All those annoying little details

Yesterday we took the kids to school and got them enrolled, then went into Palmer to start on our "to do" list. We didn't get very far! We went to lunch with my cousin Jeff and wife Luci (the kids were soooooo jealous!) and by the time we were done, it was about time to head back into the hills to meet the kids after school. We actually got a lot of good advice from Jeff and Luci and they mapped out for us some places to go to work on our list so while we didn't get a lot crossed off the list yesterday, they set us up with a great plan to work from today. We went back into Palmer and Wasilla today and got auto insurance, registered the car and truck and got pretty new Alaska license plates ;) got Rodney's driver's license, checked to see if Rodney's handguns had arrived (they had not), had lunch, stopped at the post office AND managed to shop a LOT of items off our shopping list! Not bad for one day now that I type it all out! We still need to go to Anchorage later this week for a few other big items but we already have some good leads on where to go for those too so it ought to go fairly quickly. This isn't exactly fun stuff, but it needs to be done in order to manage the household! I haven't been feeling all that great and finally figured out that there is mold in the house we're staying in so I'll sleep in the camper until we can settle in the other house. Still no phone either so email is probably the best way to stay in contact unless we can call while we are running our errands. Sorry this is so scattered! My thoughts are all over the place lately! I am working on a few more posts down the road starting with one on guard rails... I started working on that one in NY!

Windshield panoramas

Can you guess why I called them that? Good thing we've arrived safely! I didn't want to post these until we had arrived safely for my mother's sake! Yes, driving with left hand, clicking with right - I took hundreds of "point and shoot" photos, most of them just clouds, but enough that turned out good enough to make it worth it! No, I didn't take my eyes off the road! This is Kluane Lake (I think) - the one that I said was so blue.



I wasn't driving for this one! LOL! This was in the Yukon - it was so beautiful I insisted we stop!
I just love the fireweed! Actually, there seem to be a number of different types of it - this was purplish, then there is some that is really red.

Remind me to tell ya'll about the motorcycles and this one buffalo with ATTITUDE! These guys were HUGE! I have closer pics, but I loved how this guy just owned the road!



I hope this holds ya'll over until I can post more!

Oh no!! I forgot about pictures!!!

Ack!!! SORRY, everyone!!! I'm so sorry that I forgot all about the pictures!!! Yesterday I spent almost all day talking, and talking, and talking... It was so great to catch up with everyone! Every meal took hours because we just kept on talking! Then today we started unpacking at about 7 am and I just gave up at about 9 pm. Talk about a marathon! At least it is almost all settled, but boy am I ever bushed! Yikes! Then I open my email and see all the responses looking for pictures! I wish you could all see me blush right now! Boy, do I ever feel like a heel! I wish I could say I'd do it right now but I can hardly see straight, much less type straight! Well, maybe I'll give it a shot anyway, since the pictures are mostly picked... I wanted to add a few more first, but maybe I'll just do those another day. We have no phone yet. We aren't the only ones though - a line got cut in camp so a lot of people are without phone. Email is the best contact at the moment though I think people can also get through to the main camp line and leave a message at the front desk. And I DID tell my computer what time it is, and I DID tell it what time zone we are in, but this blog still thinks I'm on Eastern time. Too tired today to try to figure that out! That's all for now!

Unpacking, unpacking, unpacking!

Wednesday, August 19, 2009

We’re in Alaska! We are in a village called Tok about 2 hours into Alaska. The roads weren’t as bad as we expected based on what we’d heard but they weren’t all that great either. There wasn’t as much gravel as we expected, but the traveling was still slow due to a lot of dips, bumps and pot holes. Rodney said Oksana was bouncing up and down like popcorn, he said his kidneys were crushed, the back of the trailer bottomed out more than once in the dips and dives, and Ellie didn’t want to get back in the truck after one particularly jarring section. Oksana said that the trailer tires must not be filled with air, they must be filled with prayers! Rodney had initially talked of pressing on until we got to camp, but he caved in pretty quickly after a couple more hours of driving after the high of crossing the border. That went so smoothly it was obscene! We were there less than 5 minutes between two vehicles! I didn’t want to say anything before we got back in the US but we actually had 10x the amount of ammunition with us than we were actually supposed to have. The guy at the Canadian border was VERY gracious! From here we head southwest to get to camp tomorrow.

Speaking of Ellie, the dogs have traveled better than expected. Granted, our expectations were pretty low. Any time before this trip Ellie has always thrown up any time we took her in the car. We give her Bonine (a 24 hr medicine like Dramamine) and that seems to do the trick as far as the throwing up goes. It doesn’t stop the whining and climbing all over Rodney, but at least she’s not throwing up on him! Eider LOVES to ride! He’s a born traveler! Half the time he’s sound asleep on his back with his legs sticking straight up in the air on the road. Dufus!

