As I packed up to leave my friends’ peaceful property outside Denali, I felt a wave of sadness come over me.  Despite the less-than-epic visit to Denali, I still had a wonderful few days there, spending time with “A,” feeling settled-in at their property . . . and enjoying some off-the-charts food. 

A few tears welled up as I used the fantastic outhouse one last time and took Winnie for one last walk around the property.  But, something else started welling up too.  A feeling inside me – a flicker of an idea – that I will be back someday. 

As I got further from Denali, the weather started to clear and the excitement about my next stop began to build.  I was headed an hour east of Fairbanks to the Chena Hot Springs Resort to spend three days soaking in the hot springs, relaxing in my quaint little room, catching up on some writing, and maybe even working on some new ideas for the business.  I also had two Northern Lights tours scheduled.   

I can’t overstate my giddiness about seeing the Northern Lights.  Although I’d been pretty screwed out of many epic animal sightings on my trip thus far, I was okay with that because the Northern Lights seemed like a massive, bucket list, once-in-a-lifetime kind of thing.  I dreamed of how I’d feel in the moment when I would spot those dancing, neon, ethereal lights in the sky.  I imagined that I’d be so awestruck I wouldn’t be able to utter a word . . . that I would feel a cavernous sense of spirituality – a never-before-felt connection to the Divine. 

And I imagined that I’d take some bomb-ass photos.  I’d spent a lot of money prior to this trip buying new camera lenses for photographing wildlife and the Northern Lights.  My forearm-length, behemoth zoom lens for wildlife photography had gone basically unused thus far.  So, I was buzzing with excitement over putting my nighttime lens and new knowledge of Northern Lights photography to use.

The drive up to Chena was rather boring and uneventful, but at least it was free from rain! And I saw a beautiful rainbow off in the distance as a came around a curve. A good sign, perhaps?  Or maybe a sign to keep the faith . . . .

I pulled into the Resort and liked how well landscaped it was.  There was an ice museum and a bunch of other shit to do that, honestly, I wasn’t going to concern myself with.  I was there for relaxing, hot springs, and Divine lights!

I checked in, grabbed Winnie, and walked the cute, grassy, flower-lined path to the building where our room was located. 

Now, this resort is rather old, which I knew.  The hot springs themselves were discovered in 1905 and some of the buildings on the property that were built early on have been preserved.  So I expected some rustic charm . . . .

When will I learn to release my expectations?

The building where our room was located had an outside door that was propped open, exposing a narrow, less than 10-foot hallway into the building.  On each side of the tiny hallway there were two doors – four rooms total.  I inserted the old-school key, opened the door, waiting to be thoroughly wowed . . . .

Instead, I stood in there in shock.  The room wasn’t rustic or charming . . . it didn’t even have a vintage flare.  It was just freaking old and outdated. 

Now, let me pause here . . . I’ve stayed in some very janky-ass, disgusting places over all my years of traveling.  I imagine that you have too.  (And if you have, I’d love to hear your horror stories!).  These disgusting accommodation experiences usually end up making for good stories, although you’d never wish them on anyone else. 

For example, almost twenty years ago, a bunch of my friends and I from the Washington, D.C. area flew to Hawaii for our friends’ wedding.  A close friend of mine and I flew out early so we could spend two weeks there.  We had a hotel in downtown Honolulu, and a third friend (who arrived later) was also going to room with us. 

The first day, we noticed a gross looking stain on the sheets on one of the beds – the bed I was going to sleep in.  I don’t remember if we were too drunk or too excited to be in Hawaii, but I decided to just sleep on top of the comforter (an even more disgusting decision, in retrospect).  The bathroom made you want to shut your eyes and just hope for the best, while the hot pink shower made a coffin look roomy. 

We mentioned the stain to housekeeping the next morning as we headed out of the hotel, and she seemed to indicate that she’d take care of it. 

