Saturday, May 29, 2010

On the road

I love this!  I am writing this as we cruise down I-20 in the rain.  We just left Dick's daughter's house a bit ago and are now headed to Memphis.  We should get through Atlanta in a couple hours, hope the traffic's not too bad there.  It's 4:30 so I don't know how far we'll get tonight.

Corey's graduation was nice, about 225 in the senior class and can you believe the ceremony only took an hour?

Egads it is raining elephants, not much visibility at the moment..

Well we are officially on the road.  We had to buy Chena, the dog, a sweater today as she got cold last night.  I guess she missed having Chili to snuggle up with so she got in bed with us.

Laugh for the hour, a guy just passed us with what used to be a nice set of pillow top mattresses.  But do you think they were wrapped in plastic?  Nah, why would you do that? duh..... he may as well throw them off on the side of the road for they are ruined now!!

Well not much to report in this early part of the trip.  Maybe we'll have a photo of the graduate tomorrow.

Take care friends and thanks for checking in with us!

Thursday, May 27, 2010

Some background

Dick and I lived in Alaska from 1995 - 2000.  It was, without a doubt, the greatest experience of our lives and we love Alaska like no other place on this earth.    We've experienced REALLY REALLY cold temperatures and loved the novelty of it!  I saw -53ºF while there and yes, your tires do get "square" and you just can't imagine how frozen and cold a vehicle can be when its been soaking outdoors in those kind of temps!

During our time there we had a pickup camper and spent our summers camping and driving.  We haven't come to a complete agreement on our favorite vacation but its between our trip through the Yukon and Northwest Territories to Inuvik, Katmai National Park,  or our trip to Cordova. 

The trip to Inuvik took us on mostly gravel road to within a 20 minute plane ride of the Arctic Ocean.  If you've watched Ice Road Truckers you may have seen something of Inuvik.  We rode on a very small airplane from Inuvik to Tuktoyaktuk so that we could dip our toes in the Arctic Ocean.   This was really a spectacular vacation  - a trip to Inuvik is definitely worth the time and effort if you ever get a chance.  The road to Inuvik crosses mountains and plains and is just a long ride through awesome scenery unblemished by civilization for the most part.

To get to Cordova, you have to take a ferry or airplane 'cause you can't drive there!  Out of Cordova is a 50 mile gravel road that takes you to the Million Dollar Bridge and Childs Glacier.  The glacier is undercut by the Copper River and so the glacier cracks and falls into the river and the accompanying noise is like a warzone!!  The force of the ice hitting the river throws boulders and fish onto the river banks and eagles and bears anxiously await these easy meals.

I'd have to say my very favorite trip was to Katmai National Park where we were up close and personal with lots of big brown bears!  I mean close like less than 50 yards.  Like good friends close, LOL!!   If you want to go to Katmai and stay overnight, you generally have to plan at least a year in advance, but it is completely worth it!

We begin our journey tomorrow, good Lord willin' and the creek don't rise, as we say here in the South! 

The pictures you see are photos I took on our various vacations when we lived in Alaska and a few from a  quick trip in March of 2007.  Please leave us a message and let us hear from you!

Monday, May 24, 2010

Hello friends!

In just a few days we'll be on the road and we are so ready to go!  But geez, we are plagued with problems right now, the radio in the RV isn't working so Dick replaced that this evening.  Can you imagine 12,000 miles without a radio??

And there's some pesky problem with the brakes, the brake light keeps coming on - that's not too bad but the awful loud ding, ding, ding alarm that accompanies the brake light drove us CRAZY today as we returned from a quick trip to Virginia to visit Dick's brother and SIL.  They live in the beautiful Virginia mountains so that was a nice prelude to our coming trip.

Our first stop on our trip will be in SC to see our grandson graduate from high school.  Oh my, I can't believe he is old enough for that!  After a couple nights in SC, we will head to Memphis to visit with Dick's Mom and sister.  From there, we'll head to Denver where we will replace some old RV batteries.  Good batteries are a definite must as we'll be doing alot of dry camping and probably won't use the generator very much.

So here it Monday night and I've got only 3 days to finish getting ready.  Tomorrow the RV will be in the shop (to work on that brake light) so ....guess I will clean house as I don't want to come home to a dirty house!

We hope that you'll check our blog now and then to find out where we are and what we're up too.  Until then, we wish you a great summer!