forum.HappieCamper.com

[Ron]

Week 35: Week ending 7/13/03

Monday:
Driving south along the Richardson Highway towards Anchorage, we encounter the Trans-Alaska Pipeline numerous times. Near Flood Creek we stop to photograph the snow-covered, sun-drenched peaks of the Alaska Range.

The Richardson and Glenn highways form the eastern side of “The Loop” from Fairbanks to Anchorage and back. (Over the next two weeks we will have traveled the other side of the loop back up to Fairbanks and down the Richardson/Glenn side for a second time.) We think that this route, comprised of the Richardson and Glenn highways, is overall one of the prettiest 400 mile drives in the world.

Click here to see some of this route.

Body-rattling patches of washboard and road damage shake us up a few times, but overall the Richardson is not bad. The fact that we are able to admire three moose casually munching away in a pond might have something to do with our rating of the Richardson.

We pull into a paved rest stop at MP 113 on the Glenn Highway for the night. We have quite a view overlooking Sheep Mountain to our left and unnamed mountains to our right. Three other RVS soon follow suit. We decide to watch the DVD Moulin rouge, which Ron won for answering a survey. Just as the credits are finishing, Ron hears a woman shrieking outside. One of the other campers is standing near the road and pointing in terror towards the north. Ron follows her point and sees two moose standing in the middle of the road and oncoming traffic approaching! Luckily, the drivers were able to stop in time to allow the nearsighted moose to cross the road safely.

Other campers joined us in watching the gathering of moose, as both adults and calves meandered in fields and crossed the street near our rest stop. As the sky darkened from reoccurring rain, the other RVers turned in for the night. Ron and Joan stayed out a bit longer and we were rewarded by the sight of two more moose, a momma and her calf. Again they seemed stuck trying to cross the road, so Ron walked closer towards them and yelled “Run!”. They finally ran across to the safety of the other side of the road and we turned for bed ourselves. We saw a total of nine moose today!

Tuesday:
Driving west on Glenn Highway (AK1) we encounter serious road construction just after MP 109. Flaggers are present, as are pilot cars. In two hours times, we manage to travel a total of 62 miles due to construction and twisty, windy roads. Finally we arrive in Anchorage. Once we are on the multi-lane highway, we could be in Any City, USA.

We can’t “get in” to the Anchorage RV park, they are full for the night, but we are able to get reservations for the rest of the stay, so we head to the local Wal-Mart to boondock for the night. Alas, in Anchorage, Wal-Mart doesn’t allow RVs to spend the night. So we scramble a bit and get a reservation at an in-city RV park. This is right in the heart of their retail strip, across from the Sears Mall.

The location is questionable (one of the first times that Ron has not felt safe) the sites are way, way too small for a modern RV (the HappieCamper sticks way out into the dirt travel area and has to actually straddle two sites to fit in width-wise. On the other hand, it is a walk across the street to the Cyber Bean Café, where Ron grabs email and a coffee. Too bad about the problems… being in the city has it’s advantages.

Wednesday:
We move to Anchorage RV Park far northeast side of Anchorage. The park is owned by a Native corporation, and they seem to have had the capitalization to create quite a nice park. About 200 spaces all with full hookups, varying in other amenities such as 50 Amp electricity, cable TV, and in-site telephone service.

The park is located on Muldoon Road, which is a main thoroughfare for the city, but the park is at the very far end of the road. As you get off of the Glenn Highway, you can go north or south on Muldoon. If you go north, in a block or two you come to the campground, and the only place you can go further than that is an Air Force base. If you go south, in a block or two you come to a retail area, including lots of strip-mall type shops, gas stations and a supermarket.

The location would be perfect if not for that Air Force base, from which a military jet or two fly over the park, on a more-than-occasional frequency. Once Ron got used to the disturbances, he actually started looking forward to seeing the F-whatevers flying overhead.

Thursday:

A restful day. In the early evening we went to the downtown area of the city, and were pleased to find an event only run on Thursday evenings sponsored by the local merchants. A tent with music, and even a toothless magician in a tuxedo. He wasn’t particularly good, and the few people watching him weren’t very appreciative. He employed the linking rings, a thumb tip trick and a card trick. Ron encouraged the crowd by applauding and gasping in all the right places, kind of whooping it up. More people came by, and he earned a little money. BTW, even though his skills weren’t well honed, he was entertaining, and neither Ron nor Joan could figure out how he accomplished that card trick. Ahhhh to be mystified by the magician!

The rest of the downtown strip is interesting – a mix of business for locals and for tourists. The City decks itself out in flowers in the summer, with hanging baskets of flowers lining quite a long section of 4th Avenue.

Off to bed early.