When we got to the room later, I pulled back the covers and . . . no stain . . . at least not where it originally was.  Upon further inspection, we saw the stain on a different part of the bed. All that she had done was rotate the sheets.  Anyway, this became a long-running joke during our time there:   guessing where the stain would appear on the bed.  Why we didn’t complain to the front desk, I don’t recall. 

We started referring to the hotel as “Ass Alley” because it also abutted an alley, where every night we got to hear a variety of drama and music from the night club below.

As far as Hawaii accommodations, it may not have been the worst, but it was a far cry from the best. 

And then, there was my trip to Memphis in 2021 (in the middle of Covid) where I’d rented an AirBNB downtown.  I walked into this swanky condo to find food splatters all over the walls, stains and dust covering the baseboards, stains on the area rug, and an impenetrable layer of thick black dust on the mini-blinds.  I called the management company and got the hell out of there. 

But most revolting of all, was my trip to Yosemite a couple of years ago, where I stayed in a newly remodeled and adorable cabin at a former KOA (Kampground of America) RV camping site just outside the park.  I woke up after the first night and noticed a little black bug on the bed, which splattered upon impact as I tried to shoo it away.  Then I saw another . . . and another.  And then I noticed several tiny red splatters on the white sheets. 

Then . . . I started itching.  I noticed that I was covered in bites. 

Then I saw a little black bug crawling on Winnie.  

I had never experienced bed bugs before, so I was in complete denial about what they were.  But after extensive Googling, there was no denying it. 

I flipped my shit and went immediately to the front desk.  The dude at the front desk was horrified and apologetic, and immediately put me in a new room.  (This was the height of tourist season, so it was either another room at this place or nothing).

I pulled all of my luggage and clothing out of the room. The front desk worker gave me quarters to do laundry.  I vacuumed my car just in case I’d transported any creepy crawlers into there.  And for two days, I itched and scratched and felt like I was being eaten alive by bugs.

On the way home from Yosemite, I stopped in Valley of Fire State Park outside Las Vegas to camp.  I spent the night sleeping in the car, feeling like an army of bugs was crawling all over me, wondering if I’d gotten everything thoroughly cleaned and washed.  I was supposed to drive to Moab to camp the next night under a full moon along the river. But I said “fuck it” and drove 12 hours straight home, where I pulled into the garage, stripped down, and dragged Winnie and me immediately into the shower.  I then spent the entire next day taking all of my laundry to a laundromat and steam cleaning my car. 

So now, because of that horrifying bed bug experience, the first thing I do whenever I check into any place – before I even bring in Winnie or the luggage – is pull back the comforter, flat sheet, fitted sheet, and mattress protector to check for signs of bed bugs. 

Consequently, when I entered the old, depressing room at Chena Hot Springs Resort and pulled back the sheets, I was appalled to see something just as bad, if not worse, than bed bugs.

Stains . . . lots of stains! 

Faint stains on the sheets and not-so-faint stains all over the mattress cover.  And I do mean all over.  And on both beds. 

“Ewww, ewww, ewww!” I kept saying over and over. 

And then I looked in the windowsills and saw at least a dozen dead flies and other bugs. 

“Oh hellll no!” 

The housekeeping lady was in the next room and I went over to tell her that the room didn’t seem to be clean.  She got her manager, who said they’d change the sheets and clean it up.  They asked me to give them ten minutes.

For ten minutes, I fumed . . . .

I walked over to take a look at the famed hot springs, thinking I’d feel better after seeing this amazing oasis of relaxation and healing. 

“Ewww, ewww, ewww!” 

The hot springs were a relatively small little man-made rock pool, with way too many people, and hoses spraying water out across the pool.  A far cry from a relaxing and restorative oasis.

“Nope, nope, hell no,” I thought to myself. 

When I returned to the “clean” room – which now reeked of Pine Sol – I looked at the sheets again.  They may have changed the sheets, but the stain-soaked mattress protectors were still on the bed. 

They did at least vacuum the dead bugs out of the windowsill. 

