Driving the ALCAN

Our last few weeks in Alaska were fun, but also pretty hectic. We had to sell most of our stuff, pack up what remained, and close on our house. On top of that, my parents, and two sisters, and Rebecca's brother, and his wife and child were all visiting. It is crazy how it all worked out. I think Rebecca's brother was the first to make plans to come visit. Then my cousin announced her wedding for the same weekend and so some of my family wanted to come up the same weekend. And then we let them all know that they would have to sleep on the floor because we were going to be moving and all of our stuff would be gone by then. I am really glad they all came because we had a lot of fun and it was a good way to finish up there.

We actually sent all of our kids on the airplane with my parents and sisters. Then Rebecca's brother left the next day. Then we had one last day to pack up all of our remaining stuff in a uHaul and clean the house so it was ready for the new people. We even cleaned the carpets and touched up the walls with paint where needed. That was a stressful day. Finally, we set out on the road at about 3 or 4 in the afternoon. It was a little later than we had planned, but we were going at least. We both felt a little sad leaving. We had a lot of great memories from living in Alaska and from the past 5 years in our home. It had been a great home for us, and it was weird to leave it behind. 

Our Anchorage Home

Rebecca and I right before we left

Funny story - a couple of hours before the kids flew out we finally told them about the note we received from the previous owners about the ghost of their nice grandma living in the basement (there was a previous blog post about that right after we bought the house). When it was time for the kids to walk through the house one last time and say their good-byes to it, Christian didn't want to go downstairs without holding my hand. It was funny because his bedroom was down there for the past four years. I hope I didn't ruin the good memories of the house for them by telling them about the letter.

On the first day we drove up to Tok, Alaska. That is the last city that you hit before entering into Canada. I think this was my favorite part of the drive. We saw a huge glacier that looked like a giant river of ice and snow that stretched on for miles. There were lots of twists and turns in the road, but it was so beautiful going up and down the mountains. That night we just found a parking lot, laid our mattress down, and slept right there in the back of the uHaul. It wasn't actually that bad.

Last night in Alaska (Tok)

driving through the mountains

the huge glacier

grizzly bear

Our comfortable sleeping arrangements - it was nice to be on our own bed at least

We left kind of early in the morning, and before we even got out of the town we saw a huge grizzly bear sitting down in the grass. We did a really long drive that day and listened to a few audio books. My favorite ones were from the Diary of a Wimpy a Kid series. Rebecca liked them too, but she thought I was really weird with how much I was cracking up listening to them. I can't remember where we stayed that night, but it was just a tiny little town with like one store and a gas station. By the time we got in everything was closed and so we just parked in a gas station parking lot and set up our mattress in the back of the truck again. 

We got a little sleep, but were awakened at maybe four or five in the morning by someone revving up his dirt bike up and down the street. It became quiet for a little bit and we tried to go back to sleep, but just a few minutes later I heard some yelling right outside our truck. I woke Rebecca up and told her we had to go. When we got out of the truck we saw the guy with the dirt bike having on argument with some other guy a little ways away. When he saw us he started to run over and in an angry, kind of crazy way, tell us that he had something in his eye and he wanted us to get it out. He wasn't having any problems with his eye earlier when he was yelling at the other guy so I told Rebecca to hurry and getting in the truck and lock the door. After seeing her safely in, I ran over to my side and we took off as fast as we could. I feel bad for not helping, but the way he asked for help and his body posture in approaching us made us feel like something was not right. 

I am glad that we left early in the morning though because we saw a ton of animals within the first couple of hours of driving. I think we saw almost 20 bear, some moose, a fox, a coyote, and herds of bison. It might have been that evening that I saw Bigfoot too. Rebecca was asleep at the time though so she cannot confirm my story. We had a short stop in Whitehorse that day, but kept on going after that. We did find a cheap hotel that night a little outside of Edmonton so we could get all cleaned up for church the next day. In fact, after the motorcycle guy incident we stayed in hotels every night for the rest of our trip.

Bigfoot crossing the street. You can tell that is him, right?

Okay, here is the video in better resolution, maybe it was just a bear. I think it was a black bear, but it seemed really big still. So the video still isn't very good. I just can't seem to get it to upload in as high of definition as I have it on my iPad. Sorry!

Sign Post Forest - there were thousands of these signs that spanned all around the block

Driving to church on Sunday

Bison

After church on Sunday we crossed the border back into the states and it was good to be back on American soil again. With the motorcycle guy, and seeing Bigfoot, and everything else, I realized how much different Canada really is from the U.S. :) For real though, having driven for those three really long days in Canada it did help me realize how far away Alaska really is from the rest of the U.S. We stayed on the Montana/Idaho border that night and then the next day we met with our builder and tried to make as many different decisions about the home that we could while we were there. It was exhausting and I didn't think it was very productive because there was no way we were going to be able to decide on the floors, and tiles, and cabinetry, and everything else in just the half day we were there. We did get to see some of the other house our builder has built and we are glad that we found them. Here is there website if you want to check out some of their homes: http://buildguardian.com/

The next morning we unpacked our stuff into a storage unit, turned in the truck, and made the drive in our van back to Washington. It was a fun trip and I am glad that Rebecca and I got to do it together. We were both glad though to get back to our children and were happy to finally have a break from sitting in a car 12 to 15 hours a day.