Epilogue

Well, I thought the End is in sight! post was our last one, but I just had to do an epilogue.  This is what we found on our garage door when we pulled in the driveway.  After 15 hours straight of flying/driving to get home (including a 40 minute nap at the Bay City rest area because neither of us could drive another foot at that point), it was so nice to see this!  Soooo nice to get home to our much-loved piece of Lake Margrethe.  It was great to get back to school, to catch up with friends at lunch, and just generally get back to our normal lives.  We loved the trip, and all the stunning scenery, but there's no place like home. . .

The end is in sight!

Here we are on our last day at the airport in Anchorage.  I know it has been long enough given the entertainment I get out of the littlest things.  Lynn had the lap top and was sitting to my left trying to get it hooked up to the internet at the terminal. Unbeknownst to her I had the mouse hidden down by my right leg.  I got such a kick out of watching her try to figure out what was wrong with the little arrow...she said "Randy, look what this is doing!"  Sure enough the little arrow was going round and round much to my amusement.

Last day today, we fly out in a few hours; our flight is at about 8 pm and we got here about 2...is there a message?  Reflections of our trip might be appropriate:
We started out about a month ago and I had grand ideas of fishing a lot and catching a bunch of this and that, all big and many of them.  As it turned out I only dipped a line a couple times and caught a few fish.  I did catch a very large
Dolly Vardan, probably 5 or 6 pounds which is very big for this specie.  I didn't know what it was, and was sure it wasn't a Dolly because of the size but Patsy Wiseman called it and later I discovered it indeed was a Dolly.  Fishing just didn't work on this trip.

We saw so much fantastic scenery comprised of everything from endless fields of hay in Montana and Alberta to snow capped mountains, mountains, mountains, mountains and mountains.  If you can get scenery overload, we got it.  Scary drives on the Cassiar Highway, the  Icefield Highway between Jasper and Banff, the badlands in North Dakota, the Canadian badlands, ferry rides to Haines and Whittier and most importantly Head Smashed In Buffalo Jump.

Our best fun was staying overnight in some RV park in the middle of a field, and sleeping in the van.  We got so we could dissemble the tent and pack the van in 1 hour flat...and just so you know, we could put it up faster than that.

Would I do it again? In a minute.  Would Lynn do it again?  She said it was a week too long, and if it were a week shorter she still would never consider doing it again...I think mostly she didn't like the sleeping in the van part or maybe the bathroom/shower arrangements.  She very much liked several of the places we stayed like the ranch in British Columbia, the cabin on the Tok cutoff, the Hilton in Calgary and the cottage in Homer.  Incidentally, Homer provided the best meal we could find anywhere at the Homestead Restaurant.

So, 6,406 miles in a 1994 rusty old conversion van with a broken exhaust manifold and only 2 issues the entire way; broken break line and one flat tire.  10 nights sleeping in the van...it just doesn't get any better!

And so we say good-bye to Edna:

She's just sitting there waiting now in the Park, Ride & Fly lot for Bert and Carrie Partello to pick her up and take her on their own adventures.

Anybody know what a road trip in Chile would be like?

Wasilla

Lynn: Randy has been on this little kick to collect bumper stickers from everywhere we have been; we're putting them on the back of the van as we go.  Randy; "And when we get the van back we can take the back doors off and hang them up as a souvenir."

 Remind you of anything, Max? So early on we decided that we must go to Wasilla to get a sticker; better yet if it had Sarah's face on it.  Oddly enough, we are actually staying here in Wasilla.  It was a good alternative to Anchorage, which has a poor selection of hotels.

Who Knew?

It's a larger town than I thought it would be; we actually took in a movie last night, which was a nice change of pace. Everything they offered was some kind of crazy violent action flick with lots of CGI, so we chose Red 2, which was silly but funny and entertaining.  I love anything with Mary Louise Parker, Helen Mirren, John Malkovich and Bruce Willis anyway.  Oh; and we found a really cute Mexican place for dinner.

Halibut fajitas!

Randy is off on a fishing quest today, as this is the last chance he will get, and I begged off and am kicking back with a Ken Follett book and Turner Classic Movies at the motel.

Randy: Who would think laundry could be such an issue?  We have a washer & dryer in the motel we are at, coin operated, but believe it or not the maid service uses it to do the motel laundry and motel guests must wait until the motel laundry is done...we do go 1st class!  So no problem, we packed up our sheets and laundry and drove to the laundromat in town.  I, having never used a laundromat, did not realize they have time limits at these places...no starting a wash after 8 pm.  Not to be confusing, the motel doesn't make you wash your own sheets and we didn't cut a deal on the room rate if we washed our own sheets.  We need to wash the sheets from our mobile bed so Bert & Carrie have clean sheets when they pick up the van (they have elected to do the return trip in the van).  We couldn't do this laundry earlier because we could not find the soap in the van and didn't locate it until this evening.  So tomorrow--we do laundry!