My trusty Jeep sputtered into life! Two cylinders… three… and finally, shuddering but living, all four were firing.
And from downstream came the triumphant honking of the truck’s horn, followed by tinny beeping from the VW. Bobby and his family had floated about a quarter of a mile downriver and gently grounded on a gravel bar where the river spread out. They had not even gotten their feet wet and had driven out of the river and up a gently sloping bank onto an old roadbed where the truck caught up with them.
Had Bobby’s VW somehow missed settling on that gravel bar, it would have continued down a short distance to where the Niukluk River abruptly flowed into a narrow, deep gorge filled with rapids and rocks. Maybe pieces of the VW would have washed up on the banks where residents of White Mountain would have puzzled over them.
As in all our adventures in Alaska, this one, too, ended well.