Friday:
Joan leaves for Chicago. Ron updates the website, adding several pages of pictures and hangs out, takes a nap, then brings the laptop to the camp office and surfs the web through AOL for an hour. Boring. Restful.

Saturday:

Ron hangs out and watches some NASCAR Busch series racing. Hamilton’s car #25 was truly dominant. If a yellow flag hadn’t come out several times, he might have lapped the second place finisher. On each restart, he just drove away from the other cars. That car’s mechanics have done something right. Can I borrow them for 12 seconds for the HappieCamper?

Ron then finishes what Joan had started on Week 34’s travel log, and does some work on pictures.

Ron is feeling just a little grumpy because he realizes that the trip is nearing the end. Joan is back in 5 days with Rita. We will be sightseeing with Rita until July 31. Maybe a few more Alaska places, and then we start to head home.

So far we’ve:

driven about 20,000 miles in the motorhome, and maybe 5,000 in the truck. Maybe only somewhere around 7,000 more miles to go (78% complete)

been on the road since November 15, 8 months, and plan on being home around September 15, just 2 months left to go (80% complete)

achieved 43 areas, 10-15 to go (74% - 81% complete).


We’ve stayed and done something touristy in 40 states, 2 provinces and DC. Only 7 states: North Dakota, South Dakota, Minnesota, Iowa, New Hampshire, Rhode Island and Maine; 3 provinces: Alberta, Saskatchewan and Manitoba remain on the “set” portion of the agenda. We may add the additional provinces of Ontario, Quebec, New Brunswick, Nova Scotia and/or Prince Edward Island. Northwest Territories would require a detour of maybe 200 miles and we don’t even have a map. We’ll see about that. We’ll know more as we see where we are, when we are.

We missed Arkansas (drove through it, but decided not to stop in the former President’s home state) and we just realized last week that we accidentally missed staying in Delaware, though we also drove through there. We’ve not driven to Hawaii on this trip, either. Nunavut is also inaccessible, and Newfoundland and Labrador is too remote.

So it’s time to start to think seriously about what we’re going to do when we get back home.
Will we sell the house? Buy another?
Sell the motorhome?
Rescue another dog (YES!)?
What kind of non-profit work can we do together to make us feel fulfilled and happy?
Will we earn lots of money again, or just stipends? Will we have to put on suits again?
Will there be the same self-imposed pressures as before, just with different titles?
Should we just start our own non-profit? If so, in which area?
Maybe we should start a for-profit?
Will we fall back into a work/TV wasteland, or have we changed our lifestyle to be more active for a long enough time for it to stick?

Things to talk about over the next 7,000 miles.

Early on, we made a decision to write these journal entries in the third person, so that for any given entry the format and style would remain somewhat consistent. At first, Ron started writing the entries, but as his responsibilities started to add up, Joan took over the vast majority of the writing while acting as navigation systems expert, with Ron doing occasional proof-reads. So if this text looks less jittery, it’s because it’s being written at the dinette table, and not in the co-pilot’s seat.

The division of work on the trip has worked out to be this:

Ron:
Driving. First and foremost. Driving. Driving some more. Driving the motorhome, driving the Dinghy. 25,000 miles means about 500 hours of driving.

Picture taking. Wherever we go, Ron does the vast majority of the photography.

Computer work. Of all sorts: General Administration, Keeping the system functioning, backups (we’d lose EVERYTHING if this system failed and we didn’t have backups). Website maintenance (both for HappieCamper.com and also for www.oes.org, whose forum (http://forum.oes.org is almost identical in format to this one) has been growing in popularity, with more than 200 members and more than 1000 posts. Ron also set up a private forum for use of a non-profit along the way.)

Bill paying. Mostly online.

External Campsite setup and breakdown, including the attachment and detachment of the HappieDinghy, utilities attachment etc..

Motorhome mechanical maintenance. Primary responsibility, with Joan’s assistance. Oil changes, lubrication, tires, inspection, battery maintenance.

Joan:
Cooking.

Cleaning.

Laundry.

Food shopping, with occasional indulgence and questionable help from Ron.

Navigation, including location of rest stops, reading the Milepost to note places of interest as we have been in the Western Provinces and Canada.

Campground selection and registration.

Journal writing.

Letter writing.

Internal campsite breakdown. Readying the motorhome to move again after being camped, stowing all things not nailed down, and making the coffee for the driver!


Now it’s about 5PM and time to fire up the grill and cook up a nice, juicy steak.

Sunday:

Hanging out some more. Watched NASCAR again. There was a fiery crash in the last third of the race. But Ron’s attention has really been focused on getting HappieCamper.com updated. He worked on the site from 11:30AM through 7:30PM, (interrupted by about an hour’s worth of phone calls) then spent an hour traveling to an internet café to get it uploaded.

Ron’s just a wild and crazy guy in Anchorage when Joan’s not around.