Livid, I went to inspect the bathroom, which consisted of just the toilet and shower.  The sink was apparently behind the door, which I’d missed entirely when I came in.  There were dead bugs and black spots (not sure what those were) all over the ceiling.  The shower handle was so old that it had rusted to nasty green color.  And the sink – behind the door – had dried toothpaste in it. 

Still processing this shitshow and wondering what to do, I started looking for electrical outlets to plug in my big Jackery portable battery that I’ve been using to power my ARB fridge in the car.  I saw that the coffee pot was plugged in behind the dresser, so I pulled the dresser out from the wall.  Behind the dresser, there were enough dust bunnies on the wood floor for me to have crocheted my own bunny, along with some used, wadded up Kleenexes.  I then pulled the coffee maker cord from the outlet, and the entire outlet box came out of the wall. 

But the final straw, was when I looked up at the ceiling and saw a rather large splatter of blood.  It looked like someone had killed a gigantic bug, had never bothered to clean up the crime scene. 

“Ewww, ewww, ewww.  Fuck no . . . we are not staying here!” 

If I could see all of this nastiness, what nastiness couldn’t I see? 

I grabbed Winnie, went to the front desk, told them that this “resort” was disgusting, and asked to rent a camping site instead.  I’d rather sleep in the trailer. 

To top it off, there was no WiFi except in the tiny ass lobby of registration.  Now, I know how privileged and first-world this sounds.  But I’d hoped to salvage this shitshow by at least being able to chill outside on the landscaped grounds and do some writing and stuff for work.  But the only way you could get WiFi was if you sat in the tiny lobby with about 15 other people who were also trying to connect to the world.  Maybe this “resort” thinks that you’ll be so busy relaxing in the dinky outdoor hot springs and getting a massage in the teeny little massage cabins that you won’t be concerned with WiFi.

Not me.  That was it.  I decided we’d stay one night in this “resort” and then get the hell out. 

That meant I had to re-jigger my itinerary and figure out where to stay the next two nites instead.  After about an hour in the packed hotel lobby logged into the WiFi, I had a new travel plan for making my way back into Canada. 

Before I left though, I was at least going to do one night of the Northern Lights Tour.  Maybe I would feel redeemed by some heavenly lights.   

I met the tour guides outside the Activities Center at 10:30 p.m. for our 5-hour, middle of the night, Aurora Viewing Tour at the top of their private mountain.  The sign-up page for the tour mentions that “[y]ou will ride in a military-style SUSV (it stands for Small Unit Support Vehicle) and it is pronounced sus-vee) for thirty minutes until we get to the top of Charlie Dome[.]”   

What the website fails to further explain, however, is what it’s like to ride in a SUSV.  They give no warnings about how rough and bone-rattling the ride is, nor do they recommend not to eat beforehand lest you toss your cookies on the ride up.   

The SUSV is two small, metal passenger containers on top of a track system (like a tank).  As the tour guide shut the door to this metal death trap, he warned the five of us unwitting passengers that “you’re going to get tossed around a lot.”   

He wasn’t shittin’! 

You know how when you’re going up a really steep track in a roller coaster, and the coaster shakes and rattles?

Well, imagine that . . . but 100 times worse.  Then add in a bunch of ruts, bumps, and rocks that the roller coaster has to go over on the way up, along with being trapped inside a metal death trap with no circulation, no seatbelts, and nothing to hold onto, and maybe – just maybe – you’ll have some idea of what it felt like to ride up to Charlie Dome in this fucking SUSV. 

As soon as the SUSV lurched forward, the two people at the back flung forward and had to claw into the seat for dear life.  I had at least positioned myself in the front of the metal death trap, with my back against the front wall, so I had some support.  But I felt every pebble, bump, and rut along that road. 

I used to have a pretty strong stomach when it came to carnival rides and roller coasters.  But it’s been several years, so I imagine that I have a weaker constitution now. And I certainly wished that I hadn’t eaten right before the tour, because it took a lot of deep breathing and meditation to keep me from tossing up my veggie pizza. 

