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August 18, 2005

North America | USA   06:55 PM
Legendary Lodge In Alaska For Sale - The Wife, Too!

The construction crew got up much earlier than me. Careful not to wake me they grabbed coffee to go from the pot brewing in the living room and went to work on the road.

Rubbing the sleep from my eyes I wandered into the bar area where Ron, Carol's husband, was shooting the breeze with one of the locals.

"Coffee?" I nod. He points to the Bunn burner and pot behind the bar. "Cups are below." I gesture for cream and sugar and Ron simply sits on the stool and points and shouts directions. I love this. Feeling local I just help myself.

"So you're the guy that made the wrong turn, huh?" He bellows out a grunt of a laugh as he busies himself cleaning the bar and restaurant area. "That's funny."

I explain that I gotta get on the road and thank him for the coffee and couch. "You're not going up there until you have some breakfast," he asserts. "Come on you need something to eat." I agree and while the eggs are cooked he tells me about the Chatanika Lodge.

The first lodge he built in the 70's and when it was destroyed by fire years later, he built it again. "I'm tired. Done. Ready to get out." The Chatanika Lodge is for sale. Handcrafted with some of the most amazing collection of burl wood and other native Alaskan Timber. The lodge has soul. From the bar, to the rooms, to the game room and to the cordoned off room that displays Ron's pride and joy: a 1955 Ford Thunderbird convertible. Flanked by life-size cardboard cutouts of Marilyn Monroe and other icons of the era, I'm sure Ron is ready to ride this during the Alaskan summers rather than tend to his lodge.

"I'm a slave to this place," he reveals, "this is better for a younger man. "Yep, the place is for sale, and depending on the price, the wife goes with it."

I'm not sure where it started, but somewhere norther of BC I heard more and more men simply refer to their lifelong partner as "the wife". If you know someone looking to get away from it all, check out the Chatanika Lodge just northeast of Fairbanks in the last frontier.

Bidding my new friends farewell, I head to meet my fate on the legendary Dalton Highway to the Arctic Circle and Prudhoe Bay and the Arctic Ocean.

Posted by allan

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