We went through some beautiful country again today. That upper part of the Yukon is GORGEOUS! Kluane Lake was stunningly blue! I’ll have to see if I got some pictures. At one point Andrei said, “We’re like in the middle of nowhere!” Like we hadn’t been for days already! It is nice and cool up here. I actually wore a fleece for a few minutes yesterday and a few hours today! Yeah!!!!! I’m still on the prednisone though so I’m probably running a little warmer than even I usually run. Sergei commented at one point, “This is nice. I haven’t sweated yet today!” I’m not sure I agree though. At one point there was a horrible smell in the car and it turned out that Sergei had taken off his shoes. I thought something had died in there! Ah well! Rodney gets him and his stink tomorrow! Tomorrow is the end of the trail! Yeah!

Thursday, August 20, 2009

We’re here! We arrived at about 12:30 Alaska time. What a blessing to be out of a car! Now it is time to unpack, unpack, unpack! The closer we got to Victory, the more agitated Andrei became. Just after we got here, he asked for some medication to help with his anxiety. Moments later we ran into Liz Weaver, a gal from the Bath, NY area who is up here with a work crew for 2 weeks. Andrei knows her from Bible Quizzing in NY! He was SO excited to see her that it really helped dispel his anxiety! They chatted for quite a while. Had we not been delayed in our journey, Liz would not have been here yet. God’s timing is ALWAYS perfect!

After lunch we went back to unpack and Rod VanDaam brought two of his kids (Robert and Tasha) by to meet the kids. That also helped the kids a lot to meet other kids that they will be going to school with. The kids had a number of opportunities through the afternoon/evening to meet some of the other kids in the area. It seems to have been a great introduction to Victory. It has been a busy day of greetings and unloading! Sorry for no pictures yet! I PROMISE I will do it tomorrow! Today’s scenery, especially coming into the Matsu valley was even more stunning than before! Simply amazing! I’m about ready to drop though so I’m going to try to keep this short. One more note though before I sign off. We were thinking we’d need to go shopping tomorrow but the fridge was FULL! So were the shelves! I think we’ll be able to relax a little bit tomorrow and just try to find ourselves!

Yes, we're still alive!

Saturday, August 15, 2009

We left my sister Annette’s house after her husband Harry insisted on cooking us breakfast (technically second breakfast). He also sent us with sandwiches for lunch AND leftovers from dinner the night before! We did NOT go hungry at their house by any stretch of the imagination. Harry’s cooking is the stuff of poetry! Seriously, it is that good. Rodney and I have only a half dozen or less “memorable eating experiences” in our lives. Harry’s cooking ranks right up there with fresh lobster in Nova Scotia, San Carlos Bay (hole in the wall) in Phoenix, AZ, my Uncle Henk’s cooking and the tiny French restaurant we ran across years ago after camping in Ontario Provincial Park. I kept telling them that if they kept feeding us like that we might not want to leave! I’m still drooling over the food just thinking about it!

Anyway, we did manage to drag ourselves away (with much pain on the part of the kids) and we started off on the second half of the journey. We drove first toward Calgary through driving rain over roads that I wasn’t too keen on driving. In Bassano where my sister lives we had walked over these wet roads that were as slick as could be! They are paved with a gravel that is like tiny smooth river rocks. They are also as slick as river rock when they get wet. I kept thinking of that as we drove along through the heavy rain! The rain finally cleared away as we got near Calgary but the traffic didn’t! Once the heavy rain stopped, the heavy traffic started and stuck with us pretty much all the way to Edmonton.

We stopped along that route in Carstairs to visit a missionary that our church has supported for years. I’ve followed Dan and Deanna Woodard’s ministry for years, met them a few times and kept in touch via email and Facebook more recently. Dan is such an interesting person and always such a joy to talk to! He’s one of those people that just radiates the joy of Christ. It was such a joy to be able to stop in and meet them in person, especially since there was a group from Castile, NY there that week putting a new roof on their house. That roof was such an amazing story in and of itself! Dan had been concerned about the roof for some time and our church had considered going out to help work on it but ended up getting pulled off to another trip. A number of us really had a burden about Dan’s roof and still wanted to help somehow. Meanwhile, we were planning this trip. We had decided that we would try to stop for a day or half a day and at least get Dan and his boys started on the job. As we were making those plans, the group from Castile decided to go up and do it. Just days before they arrived, Carstairs was hit by a freak hail storm that damaged most of the roofs in town as well as siding on many of the houses. Had that roof gone on any sooner, it would have been ruined. God’s timing was impeccable!

Less fun was some of the road kill we saw. Today’s was more disturbing than unusual – a Pyrenees and a horse. Not sure why we don’t expect to see that sort of thing, but we don’t.