The rattling and bumping was so bad it started giving me a headache.  And when I got off this death ride, my whole body felt like it was still vibrating. 

I muttered to myself, “I’d better see some fucking Northern Lights after this bullshit.” 

Well, after three hours of waiting in the warmth of the large yurt, someone said they thought they caught some of the lights on their iPhone camera.  I ventured outside with all my camera equipment.  I didn’t see anything, so I just started taking photos of the amazing night sky.  There were a ton of stars out, so it was a good chance for me to practice my night photography. 

The number of stars was breathtaking.  I’ve been in several Dark Sky parks – like in Utah and parts of Colorado.  But seeing a zillion stars and the faint, ghost-like impression of the Milky Way, always leaves me awestruck.   

It’s indescribable to see tiny specks of light gradually appear as the sky darkens, to the point where all of the sudden, you realize that there is a cacophony of twinkling lights hanging above you, dancing. The more you stare, the more you realize there are even smaller, more faint lights hovering in the background.   

The really astounding thing though, is that we can only see about 6,000 stars with our naked eye.  There are about 20 million more stars that we can’t see with our naked eye, and an estimated 100 billion stars in our little galaxy alone.  I wonder what the night sky would look like if we could see even 20 billion stars?   

And, if you’re in a dark enough place, you can start to make out a fuzzy, ghost-like swath of light splashing across the stars - the Milky Way.  The first time I saw the Milky Way was when I was in Australia over a decade ago, and it left me speechless.  I was standing in the middle of a cemetery somewhere in Australia (a weird fascination of mine), when I looked up and saw the ghostly Milky Way.  When you realize that you’re staring up at the remnants of the galaxy in which we live – a galaxy made of stars and cosmic dust – it humbles you.  Even more humbling is the fact that the Milky Way is only one of billions of other galaxies in the universe.   

We can’t even see the bigger whole that we’re a part of . . . and yet, it’s there. 

This is why I’ve become fascinated with learning how to photograph the night sky . . . to capture a scintilla of what my naked eye can’t see.  To capture with my camera an incomprehensible tiny fraction of there is out there in our universe and beyond. 

So, I’m standing on top of Charlie Dome, playing with my camera settings to get a photo of the Milky Way and night sky, and waiting for the long exposure of 30 seconds to finish processing on my camera . . .

and when I looked at the image, the first words out of my mouth were, “uuuh, holy shit!”   

There they were . . . a small green and purple splash of lights on my camera. 

But I couldn’t see them with my eyeballs. . . my human eyes couldn’t see what was right in front of me.  

So, I took a couple of other photos with some different settings, to see if it was a fluke.   

But the images kept getting better . . .

I finally called over to someone else and said, “can you please go get the tour guide?” 

The tour guide and some other folks came over and I showed them the images on my camera. 

Indeed, I had captured some Northern Lights. 

It was like I’d captured a spirit, dancing across the sky.  I couldn’t see them . . . but they were there, and my camera saw them.

For at least thirty minutes I played with my camera settings trying to blindly capture the glory of the dancing lights that the limitations of my human sight couldn’t see. 

And each photo kept getting better and better . . . until the clouds moved in . . . the proverbial curtain call on the light show. 

I went back into the warmth of the yurt, feeling like I’d witnessed something paranormal.  No one else – including me – could see them.  But we had evidence of them . . . playing, dancing, splashing color across the sky, like we little humans weren’t even there. 

The heavens, the Universe, the Divine . . . just doin’ its thing, while we little humans would have been unaware of all it were it not for a camera lens.

I thought to myself, “Finally. . . I finally captured something that I really wanted to capture on this trip.” 

I had very little time to bask in my photography accomplishment before we had to hop back in the SUSV at 3:30 a.m. 

My giddiness over the Northern Lights photos was short-lived. When the SUSV lurched forward down the hill, I believed for a moment that the Northern Lights may be the last thing I’d experience in my human life.  I don’t get terrified easily . . . but this fucking SUSV ride downhill had me praying to those ethereal spirits I just saw in the sky. 

