When the best-selling Coming Into the Country was published 30 years ago, my husband and I were what McPhee called ''urban Alaskans.'' I was born in Fairbanks when the state was a territory. Jason grew up in Anchorage. Our roads crossed at the University of Alaska. Then, just as the state began to feel the seismic economic impact of the Trans-Alaska Pipeline, we left.
Things haven't changed much.
Now we're speeding along the northern reach of the Continental Divide as we drive up to Fairbanks. We rented a 29-foot Winnebago Chalet motor home in Anchorage three days ago. It's our first RV trip. We thought it would be a fun way to show the state to our son, Francis, who says his parents make him half-Alaskan, even though he was born in Houston.
Most of the state is accessible only by water or air. But even though the highways are limited, Alaska is a spectacular setting for a road trip.
Journey along with us as we explore five routes.
CHENA HOT SPRINGS RD
Where: Fairbanks to Chena Hot Springs
Length: 56 miles
Surface: paved
Ah, glorious asphalt. A jaunt to Chena Hot Springs Resort is a fun day trip, one popular with the locals, too.
The road passes through the Chena River Recreation District, and you'd have to be driving blindfolded to not see any moose, which are protected here. A car pulled to the side is the first sign someone has seen an animal ahead, and I lose count after a while.
We skip our favorite trailheads and go straight to the resort. It's been spiffed up and expanded since I was a kid. The rotten-egg odor of the indoor pool is gone and the outdoor adults-only lake is peacefully quiet -- and hot.
I also insist on touring the Aurora Ice Museum, which looks cheesy from the outside but turns out to be totally cool.
We meet sculptor Steve Brice, who has created an icy fantasy world that stays on view year-round thanks to a custom cooling system. His work includes full-size knights jousting on horses, an oversize chess set and an ice chandelier. Then, we ''warm'' our hands by the ice fire and check out the rooms. Francis is so taken with the bed carved in the shape of a polar bear that he crawls into the winter-grade sleeping bag on it and stays there while the adults have apple martinis at the ice bar. Francis adds a night in the ice hotel to his life list.
RV camping is $20 here, but we find a secluded area next to the Chena River. The view is charming, and we have the place to ourselves after a fisherman scurries away (the grayling aren't biting). We make a driftwood fire and lounge the evening away in what we agree later is one of our favorite spots.
STEESE HIGHWAY
• Where: Fairbanks to Circle
• Length: 161 miles
• Surface: One-third paved, two-thirds gravel
For the first hour, we drive past relics from the mid-1900s gold rush. Tailings -- gravel dredged from stream beds -- line the highway. We stop at the Chatanika Lodge and scramble up some to look at a rusted dredge.
The drive continues through winding river valleys that were burned in a 2004 wildfire. I miss the green, but my husband finds the stark landscape of charred tree trunks intriguing. Francis is oblivious. He's reading, somehow immune to the RV's motion.
We stop at Eagle Summit for a hike. The elevation is 3,600 feet, but at this latitude, we're well above the tree line. The Milepost, the gold standard of Alaska road guides, says this is the best place to see wildflowers on the state highway system. The hills to the north are carpeted in magenta -- fireweed, so called because it's often the first thing that grows after a burn. It's ubiquitous in Alaska, but I've never seen so much of it in one place.
Two German backpackers have just finished a three-day trek along the Pinnell Mountain National Trail. We're going the opposite way, so we give them water and beer instead of a ride.
The nice wide gravel road suddenly narrows. Potholes and ridges appear. We try driving down the middle of the road, even on the other side, but it's so bad, we're stuck in an 11-mph crawl. If we go any faster, this thing will surely shake apart.
We get a 1.5-mile asphalt break in Central, population 113, before we're back on gravel. We only have 33 miles left, but we're still going 14 mph, tops.
Francis reads out loud from The Milepost. A pair of wild swans and two young floating down Birch Creek on our right lift our spirits.
Finally we reach the suburbs of Circle, about a dozen small homes with matching outhouses in yards landscaped with junk that might be useful someday, and drive straight into a bare dirt lot that slopes into the Yukon River.
Circle is a transportation hub for the river, but there's nothing to do here, really. I take pictures; some of these cars have been abandoned since the '40s and '50s. Francis sits on a swing in a patch of overgrown grass and complains about the gnats, which are bad for a few hours.
Though the sun sets, it doesn't get dark. It's so still the quiet rings in my ears.
We leave early the next morning, in time to catch a black bear ambling down the road.
We stop in Central for $94 worth of gas and at the Chatanika Lodge for lunch. A classic Alaskan roadhouse, it's decorated in genuine frontier kitsch. Flowers spill from containers out front.
Inside is a restaurant, a bar and dance floor, saw blades with hand-painted scenes, fox pelts and a mint-condition 1955 Thunderbird convertible that's parked in a back room with a full-size Santa, snowman and sleigh. It's all for sale, except for the sleeping ''guard beagle'' that's so fat it looks more like a doorstop. Lunch is $30; the pelts run $85 to $100. We don't ask the price of the restaurant and car.
PARKS HIGHWAY
• Length: 362 miles
• Where: Anchorage to Fairbanks
• Surface: paved
The silvers are here, the woman behind the counter of the Montana Creek general store says. Jason and my brother-in-law John, who lives in Anchorage 96.5 miles to the south, aren't buying it. She probably just wants us to pay for parking.
But the people on the bank where the creek empties into the Susitna River say it's true. We grab our gear and $145 nonresident fishing licenses (good for two weeks) and join them.