Sunday, August 16, 2009

We left Whitecourt, Alberta and drove through more amazing scenery. The area gets remote quickly once you leave Edmonton aside from the anomaly of Grand Prairie with it’s 50,000 people. The gas prices started creeping higher and higher the further out we got. British Columbia has TONS of forests and trees through the area we drove and lots more mountainous roads. Oh yeah, STEEP and CURVY! Yikes! Intense driving! We ended up at Pink Mountain, about 140 miles past Dawson Creek, British Columbia, the official start of the Alaskan Highway.

Monday, August 17, 2009.

Today’s drive was AMAZING! It was probably the most amazing scenery I’ve EVER seen in my life! And we thought we’d seen beautiful before! EVERY turn or hill revealed another amazing vista more beautiful than the last. Today’s drive was through the Rockies. We saw moose, caribou, BUFFALO (honest to goodness, real life buffalo) and Stone Sheep. We’ve also seen antelope, mule deer and white tail deer, just not today. The buffalo like to sleep on the road at night. I’ll bet that’s exciting! Those things are MONSTERS! We had gone through one section where they said there were a lot of them and we didn’t see one. We got to another section like that and I said I’d really like to see some, not up close and personal like with a car, but close enough for pictures. Did I ever get that prayer answered! We saw a whole herd right beside the road (not in it). It was AMAZING! We didn’t make it that far mile-wise, but we sure had a full day! We were on the road by 8 am out of Pink Mountain, British Columbia and finally made it to Liard River, BC by about 5 pm. It was intense driving the entire day, much of it over winding gravel roads with some intense up and down grades. And we thought it was bad on Sunday! Every day brings more beauty and worse roads! LOL! It didn’t help that at the bottom of “Suicide Hill” they had us STOP for construction. Who’s bright idea was that? The brakes on the trailer were SMOKING after that one! There wasn’t a moment of relaxation at the wheel all day. We camped at Liard River Hotsprings Provincial Park which as the name indicates, is situated on a hot spring. We went up to the spring to soak and relax after the long day of driving. Ummmmm!!! Delightful! I had to stay on the cooler side of the spring, but my skin loved the spring water (just not too much of the heat).

Tuesday, August 18, 2009

Well, we finally have internet again! Yeah! We made it to Whitehorse in the Yukon Territory. It was another beautiful drive today with much better roads than yesterday. We made pretty good time today, putting on about 400 miles in 9 hours. In the camp last night there was a bear trap close to our campsite. Oksana and Andrei slept in a tent and Oksana didn’t sleep at all worrying about that bear. Then they got wet too because they didn’t stake out the tent. It was a crabby morning to say the least! We’re drying out now though and everyone is in better spirits knowing that the end of the trip is in sight. We expect to get to camp in about 2 more days. We might even get to Alaska tomorrow depending on the roads. The road is supposed to be gravel and poor a couple hours north of here. We’ll find out tomorrow. We’re all pretty tired at this point. It will be very good to get to camp! I'll try to get some pictures up later, but a shower takes higher priority!

Pictures!

Oksana with Jadin's geckos Trains were everywhere

Antelope in Alberta, Canada
The road from Havre, Montana to Canada
Road work delay in Montana
Badlands in North Dakota
Hay bales in North Dakota
Andrei and Oksana watching videos on the computer
Sorry for the reverse order! I forgot how this worked and it took me a bunch of tries to get it together today!

Ready for the next leg!

This time with my sister has been AWESOME! We definitely needed it! We've been able to eat AWESOME meals, clean up, do laundry, eat, reorganize, spread out, get some sleep, eat, etc. Annette, Harry and Jadin have gone all out (as usual) to keep us well fed. Sergei is pretty sure he is in heaven. All the kids say this is their favorite part of the trip so far. The house we are staying in has a pool table in the basement so they've been having a BLAST playing pool, having raucous tournaments, usually Rodney and Oksana vs Sergei and Andrei. R&O beat S&A 5 times before S&A won and you should have heard them celebrate when they finally did win! You'd have thought they had beaten them every time! That pool table has gotten quite a work out. Their cousin Jadin has done a great job of entertaining the kids too. They all went out to the dam yesterday to check that out and they've been playing games, checking out his chameleon and crested geckos and just hanging out watching videos.

We'll be on the road tomorrow morning with one stop in Carstairs (above Calgary) to visit another friend and then hoping to camp northeast of Edmonton tomorrow night. I don't know how much internet access we'll have up there. We also can't seem to pick up our cell phone voice mails either so appologies to those who are leaving them! We aren't trying to ignore you! Email is more reliable at this point, or it has been at any rate. We're not too sure about that from here on out. We'll try to update this whenever we are able. We've got a book called the Milepost that tells all the gas stations, camping places, dumping stations, and other services along the route we will be taking. It seems to be an excellent reference manual (updated yearly) to the trip. ;) This last half should take 5 or 6 days, we expect, barring any problems. Thanks so much for all your prayers!