It felt like we were going to careen off the hill at any moment.  My stomach went up into my throat as I hung on for dear life.  The bumps, ruts, jerking, and jolting were even worse on the downhill, as we were going about twice as fast as we did uphill.  Indeed, it only took 15 minutes to get down. 

I tipped my tour guide and headed to the trailer to snuggle with Winnie and stare at my glorious Northern Lights photos.   

Winnie and I slept in the next day, then packed up and told the resort we were leaving early. Good riddance. 

Back on the road, we headed toward the Tok RV Village.  In revamping my travel plans, I decided to stay there two days instead of staying at the “resort.”  Tok RV Village was the first place we stayed when we crossed into Alaska and I loved it.   

It felt like a home on the road, which may seem weird to say about an RV village. But, something about it just settled my system . . . made me want to stay, relax, and just be. 

We drove Highway 2 south out of Fairbanks and toward Tok.  It was a gorgeous drive north of the Alaska range.  A few hours later, we entered Delta Junction less than two hours from Tok. Delta Junction marks the end of the infamous Alaska Highway at mile 1,422.

This end of the Alaska Highway marked the beginning of my journey down this 1,387-mile stretch of road back into Canada . . . which is where I’ll pick up next time.  (And explain the discrepancy between this signpost and the actual mileage).

There’s no meditation or recommendations for what I listened to for this installment.  I didn’t have a chance to record a meditation, and at this point in time where I’m writing this more than two weeks after my “resort” experience, I don’t remember what I was listening to at that time. 

So here’s a mini-dose of Trail Mix:  

Lessons learned: 

• “Resort” doesn’t necessarily mean the place is nice or clean.  Also, traveler reviews are very subjective!

• Despite all of my planning for this trip, one of the big lessons that is emerging is how to be more flexible.  On any journey, shit will happen that will cause you to re-evaluate and re-jigger.  There is no amount of planning that will save you from life happening - on a daily basis or on travel.  And although Type-A people like me love to plan and think that we can control every outcome, that Type-A tendency comes with a gigantic pitfall:  it leaves us too attached to expectations and too resistant to the unexpected.  Sure, planning is great if that’s your thing.  But, can you leave room for flexibility and surprise in your planning?  Can you open up to the possibility that the outcome or process to which you are attached may not be the only way – or even the best way – for you?  Can you learn to release some of your expectations?  As my best friend often says to me (and I’m not sure where she got this quote from):  “Expectations are the death of serenity.”  Can you have faith that there are possibilities that you can’t see that may be even better than what you’re planning or wanting?  Which brings me to my next lesson . . .

• Remember this:  the Universe, Divine, God, Spirit, whatever you want to call it, is always dancing and playing in the background, whether you know it or not.  I don’t care what faith you prescribe to (and even agnosticism and atheism are a type of faith because they’re a belief in “nothing” as opposed to “something”), there is an undeniable truth to the world.  There are animating forces or energies that we humans cannot perceive.  We’re only perceiving a teeny fraction of what is “out there.”  Given that, how can you be so sure that the expectations you have – which are based on your limited perceptions – are “true” or “the best” or even the only way?  When we attach to one outcome or path or expectation, we are cutting off a myriad of possibilities that we’re not even aware of . . . possibilities that may be even more magnificent than what our tiny human brain can conjure up.  So, where can you detach from an outcome or expectation in your life?  Where can you begin to loosen your grip a little bit on what you “think” is the case or what you “think” will happen or should happen?  Where can you invite in a little faith that the Universe is rooting for you . . . that it’s holding for you an infinite number of possibilities that you can’t see?  What would it take for you to make a little room for notion that the Universe wants you to play and dance like no one is watching . . . just like it’s doing?

Wherever you are, may you go outside tonite and gaze up at the nite sky . . . and for just a moment, open yourself up to the vast possibilities that you can’t see. 

Finally, I’d love for you to share with me your travel horror stories.  What are the worst places you’ve stayed?  The worst experiences you’ve had on your travels?