Sept 26th

THE HOUSE!
Due to popular demand, we have added some video of our abode. Since we have such a following, I guess we should add some photos of our town and surroundings as well.

videos

A FEW VIDEOS FROM THE TRIP!

Sept 24th

THE FAM IS NOW BACK TOGETHER!
Marcie and the boys arrived last night at 8:20...30 minutes ahead of schedule. We spent the evening ...sleeping. Everyone was just too worn out to really do much. So we had cereal and went to bed...after the boys picked the rooms they wanted of course.

Today we rented a car (as our Pilot went into the windshield shop) and drove to Whittier, AK. It was rainy but beautiful...lots and lots of glaciers. Also stopped at a small creek and checked out some very large salmon at the end of their spawning season. They looked a little, or alot, ragged. We also went through the longest, or second longest, tunnel in North America, and saw our first large blue floating ice chunks at the upper end of Prince William Sound...very cool but didn't take pictures as it was pouring rain.

OH! We also saw some Beluga whales in the Turnagain arms...very very cool.

We'll see what tomorrow brings.

September 23

We're getting settled in.
Gabe and I spent Monday and Tuesday shopping for the major necessities...washer/dryer, beds, kitchen table/chairs, t.v. (of course), cell phones, cable, internet...tons more.
Today we set up all the utilities and cleaned this house...man renters are dirty. I don't think the people before us ever cleaned. I had to vacuum the fan blades before I could dust them. Luckily the carpets were professionally cleaned so we didn't have to worry about that.
I am pretty sure we have minimized the amount of stress Marcie will feel when she gets here in ...3 HOURS :) :) :)

I still have photos on the other camera to get developed, maybe in the next couple of days.

Tomorrow we are going to go down to Whittier and jus take some time off from cleaning and running and stressing...maybe actually enjoy the reason why we are here. I think we'll do the same on Friday, why not.

We will try to keep things on the exciting side so we have stuff to write about.

Oh..we have new phones and phone numbers.
I am sure we will also email/text/call everyone with these new numbers as well.
Take care

September 20th...home

Alright, alright, alright.  We have reached our destination of Eagle River, AK.  Rolled into town around 4:30 I guess it was.  Knowing we had an easy 6 hour day ahead of us, we were able to sleep in until 8:00, take our time getting organized, and actually "enjoy" a wonderful breakfast of biscuits and gravy with reindeer sausage at a hoppin' little restaurant (in Tok) called Fast Eddy's.  It is officially recommended.

We bolted around 10:15 after filling up with gas, again.

Rather uneventful trip, no broken windows this time, but I guess the odds diminish as window counts decrease.  The roads in general were still in pretty bad shape...not so much the actual asphalt quality but rather the whoopty-doo affect caused by frost-heaves beneath the subgrade.   It would have been kind of fun if we had not been pulling a trailer...this kept us at around 45-50 mph and really worked the suspension over.  10-4, over.

Weather was fair, started out with low clouds and fog making it a bit mysterious what was actually out there, but it cleared off around noon and became just partly cloudy throughout the day.  We awoke to snow on the peaks just outside the motel and upward 3000' or so...though we could only barely see them as the fog moved through. 

Many of the peaks are now covered in snow up here.  The temperature was in the 50's all day, just about perfect really.  We caught our first glimpse of a "real" glacier today...the Matanuska Glacier field I think its called.  You could see the blue ice and its terminus down low as well as the extensive morraine field it has left behind.   Unfortunately, the road was very narrow and wound its way quickly down the canyon, so simply pulling off and snapping photos was not possible.  There was a photo pull out that we used, but the viewpoint was just not as good as it could have been...we did what we could. 

No exciting animal life today, or yesterday for that matter...except for a very large owl in the middle of the road just after the border crossing last night, a large, very red fox with a white-tipped tail yesterday evening, and a few muck-ox on a ranch this afternoon.  Pretty bummed we didn't see any bear or wolves or even more of what we did see...but, I guess I live here now, and I should have time to seek them out, I hope.

We had to break into the house today when we arrived.  The keymaster (Erin) apparently lacks the special power of clairvoyance and didn't know we would be here two days early.  She was enjoying her birthday about an hour out of town with additional plans for the evening...the nerve.  Thankfully, she left a lot of windows open and we were able to hone our breaking and entering skills.  Her husband showed up about 2 hours later with a key. 

Shopping tomorrow.  Might be good to have beds, a t.v., a washer and dryer, maybe a table and chairs to get us started. 

Guess we will just keep updating as things happen.  I need to buy more shampoo.

Oh...photos.   Gabe summe it up best today..."If you are not standing in front of it, you just don't get it".  In response to my complaint about how it is all just too big to photograph it.

