Tag Archives: Retirement

North to Alaska (again) – Part 1

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We went to Alaska in 2019. It was a kind of ‘spur of the moment’ thing. We saw the RV’ing to Alaska group was having a 4th of July get-together near Anchorage. We signed up and made that a target for our initial travels.

Our friends, the Chen’s wanted to go to Alaska so we decided to go with them this year. We made a decision on a specific date to be at Denali National Park and used that as our target for this trip.

We left our place in Arizona on May 26 and had scheduled to leave Great Falls, MT with the Chen’s on June 19. This gave us time to head to California to visit family. The first stop was to see our youngest grandchild and her family (we also got to see our oldest grandchild here also). Here is Roxie taking Charlee out for a walk in her trike.

The next stop was the middle grandchild, Atlas, and his family. When Hannah and Roxie were doing something, we boys (me, Lukas, and Atlas) went to a park to wait and could overlook San Francisco.

As our whirlwind tour continued, we saw Roxie’s sister (Desiree) and her daughter (Tiarah). We were there for Tiarah’s high school graduation. She graduated from Central Valley High School which, ironically, is the same high school I graduated from 45 years previously. It was still held in the same venue.

After all this California ‘love’ we headed north. The first stop was Collier State Park in Oregon. It was by a beautiful creek.

We headed to Washington and stayed at Charbonneau Park, an Army Corp of Engineers campground. We spent a couple of nights there and did the ubiquitous laundry loads. Here is Roxie telling me something.

We turned east to get into Montana and eventually to Great Falls. We also stopped a few nights to see a family friend and his family, Jared.

Unfortunately, Jared’s family had to leave before we got there to attend to an ill relative. We are sorry we missed them but are glad they were able to go. Jared lives next to Post Falls, so we went to see the falls.

One more travel night and we made it to Great Falls and met up with the Chen’s. They had an extra passenger, their daughter Maya. We knew she was coming along on the trip for half of it. She would fly back home midway through the trip. Great Falls also has many waterfalls around the area.

George is king of the selfies.

We were off the try to get into Canada. I took a shotgun with me the last time and decided to do so again this time. You should declare, on the US side, that you are the owner of the shotgun and use a form that states such. This took a bit of time as the border agent came out to our trailer and verified it, but the longest time was waiting until an agent asked us what we needed.

Now the Canadian side. The initial questioning went easy. The agent did ask about guns and I had already said I needed to get a permit for the shotgun so she never asked about any other guns, which I did not have. Pull over to the side and come into the office.

I got a great agent for my shotgun permitting. All went smoothly and it took some time also. But we were in Alberta.

There was a caribou farm of some type on the side of the road and Roxie had an interest in them as they had a curiosity with her.

We headed north to get to Dawson Creek, stayed in small campgrounds (municipal ones if we could) and avoided large towns as we could. We did make a stop in a Calgary Costco and saw something very Canadian.

We stayed for a few nights in Morinville, AB, just north of Edmonton.

We went to Edmonton for a few days to see the sights. At the University we were able to do some solar observations (sunspots, corona, etc.).

A large replica Stanley Cup.

The city skyline.

And, of course, the largest mall in North America.

Back on the road and after a few more nights we made it where all Alaska travellers want to take a photo. Mile 0.

As mentioned previously, Roxie and I were in Alaska in 2019. However, I went to Alaska with my family in 1964. It was my dad, mom, sister and me. We drove from Southern California and had a total of 9 flat tires. Some of that 1964 story is here. I tried to recreate many of the 1964 photos that I have found. Here is the Mile 0 photo from 1964 (I am the short one).

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.