Right now I'm sitting at a picnic table beside our camper in warm sunshine under cloudless skies here in Soldotna, Alaska, listening to a student pilot fly overhead making his touch and go take offs and landings on a strip very close to us on Funny River Road. The last couple of days have been rainy and cloudy, but the cool felt nice after the scorching heat of New Mexico. I couldn't obtain an internet connection or even make a cell phone call during most of the way here, so this entry will be a bit lengthy to get you caught up. I know it's been a couple of weeks since I posted my first blog about our upcoming trip to Alaska, but it has been a very full two weeks. We left home on Thursday afternoon, August 4, and couldn't believe that we were actually on our way. We wound our way up through Utah, Montana, Idaho, and Washington and saw some beautiful country we'd never seen before. We had our share of calamaties along the way, however.
The second day out, we didn't shut the refrigerator door completely and found most everything on the floor when we stopped for lunch. Two or three of the plastic door shelves had broken, too, so we had to rearrange everything in the fridge after we cleaned up the milky mess. The next day, we pulled into Grand Coulee Dam for a break and noticed two of our trailer tires were dangerously worn on the outside edge so we purchased a new set of tires the following morning and got back underway. We kept the best two tires for spares and went on our way. A couple of days later I was driving when I saw a tire appear in the oncoming lane rolling along with us and told Brad, "I think we just lost a tire!" Of course he thought the worst until we realized that one of the spares had come loose. We found and restrapped the tire and kept going. The next day Brad was driving and say that something just flew off the truck and thought it was the bumper hitch. Sure enough, the bumper hitch was missing and we noticed a huge dent in the trailer below the front exterior compartment. Never found the hitch in the weeds along the roadside, but oh well. Each day of driving took us closer and closer.
As soon as we crossed the Canadian border the landscape took on a whole new perspective. The road was lined with one orchard after the other full of apples, peaches, pears, cherries, blueberries, blackberries and fruit stands everywhere to stop and buy whatever we wanted. Huge lakes appeared around every other bend in the road it seemed. Summerland had a canal that cut through the city and thousands of swim suit clad young people were floating down the canal or standing on the side of the road waiting for their ride to take them back up. The longest lake I have ever seen ran along the highway full of boaters and people enjoying the last bit of summer.
At Cottonwood RV park on the Kuanne Lake in the Yukon was probably the most beautiful place we stayed but it was cold and windy there. There were a couple of grizzlies in the camp the next morning, so all the travelers were out trying to get photos. One young woman we spoke to was walking her dog early that morning when she spotted the bears about 25 feet from her. One stood on his hind legs to get a better look, she said, so she didn't waste any time backing away.
The closer we got to the Alaskan border the worse the road got. We had read about the frost upheavals, thata cause the highway to buckle up, but had a close encounter that shook us to the core. We were driving about 60 mph along fairly good road, and hit a part of the highway that had heaved up to a point and sent us airborne! The truck hit hard as it came back down to the pavement, then the trailer followed suit, jarring us to the bone. We later learned that it broke the small table between the two recliners, the bottom out of one of the dining chairs, and busted a vertical section of the closet so the door will not shut any longer. Our stuff was strewn all over the camper as you can imagine. But yet we kept pushing toward the northwest, anxious to end this seemingly endless journey.
On the evening of the ninth day, we pulled into Soldotna and found a quiet campground that we've been staying in for three nights now. We have been watching anglers on the Kenai and Kasiloff Rivers and boaters floating the river as they try to catch their limit of silver salmon, or coho. Just now did Brad bring out his fishing rod to get it set up for our first try at fishing tomorrow morning.
We have looked at probably 20 pieces of land the last two days and have three possible candidates so far. We want to make sure we spend an approprite amount of time looking before we make our choice. We'd like something with a view and plenty of sunshine, so we're determined not to buy until we are completely satisfied. I'll be back in touch soon to let you know how things are going. Hopefully, I won't have so much to write about and will keep it short and sweet. Till then...adios!
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