Category Archives: Retirement

North to Alaska (again) – Part 5

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Once again, I am pretty close to a year behind on this entry. These are the continuing adventures of our 2023 Alaska summer trip.

We headed back to ‘civilization’, Anchorage. We parked in the Cabela’s parking lot for the night and got some necessities done in town, shopping, laundry, and moose hunting? We were on our way to the first two on the list and got sucked into the last one. We were driving downtown Anchorage, passing a park by a Post Office and George spotted a moose eating in the divider. He hopped out of the truck and pursued the moose throughout the park, it went through a pond and ended up in a park parking lot. Most other people were pretty non-plussed about the moose wandering around downtown, I guess this is Alaska.

The next night was just up the road to Wasilla and an overnight stop in the Walmart parking lot. The interesting incident here was that Walmart was evacuated due to a fire alarm. George happened to be in the restroom then, so he claimed he caused it.

We continued our northerly trek with a bit of eastward movement on our way to just south of Glenallen. We stayed in Glenallen on our 2019 trip but we found that there was another free location at a boat ramp parking lot just south of there near Tazlina, and we headed there.

We were on our way to Valdez. Roxie and I did a day trip there in 2019 from Glenallen but this time all of us were going to spend a couple of nights there. On the way down we stopped off at the Wrangell/St. Elias National Park Visitors Center. This is the closest most visitors get to the actual park.

Valdez was pretty rainy and miserable. It is a small little town with a Safeway, a very expensive Safeway! We braved the weather, it was pretty well flooded in the campground and visited the local fish hatchery. We got to see the salmon swimming back to the hatchery where they started their journey. They are unable to continue up the local river so they get diverted to the fish ladder and on to their demise. However, sometimes they don’t even make it up the ladder as other animals want to intercept them.

Leaving Valdez, we passed a glacier and headed to the town of Chitina, the mining town of McCarthy, and the Kennecott Mines. This is an area that few people visit when seeing Alaska and our first time doing so. We drove just past Chitina and there was a small free campground where we stayed for two nights.

Worthington Glacier along Richardson Hwy driving from Valdez AK

We took the day trip to McCarthy. It is a road that we would not want to take with the trailers, although some people do. You drive to the river that flows out of the Kennecott Glacier. You park your vehicle there and walk across a footbridge to the other side. The Kennecott Mine is quite a few miles up the road but the local businesses provide shuttle vans to get you up and back.

Once you get to the mine, you can walk around and see the buildings, utilize some of the vendors there, or perhaps walk up to the Kennecott Glacier. We just stayed around the mine area but did have a view of the glacier.

Coming back from McCarthy on our road less traveled, we encountered a gentleman on the side of the road with a flat tire. We stopped to see if we could assist. He was a man from France who rented a minivan in Denver, drove it to Alaska, and ended up where we found him but no cell service. We also had no AT&T cell service where we were at, however, we did have a Verizon signal. We have two different providers on our cell phones for times when the other doesn’t have coverage, precisely for this.

His minivan came with no spare tire and the flat repair kit they provided was unusable. He was able to use my phone to call the car rental company and they said they have no way to help him out in Alaska. We called the state troopers and they gave us the number of a tow truck service in Glenallen. We contacted them and they said they could send one the next day to get him transported to a repair location. He felt secure in staying the night on the side of the road, sleeping in the mini-van as he had done this since Denver. We were glad we could help.

Our journey continued back north through Tok where we decided to take the Top of the World highway. Conditions seemed to warrant it. A couple of days in Tok to resupply and on to a night in Chicken. The US/Canadian border closed each night at 6 pm and we wanted to make sure we had plenty of time to get through.

The border crossing was uneventful, or at least we thought it was, and we made our way on to Dawson City, YT. The Yukon River crossing is via ferry boat between West Dawson and Dawson City.

The ferry only runs in the summertime, in the winter the river freezes over enough to drive across. We got a video of George and Marcia crossing and they got one of us.

We did a few different things in Dawson City and went to see some of the old dredges in the area.

As we were driving back to town from the dredges I noticed a small stream alongside the creek and a large pond had been created. Beavers! We stopped to watch them for quite awhile and got this video.

We drove up to an overlook and got a good view of the town and the river.

In Dawson, I was able to recreate another photo from my 1964 trip. There is a paddle-wheeler named Keno that is drydocked in town, as it was in 1964. Normally the current tour does not allow visitors to the upper deck anymore but once I showed the docent the old photo, she made it happen. Here are the photos, 59 years apart.

I need to explain about the non-uneventful border crossing. While we were in Dawson City, I got a phone call from the Canadian Border Patrol and asked if I was with George Chen. I said yes, and he stated that they neglected to return George and Marcia’s passports at the border crossing. Fortuitously, the agent was passing through Dawson City the next day and would drop them off to George. Crisis averted!