Sept 19th

Just rolled in to Tok, Alaska. 14 1/2 hours on the road today. 11 yesterday. 12 the day before. more the day before that. 5.5 tomorrow and we're done.

We busted out our back window today. That was bad.
But boy, the views were AWESOME!

I will add pictures from today soon...time for sleep now.

September 18th

Short post...too tired, must sleep.
Left Fort St. John at 9:15 this morning, just after feeding Poseidon and Zeus.  Drove through Fort Nelson around 2 and from there north was extremely incredible driving sceneryscape. Again, photos through bug-riddled windshields somehow do not do the journey justice.  I have other pictures on a different camera as well as Gabe's that may prove more worthy...they have to wait though.

We are currently in Lake Watson, just barely in the Yukon territories.  Hoping to make it to Tok, AK tomorrow but that is 650 miles or so...at 16 mpg and over $4/gallon...sheesh, good luck, right?

Gabe saw his first buffalo today...I find that hard to believe, didn't he ever drive down Southside River Road?  We also saw a few straggling caribou, some stone sheep, a coyote, an eagle, a white-tip tailed fox, a very unfortunate road-kill moose.

If anyone ever mentions that "loose-gravel patching" is a good idea, flick that person in the nose for me.  I will need a new windshield when this is over.

Stay out of my shampoo!!

Morning, Sept. 18

Alright, it was late last night, we were tired...GAWSH!
So, I forgot shoes.  Blah blah blah...We forgot a lot of things, shoes just happened to be the one thing I probably should have remembered.  "I'm goin' to Alaska, I only need my flip flops, right?"    Dork!
And, yeah, the motel in Cache Creek advertised wireless internet...but only if you were near the office, and of course we were the farthest away from the office and had almost enough signal to connect.  We were pretty tired as it was, any post would have been very dull.

"Gabe keeps using all my shampoo!"

Headin' out now.  Need t find some breakfast and let the dog run a bit at the new park we found last night.

Until next time....

September 17th, 2009

Finally made it to a town with internet...or rather, a hotel with internet.
We are currently in .....uh, Canada!
Make that Fort St. John, Canada, just north of Dawson Creek, B.C.
We spent last night in Cache Creek in a funny little motel called the Sage Hills Motel.  The lady who owns and runs it is English through and through...real fast talker but good sense of humor.  She had a border collie that really wanted to play fetch with a stick but not nearly as bad as she wanted to hold on to said stick.  Every time I would reach for the stick she would pull away, and then follow me around with it when I started to walk...including in our room.

Yesterday's drive started at 10:30 a.m. and we hit Cache Creek at 10:00 o.m.   We rolled through Seattle right at 3:30 and just barely skipped past without hitting rush hour though the signs of its onset were increasing as we progressed.  We crossed the border with no issues at 5:30-ish?  They asked us why we were there, where we were going, and if gabe always looked like that.  He made us park and go inside the building while he sratch and sniffed our passports for a few minutes, letting us sweat and wait.  Then he said "here you go", left the passports on the table and walked away.  We left pretty quick.

Today we were up at 7, had breakfast by 8 at the Black Bear Cafe (Eggs Benedict x 2...uh, good!)  and bolted out of town by 8:30.  It took 5.5 hours to get to Prince George.  We tried to find a spare tire for the trailer but apparently it is a one of a kind type of rim and we were unsuccessful (thanks Uhaul!).  We also converted some cash in to the very colorful Canadian, eh, money .  They talk funny up here.  It took us another 7 hours to get to Fort St. John.  It's been a long day.  Tried to get in in time to skype Marcie but I was not fast enough....sorry sweetheart.

Puck got to play with a 4 month old golden-white lab in the park named Charlie...it was awesome and he needed it.  The cats are doing well, taking it all in stride.  Lucipher cried through Portland and finally gave in with the exception of an occassional WOOOWWRR every hour or so just to let us know she was still there.  She loves to climb and ride on the top of the shelf I made.  Fatty, aka "The Black Lord"....he just goes with the flow...no complaints as long as he has food.   The frogs....they hardly say a thing.

We have been in awe of the landscape...the pictures don't do justice.  We finally saw a moose and calf this evening (Gabe's first) and a few deer...the only animals we have seen so far.  We did get a little excited when we saw the badger crossing sign....but no badgers yet.  For the pictures...just click the slide show to the right and they will open up in a new window.

Don't know how the internet links will be in the next few days, but we will try to update as much as possible.
Trying to make it to Lake Watson (i think) tomorrow...about another 10-12 hour day.  Stay tuned.

Word!

The Alaskan Trashkan Experiment

We are the Alaskan Trashkan experience!
Our mission is to get from Albany, Oregon to Eagle River, Alaska without death, dismemberment, or catastrophic mechanical failure...or even a flat tire.