entirely gravel, not so level, and certainly not something a bunch of tourists from Chicago would ever attempt. But it did allow for military convoys to travel north.

Henna did the hammering and we left a little something of ourselves at Historic Mile Post 635 on the Alaskan Highway

So while recovering from an injury, Lindley was asked to repaint a few directional signs. As a joke he added a sign pointing to his hometown of Danville, Il (just 2,700 happy miles away). Over the decades people kept on adding signs and the official count is now over 77,000. Make that 77,001 as we added a signed Frisbee to the mix. That Frisbee, by the way, was purchased by Corey and I almost twenty years ago. It likely has joined us on most of the trips we have taken including the first time we drove the Alaskan Highway. In the moment it just felt right adding this personal memento into the mix.