The salmon pass right in front of us; we can see them when the sun breaks out from the light, low clouds that obscure the Alaska Range.
After landing fish all afternoon, we keep only two silver -- or coho -- salmon for dinner. Jason and John are so excited, the filets are nearly done on the portable grill before I even start to boil water for the rice. You'd think they'd never caught a fish before.
We catch two more silvers the next morning before we leave. Two miles later, we turn onto the 14-mile spur to Talkeetna. The town is the staging area for climbers flying to the Kahiltna Glacier base camp on Mount McKinley, 60 miles to the northwest, and a great place to book a flightseeing tour.
At the Fairview Inn we stop for a drink. In 1923, President Warren G. Harding ate here after driving in a golden spike to complete the Alaska Railroad. He died a few days later, rumored to have been poisoned at the inn. We feel fine; maybe the president should have stuck to beer.
Another hour's drive takes us to the Byers Lake Campground in Denali State Park, a less-crowded alternative to the national park a few hours up the road.
A man who looks like an overgrown Hobbit strolls into our camp, no doubt attracted by the substantial stream of smoke we have generated. Keeps away the mosquitoes, you know.
He conjures a proper blaze in moments. Giles is from Quebec; we chat in broken English and French. He declines a s'more, but accepts a plastic cup of the Veuve Clicquot champagne we've opened to celebrate our anniversary.
After John and his 6-year-old son turn back to Anchorage in their truck the next morning, Jason, Francis and I hike around the lake and up to a ridge, where we can see Denali peeking through the clouds.
Denali National Park, up the road a bit, is utterly magnificent, not to be missed if you've never seen it. But we have. So we blow by the entrance. Or try to. Two traffic lights -- some things have changed -- are both red.
We watch an Alaskan Railroad train cling to a mountainside as we wend through the Nenana River canyon. The Alaska Range drops away behind us; we're now in the Interior.
Road construction stops us a few miles from Fairbanks. I'm happy to sit on the guard rail and wait. We're on a ridge, with broad views of the Tanana River and the Alaska Range off one side, and lowland country off the other. It's a sunny, dry 70-degree Interior day. Jason and Francis have heard it a million times: I want my ashes scattered here.
RICHARDSON HIGHWAY
• Where: Fairbanks to Anchorage
• Length: 366 miles
• Surface: paved
Just past a pair of lakes lined with Fairbanksans' weekend cabins, the road runs directly next to the glacier-fed Tanana River. The snowy peaks of the Alaska Range, which seem distant in Fairbanks, are suddenly much closer.
I have been on this road many times, but Jason has not. Jason says this is the prettiest stretch of Alaskan highway he's ever seen, which surprises me, since he's from the coast, which has a reputation for more dramatic scenery.
I look at it with fresh eyes. Towering white mountains, blue sky, a wide braided river. Yeah, I guess so.
The 800-mile Trans-Alaska Pipeline dips in and out of view, as both it and this highway end up in Valdez. My engineer-husband is excited, but I react like the indifferent teenager I was when it was built.
We spend the night at Donnelly Creek State Recreation Site. Our campsite doesn't have a view, but several yards away, the trees give way to another wide river with a breathtaking view of three of the Alaska Range's most striking mountains: Mount Deborah (12,339 feet), Hess Mountain (11,940 feet) and Mount Hayes (13,832 feet).
Francis has been nursing a serious case of gold fever ever since we toured the Eldorado Gold Mine near Fairbanks, which guarantees a few flakes during its gold-panning demonstration. He takes his pan, purchased at the Eldorado's real gold mine -- the gift shop -- and crouches next to a stream to make his fortune. He gives up 20 minutes later.
DENALI HIGHWAY
• Where: Paxson to Cantwell
• Length: 134 miles
• Surface: 85 percent gravel, 15 percent paved
Good thing we called Great Alaskan Holidays to ask if we could keep the RV another day. Bad thing we didn't ask to keep it two more days.
We're driving 10 mph again as we test ourselves on the Denali Highway, the most scenic -- and roughest -- in the state. Built in 1957, it's open only in summer; even the few milepost signs that remain are original.
After buying another $94 in gas at the roadhouse in Paxson, we'd taken a sharp right turn off the Rich so we could cut back across the southern side of the Alaska Range to Cantwell and the Parks Highway.
The weather is cloudier on this side of the range. Hundreds of small lakes formed by glaciers, which we see spilling from the mountains, dot the land. All-terrain vehicle trails used by hunters parallel the road.
A lone moose crosses a wide river, and an eagle flies in lazy circles above us. We pull over for a hike.
We climb until our RV is a speck. We eat blueberries and see enough bear scat that we decide to go down before reaching the top. The scat isn't fresh, but it doesn't look old, so we sing and yell as we beat through the tangle of scrub on the lower slopes. Bears love to hang out in this stuff.
We fantasize about buying the derelict roadhouses we pass and making this our summer home. We see another RV from Great Alaskan Holidays parked for the night in a turnout with a killer view. We're jealous because we have to keep moving; we're due back in Anchorage tomorrow.
When we turn south at Cantwell, and re-enter Broad Pass, I go back to make sandwiches. After 11 days, we're finally OK with the sway of the motor home.
It's raining and starting to turn dark for the first time when we stop for the night about 80 miles north of Anchorage. The weather matches our mood.
We've gone more than 1,400 miles, and camped in style -- that is, without mosquitoes -- the entire way. We're joking about turning back north.
But the next morning we head south to Anchorage and merge into the rush-hour traffic of urban Alaska.
