10,200 miles!!!

July 20, 2014  10,200 miles!!!!

Well we have 10 hours left and we should be home.  We spent the night just outside of Cheyenne boondocking again.  George is getting used to that and kind of likes it now.  We even like Walmart parking lots.  Last night we were at a very nice rest stop with some other semi’s.   We talked about our adventure and even after our Yellowstone adventure are glad we did it.  I reminded George how he wouldn’t even drive in San Francisco when I did a nursing tour there.  I had to drive when he came out to visit.  Now he’s a pro.  We can’t believe we survived the roads in Alaska and Canada and above all Yellowstone.  He said his tire was hanging off the road part way at one point and he couldn’t see the white line anymore.  Scary scary.  We will be sitting in our rockers one day saying, “remember when…”

Well, it’s midnight so we aren’t going to officially be home until July 21.  All in all it’s been a great trip.  We have lots of cleaning to look forward to now. 

Toto has been great.  He fell again trying to get into the truck and is limping pretty bad.  Poor thing.  Sometimes he jumps in and can make it and sometimes I have to kind of help him.  He flopped right our onto the cement before I could catch him last night. 

Heading home with our little dog Toto.

July 11, 2014

We decided to load up and head back to Kansas.  It’s sad.  This is such a beautiful place.  This will be our first time really driving the 5^th wheel.  We brought it 40 miles from Anchorage to Palmer but now we are facing about 4200 miles.  I think George is a little nervous about what to expect but we see all these “old” people driving so we figure if they can do it; we can too.  George doesn’t consider himself “old.”

 

Mountains to the right and mountains to the left...

Here I am!  Stuck in the middle of all these mountains. 

Goodbye RV repair shop

June 22, 2014

Yeah times 3!  We are finally leaving the beautiful RV repair shop parking lot.  It really was great views, quiet neighbors and beautiful mountain views, but it just didn’t feel like home if you know what I mean.  George got up at 7:00 this morning and went to Wasilla to a Ford dealership to try to find out what was wrong with the PU.  We just couldn’t understand why it wouldn’t recognize a tow.  Apparently when we had the trailer hitch put on, they failed to connect something.  Their little error cost us 2 days of vacation, about 10 extra gallons of gas, $100.00 at the RV repair shop and a $65.00 repair bill at the Ford dealership in Wasilla.  I understand honest mistakes, but we specifically asked this company if they tested it and how we were going to Alaska and they told us we were good to go.  Then to top it off, they didn’t even return my call when I left a message telling how we were stranded. 

This trip was planned as our honeymoon trip.  I think everyone should take a trip like this probably before you get married and then make that big decision.  But, we are finally settled into our 5^th wheel and it is beautiful up here.  Mountains all around us, great weather, fresh air.  We just couldn’t ask for more.  We are very blessed and we both keep reminding each other how well we have it.  People crossed these mountains on foot to get here and we laughed at how we were whining just the other day coming down the mountain roads in a nice warm pick up.  Kind of humbling and  puts things into perspective. 

Back to the honeymoon part.  I will try to do this tasteful, but it was pretty funny.  We were christening our new home and during a romantic moment, we both started laughing about the same time.  You know the old saying, “Don’t come a knockin’ if the RV’s a rockin’?  We always heard everyone joke around about that whenever someone got a new RV.  Well, let me make it clear; that’s not some old wives tale. 

George has his own “honey do” list going.  He has been hooking things up, tightening this and that.  Oh yeah, he was going to put some stabilizers on the front. 

 

Our 2nd night in our 5th wheel

June 21, 2014   Saturday

We love the RV, or at least I do.  With all the trouble we have had, George says, “And that’s why I don’t like to buy used.”  Understand that the problem isn’t with the “used” RV.  It’s with his brand new pickup truck.  Oh yeah.  His brand new Super duty 350 Ford.  With 4 wheel drive, heated and AC seats and all the bells and whistles.  My “used” 5^th wheel that I picked out is great.  I’m just thinking, “Thank You God, for not letting me talk George into buying a used pickup.”

We spend our second night in our wonderful RV.  We had fun going to eat at the little café that he and Dave ate.  We got our laundry done.  We went to Fred Myers which has “everything” according to George and this is one of his and Dave’s favorite places to shop besides Costco.  George drove around Anchorage and had fun showing me all their favorite places. 

Yeah! Our new 5th wheel

June 20, 2014

We are so excited to finally be picking up our 5^th wheel.  We went and got our temporary license and found a place to park it.  We unload all the bins and I am putting things away while George is figuring out the outside.  He has to charge the battery and get things figured out.  One of the guys, Kevin, is actually from Kansas and helped us out quite a bit.  George backed in and hooked onto the hitch without a hitch (pun intended) but that’s where our day went south.  Kevin assured us everything would be fine and they would get it figured out.  I have learned that when George says, “Everything is fine or it’ll be fine.”  That actually means, nobody died or will die.  So whenever things go wrong or George forgets something or fails to prepare for situations and we live through it, his response is, “see, I told you everything would be fine.” 

Well, as it turned out, our day wasn’t fine.  We are going to have to spend the night in their parking lot.  So we had to cancel our reservation for the RV Park.  The repair shop hooked us up to electricity and water.    So here we are surrounded by mountains on a Friday night in an RV repair shop parking lot. 

Panning in Chicken

June 19, 2014

We are leaving Chicken this morning.  George stayed up till 11 panning and got some good gold. He got up early and went again.  Toto and I slept in a nice cool cabin under a down filled comforter.   It’s a little harder for me to sleep with it light our 24/7.  I could tell George was doing well because you can see a smile while he’s panning plus he came back to the cabin several times to show me his gold.  He said he can see why some of these places hang on to their gold because most people don’t know how to pan and it gets dumped right back into the water.  He was still giving lessons this morning.  Toto and I took a walk around the whole camp and got some great pictures.  When we saw George panning I noticed he had a pair of cheap multi colored reading glasses on.  He forgot his and found this pair in the truck for emergency purposes (mainly for me).  I had some for him but he grabbed the first pair he could find.  He had to get back to see his finds.  I will have to post that picture for your smile for the day. 

We just had a moose encounter on this road from Chicken.  George yelled moose and I looked up and sure enough a huge moose was running down into the valley.  He said he was on a collision course with him but maybe our deer whistles is what made him turn around and run back.  He was big and filled out unlike the one in Canada.  I didn’t get a picture.  It’s like the one that got away eh? 

We got to Palmer, which is just 40 minutes from Anchorage.  We were both exhausted and a little tense after coming through the mountains.  There were so many steep grade and straight drop off we didn’t expect.  We were both thinking this is ok and thank God it wasn’t raining because there were so many rock slide areas.  I honed my back seat driving skills, or so I thought, but George still came down a little fast and threw Toto to the floor as he put on the brakes.  Typical dad.  All he could say is, “I told you to sit down.”  Poor little guy was ok except he hurt his left leg.   Communication is not one of George’s strong points and he is happy to keep it that way.