Alaska!

Saturday 27^th we leave Whitehorse and head for Tok. Drove all day many long hours, slow going because the roads are icy. Drove till 3 hrs after dark and spent the night at Buckshot Betty’s Café (Town of Beaver Creek), in the parking lot. She had RV hookups but none were working, there was fuel right down the road, they would open at noon. We went to fill our truck but their pumps were frozen. -65 degrees that night. Propane failed due to cold, propane stays a liquid below -45 degrees, we had to plug in a battery blanket (around the propane) to make our house warm up.

Sunday 28^th leave Beaver Creek and go 20 miles to next fuel station, they had fuel. Drove mostly without event to the Tok Cutoff road. Took many pictures of Kluane Lake which was beautiful. Stopped at a small fuel station and store and spent afternoon and night relaxing and not going anywhere.

Monday 29^th left the little lodge and headed down the Tok Cutoff for Richardson Hwy to Anchorage, Ak. We crossed into Alaska, many cheers were heard from the back seat. Once we came to the Richardson Hwy, we learned that the mountain range just inside of Alaska, is absolutely laughing at the Rocky Mountains in Canada. I mean, really laughing. These mountains watch people coming over the Rockies, huffing and puffing and say quietly to each other, we will kill them if they are struggling over the little Rockies! And yes. They tried. They did some work on our transmission. It took nearly 8 hrs to go around 200 miles. These mountains, were Wicked. I think (by map) they are called Wrangell Mountain Range.

At a stop off section of hwy, we pulled over for late lunch and the transmission threw up about 1.5 qts fluid on the ground. Because it is red, it looked like the truck was bleeding. The transmission was tired of the steep ups and downs pulling 27,000. Frank refilled the transmission and we tried to go forward, we had only 84 miles left to the RV park in Anchorage. We limped in slowly at around 8 pm and found that the park was crowded, dirty and full of weird people. I mean really scary.

At midnight, we experienced a fun marital fight happening next door. The neighbors came out screaming at one another, threatening to murder each other and the man was sobbing and crying. Then he asked the woman, yelled rather, why did I have to *&^%$#@ marry you!!! Then he spent some more time wailing. Doors slam. Insults hurled.

Morning came, I emailed Amanda and she found a RV park out in the country for us. It is on the edge of Palmer, Ak heading towards Wasilla, Ak. It is beautiful, and costs 350 vs 870 and we are allowed to use electric heaters. The other park allowed only our propane heater which is a wet heat, and doesn’t keep us warm enough. The wet part just means condensation inside of our RV whereas the electric heaters help to dry that out.

Tuesday we scouted the new RV park, and decided we wanted to come here. The lady assigned us a spot and we came Wednesday morning. The only drawback is that this park wasn’t ready for winter hook up living. So, the other RV owners who live full time do not have any running water. They use their toilets (not all of them) after pouring a jug of antifreeze in it, and then they dump it using a smart tote and dragging it to the main dump-the only thaw one.

We maintain water in our rig because we have tank and pipe heaters, and insulation. We shower in the shower house because that is the bulk of water use and we have to dump it in the smart tote wagon, pulling 27 gallons of liquid across snow isn’t fun. It takes us about an hour to dump our tanks and refill our fresh water by hooking several hoses together.

We like it here a lot, its cheaper and has nice neighbors. A lot of kind people who go out of their way to be a good neighbor. Our kids have made friends and snow tunnels, made forts and used the big hills for sledding. We will start looking at houses this weekend and hope to find some land.

So that’s it! Our big Kansas to Alaska trip in small print.Pictures of Kluane Lake to follow.