Back to Whitehorse for our next ‘big’ city. But first a quick overnight in a free campground at Pelley’s Crossing.

Here another odd thing happened. We had stopped on the way for a restroom break and I found someone’s wallet which contained ID. I saved it and contacted the RCMP in Pelly’s Crossing. They drove by and retrieved it from me. Good deed done.

Whitehorse was two nights and we visited the transportation museum where they have the world’s largest windvane. A DC-9 DC-3 (thanks Roger Ritter) was donated and they mounted it on a swiveling stand so it could swing into the wind.

Now being back in Canada and heading to the lower 48, Alaska is no longer on our list, or is it?

Next chapter

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Our lives really work out like chapters in a book. You can define different portions of life with distinctive start and endpoints. I don’t mind closing out a chapter and going to another one, I am just not ready to finish the book just yet.

Prior to leaving Arizona, we got a few tasks completed or scheduled. The first was a chain-link fence on the eastern part of the property, about 310′ and 2 gates.

We also added a small section of ‘field fence’ to the southwest portion of the property. It is now fully fenced. We also took advantage of our absence to replace the existing flooring. It had carpeting and roll vinyl and was most likely original to the mobile home. We replaced it with LVT (Luxury Vinyl Tiling). This was done while we were gone so all we got to see were pictures when it was done:

We are also able to have a quick visit from our friends George and Marcia in their trailer. I smoothed out a spot for them:

Having purchased the house in Arizona we headed back to California to accomplish a certain set of tasks so we can get back here. The first step was to help our son move to their new home. Their home was being remodeled and was not quite done. This gave us an opportunity to fix a few things around the old house and get some logistics lined up, like renting a UHaul truck and trailer.

The moving day for our son did come and so did the movers to clear out the house. The house was now virtually empty so we had to start filling up the garage. We have been renting a 10’x10′ climate-controlled storage unit for our stuff which was primarily a large oak bedroom set. We took up one side of our garage with our storage unit items along with some other items that were accumulated from our son’s move. Prior to moving all their items, a pile grew on the other side of the garage that held items for a yard sale. Oh, happy day! Not a real yard sale fan. The garage was very difficult to walk through at this time.

Time to think about the sale of the house. Clean things, repair things, paint things, replace things, a whole lot of things, to do. Now the house is ready to show, just don’t look too hard in the garage. Our realtor had it lightly staged, and had photos taken. The house was listed on a Friday in the morning. That day we had around 10 showings, the next day was close to the same number. We had an open house on Sunday where the agent ran out of flyers. It was very popular. By Monday we had 8 offers and narrowed it to the primary and 2 secondary offers. They were all very generous offers.

The offer we took turned out to be the best one by far. The buyers had an offer on their house that technically was a contingency but the way it was structured, it really wasn’t. Everything went amazingly smoothly and escrow closed in 2 1/2 weeks! And just like that, we only owned one home.

During all this escrow time we were focused on getting back to Arizona, with all our stuff. Roxie didn’t trust anyone else hauling our items so we decided to rent a UHaul truck. Our son, Aaron, volunteered to drive the truck as we had the Airstream to drive back. How does he get back to California though? He could fly back from Vegas but that was a lot of moving parts. We decided to have him rent a car, we hauled it on an auto trailer behind the truck, and he was to drive it back when we completed the move.

We got the trailer on a Wednesday and took about 2 days to load it:

Finally, we hit the road on a Friday and did the whole trip in one day, it is around 400 miles. The truck started having some unknown issues about 20 miles from our place but we made it there. We unloaded the truck the next day and Aaron left, heading back to California. We were back home, again.

We weren’t able to sleep in the house yet, though. We had to find all the parts for our bed and that took a few days, but we still have the Airstream to sleep in. On the 4th night, we were able to sleep in our new home:

We had to take back the UHaul and trailer to Kingman, about 15 miles away. Given the minor issues we had, I decided on a more rural route. Boy did that pay off when the major issue arose:

It started losing power, then gave a message about low oil pressure, then the engine shut off and I had to coast to the side of the road. Three hours later and the truck was being towed to Las Vegas and the trailer was being towed to the UHaul drop-off. Good thing we are retired and didn’t have anything pressing.

We are settling in slowly, getting furniture and TVs installed, unpacking boxes, etc. One thing that happened was I get my Starlink Dishy delivered and installed! This is it after a night of 50mph winds:

We will now take a break from our full-timing but have plans to go see fall colors in the east with our friends. Roxie is looking forward to this respite and I can deal with it also. From the time we started in May of 2017, we have spent around 1760 nights in the trailer. End of this chapter.