Highlight Reel

We got home late Monday night, about a week ahead of schedule. We didn’t plan to come home so soon. Weather in Alaska put us ahead of schedule a bit. We went to four different towns where whale watching tours were offered. We hoped to be able to go see whales, puffins, seals, etc..at least once but it rained and the water was pretty choppy. It rained in fact, every day we were in Alaska. Several people told us it was the coldest, wettest summer they could remember. We made the most of it though. It didn’t stop our adventure. It just made it look a little different. Looking back now, I wouldn’t change a thing. We were blessed beyond measure to be able to make the trip.

Several people have asked me to pick one single highlight of our trip. That’s really hard to do. There were so many. I decided to make a list of all the things that stood out to us. Some of it is highlights. Some of it is lowlights. The list is below in no particular order.

Wildlife – We saw a little bit of everything that lives on land; eagles, bears, sheep, caribou, moose, fox, porcupines, rabbits, a variety of squirrels, puffins, wild ponies.. I’m sure I’m missing some too. The wildlife was not shy on this trip. We saw something every single day we traveled.

Friends and Family – I love incorporating visits with friends and family in our travels. This trip certainly included that. It started with Greg’s family reunion and included visits with extended family and old friends all along our routes. I’ve said so many times, “if you’re my friend today, you will be my friend fifty years from now”. I mean that too. Friendships mean the world to me. I have been blessed with a ton of really good friends.

Anchorage – Anchorage gets its own category because it was my childhood home. We lived in town for two years and on Elmendorf AFB for three years. Visiting my “old stomping grounds” was definitely a highlight. It was a bit of a bummer that Elmendorf AFB isn’t as vibrant as it was when I lived there. During WWII and the Vietnam War, it was an important supply and refueling base between the “lower 48” and Asia-Pacific. Things are different now. Those days are past. It’s still an important strategic base but looks very different today. A lot less people live there. They work different than before. I am very thankful I was able to go back and see it again though. We owe a huge “thank you” to Taylor Ufford for making that possible. Taylor is my friend Becky’s son who is stationed at Ft.Richardson, now Joint Base Elmendorf Richardson. I used to check him and his sister in to the children’s ministry at our church when they were young. Now they’re adults and he’s an Army Ranger. Who knew twenty-some years ago that he would be the person escorting me around the base? Only God for sure! My family spent a lot of time camping when we were in Alaska. It was pretty cool going back to all our favorite camping and fishing spots too. We saw just about all of them.

Beautiful Landscapes – Driving the RV gave us a six week long, front row seat to some of the most ruggedly beautiful scenery in the world. Northern Canada and Alaska were the highlight reel. I’ve traveled to many places on this planet. There’s nowhere quite like Alaska. I could seriously consider living there again if it wasn’t so stinking cold in the winter. There’s no place like it in the summer though. Driving all those miles let us experience it like we never could from a ship or airplane. I’ve often said going on a cruise is like going to a five star restaurant and only eating appetizers. Nothing against cruises. There’s just SO much to see. There was no shortage of breathtaking snowcapped mountains, waterfalls, canyons that were thousands of feet deep, turquoise lakes and rivers. And we had long daylight hours to enjoy it all.

Wildfires – The wildfires were definitely not a highlight. We drove through hundreds of continuous miles of scorched landscape. Northern Canada and Alaska both have small population centers and extremely large, dense forests. It only takes one lightning strike that can smolder undetected for days to start a raging fire. We experienced that firsthand in Hundred Mile House, BC. We were headed to a golf course / RV park north of Kamloops and both roads into town were evacuation routes for the Clinton, BC fire. Smoke was pretty thick when a thunderstorm rolled in making it dark as midnight. I’m not exaggerating when I say that. I cold see a couple hundred feet in front of the RV. It was raining gray, muddy soot on the RV and the roads. The sky was an eerie rust color. It wasn’t scary but was one of the eeriest things I’ve ever been through. My heart goes out to the people who lost homes and businesses in the fires. I can’t imagine what they are going through.

Traveling Companions – I couldn’t possibly write an entire blog about a 10,500 mile drive without saying something about my traveling buddies. Greg gave up his summer to help me take this trip down memory lane. If you know him, you know he’s a homebody so, this trip was a big ask on my part. There’s a million other things he would choose. It’s also a big ask for me to corral him into a little RV with me and two dogs for six weeks. He was the best travel companion though. I drove parts of the trip. He drove a lot more of it. I can’t think of anyone else I’d rather drive that far with. He was great. Our dogs Hank and Macklin were incredible travel buddies too.

Hank had a bed between the two front seats and slept there during the day while we were driving. Macklin was in her crate a lot, mostly because of her head injury. It was the safest place for her to be. We kept her crate toward the back of the RV. She let us know, on no uncertain terms she wanted us to move the crate to the front of the RV while we were driving though, or better yet, ride in someone’s lap. Three different times on the trip, she let out a high pitched “scream” reminding us she was not close enough to us. We moved her crate closer to the front of the RV and she never complained again. She did also get to ride shotgun some in the lap of whoever wasn’t driving. We would roll up a blanket and let her lay on top of that. She was very happy to sleep safely in the arms of the shotgun person. For an eight month old puppy (recovering from a traumatic brain injury) she did amazingly well.

Home Sweet Home – we got home from our trip Monday night. We didn’t plan to get home that quickly, even with the missed whale watching trips. We spent Sunday night in Albert Lea, Minnesota and decided to see how far we could go on Monday. We were home before we knew it.

I’m incredibly happy to be home from our trip. There really is nothing like stretching out in my own bed. I can’t wait to start planning our next adventure though. I feel like we have two homes now; one that’s brick and mortar and one that is driven by GPS. I’m not sure where the RV will go next. I’ll let you know when we figure that out.