Beyond Mile Zero

In 1942, the west coast of North America was under threat after the attack on Pearl Harbor, prompting the US government to build a military road from Dawson Creek, BC, to Delta Junction, AK. Renowned as a driving challenge and for its remote scenic beauty, the Alaska Highway opened to the public in 1948. It was the beginning of the golden age of the automobile. Silvertip, Swift River, Silver Dollar, Krak-R-Krik, Chickaloon and other quaint and quirky establishments sprang up along the highway, offering travellers coffee, gas, conversation and a place to spend the night. During the roadhouse heyday, owners and employees lived on the frontier and earned good wages. Some were looking for a life-long commitment and a place to raise a family, others relished the isolation. Aside from truckers, today most people travel the Alaska Highway in fuel-efficient cars and self-sufficient RVs--the demand for lodge services has diminished and the businesses struggle to survive. Since December 2014, Yukoners Gontard and Kelly have been visiting operating and abandoned lodges, recording the unique culture of the Alaska Highway before it disappears completely. The book includes the recollections of Gay Frocklage, whose parents, Doris and Bud Simpson, ran one of the oldest roadhouses on the highway, Mile 716 Rancheria Lodge, Yukon; and Bud and Pam Johnson, who met at the Mile 1318 Tok Lodge, Alaska, were married six months later and ran the lodge for three decades; as well as Ross Peck whose parents, Don and Alene Peck, operated Mile 200 Trutch Lodge, BC, as a highway lodge and hunting outfitting base from 1950-1963. Featuring both archival and contemporary photographs, Beyond Mile Zero explores the evolution of Alaska Highway culture and will be of interest to locals and travellers alike.

In 1942, the west coast of North America was under threat after the attack on Pearl Harbor, prompting the US government to build a military road from Dawson Creek, BC, to Delta Junction, AK. Renowned as a driving challenge and for its remote scenic beauty, the Alaska Highway opened to the public in 1948. It was the beginning of the golden age of the automobile. Silvertip, Swift River, Silver Dollar, Krak-R-Krik, Chickaloon and other quaint and quirky establishments sprang up along the highway, offering travellers coffee, gas, conversation and a place to spend the night. During the roadhouse heyday, owners and employees lived on the frontier and earned good wages. Some were looking for a life-long commitment and a place to raise a family, others relished the isolation. Aside from truckers, today most people travel the Alaska Highway in fuel-efficient cars and self-sufficient RVs—the demand for lodge services has diminished and the businesses struggle to survive. Since December 2014, Yukoners Gontard and Kelly have been visiting operating and abandoned lodges, recording the unique culture of the Alaska Highway before it disappears completely. The book includes the recollections of Gay Frocklage, whose parents, Doris and Bud Simpson, ran one of the oldest roadhouses on the highway, Mile 716 Rancheria Lodge, Yukon; and Bud and Pam Johnson, who met at the Mile 1318 Tok Lodge, Alaska, were married six months later and ran the lodge for three decades; as well as Ross Peck whose parents, Don and Alene Peck, operated Mile 200 Trutch Lodge, BC, as a highway lodge and hunting outfitting base from 1950-1963. Featuring both archival and contemporary photographs, Beyond Mile Zero explores the evolution of Alaska Highway culture and will be of interest to locals and travellers alike.

"Mile zero" marks the location of Key West -- the island that defines the end of the American road, the cultural junction where Anglo-Saxon, Latin, and Afro worlds collide. On this island, with its cruel legacy of slave trade and Latin revolution, and its turbulent present of marijuana millionaires, threadbare illegal immigrants, and hard-luck treasure hunters, lives St. Cloud, an American expatriated in his own country, a fugitive from the unresolved anguish of his generation. Chronicling St. Cloud's dangerous reawakening, Mile Zero illuminates the inward and outward tumult of our time in a huge, startling, and profoundly felt novel.

True stories of writers and pirates, painters and potheads, guitar pickers and drug merchants in Key West in the 1970s. For Hemingway and Fitzgerald, there was Paris in the twenties. For others, later, there was Greenwich Village, Big Sur, and Woodstock. But for an even later generation—one defined by the likes of Jimmy Buffett, Tom McGuane, and Hunter S. Thompson—there was another moveable feast: Key West, Florida. The small town on the two-by-four-mile island has long been an artistic haven, a wild refuge for people of all persuasions, and the inspirational home for a league of great American writers. Some of the artists went there to be literary he-men. Some went to re-create themselves. Others just went to disappear—and succeeded. No matter what inspired the trip, Key West in the seventies was the right place at the right time, where and when an astonishing collection of artists wove a web of creative inspiration. Mile Marker Zero tells the story of how these writers and artists found their identities in Key West and maintained their friendships over the decades, despite oceans of booze and boatloads of pot, through serial marriages and sexual escapades, in that dangerous paradise. Unlike the “Lost Generation” of Paris in the twenties, we have a generation that invented, reinvented, and found itself at the unending cocktail party at the end—and the beginning—of America’s highway.

Beyond The Bridges takes the reader through all aspects of river life. From canoes to steamboats, from river history to river lore. It is both a great reference book for those who wish to do their own river boating and has entertaining chapters about the author's own mishaps and adventures. Jerry Hay began is river adventures on the Wabash River in Indiana and has since traveled and made river maps on many rivers by canoe, kayak, steamboats, powerboats and even towboats. Millions of people cross bridges each day with no idea of the adventure, power, and magic that a river offers. After reading this book, one will look at the rivers differently while glancing over the guard rail at the waterways below. He or she will know what it is really like.......Beyond The Bridges. Available to download to your device as an ebook.