May 18, 2005

One dollar! We have landed. Actually, we landed yesterday afternoon. The final odometer reading was 4043 miles.

We woke up to rain yesterday at our campsite in Tok. Our original plan was to drive to Palmer and camp one last night only 50 miles from Anchorage and get into our apartment early the next morning. The rain combined with weariness from the road and excitement for getting to our new home. We decided to drive to Anchorage.

The plan had been loosely set around the concept of arriving at our new apartment in the morning so we would have all day to unpack. We then realized that the worst case would be that we would camp in our new apartment and unload the next day, actually having more time to unload since we wouldn’t be driving 50 miles and handling all the paperwork. Logic sometimes requires immediacy to develop. When you are 4000 miles away, something can sound good that doesn’t really make that much sense.

Anyway, we had a lovely morning, listening to the raindrops on our tent until we finally were fully awake, then packing up and making our coffee in the rain. The rain felt good and my new hat kept my head and my glasses dry. Rain isn’t as bad as people make it out to be. We were really surprised when we finally got loaded up and started up the truck. The temperature gauge indicated that it was in the 40’s. It seemed comfortable to us. Maybe we are ready to live in Alaska.

The drive from Tok to Anchorage was awesome, at least scenery wise. The roads really beat the crap out of us. There were frost heaves that make us feel like having breakfast heaves. There were potholes that caused me to weave and swerve. There was about 10 miles of ‘construction’ through which I struggled to go 15 mph, with ruts and rocks and washboard on a gravel and mud surface. The last day and a half of this trip provided the worst driving conditions.

The scenery, as I said, was awesome. There were stretches of total desolation. There were the Wrangell Mountains, the Alaska Range, and finally the Chugach Mountains (our new home mountain range). There were rivers and spectacular valleys. In the Chugach range, we finally saw awesome glaciers.

We arrived in Anchorage in the late afternoon. It was about quarter to 5 when we got to the apartment complex. We got to drive through town during early rush hour. I figured if I can make lane changes with a trailer in rush hour, the traffic isn’t too bad. The town seemed unspectacular. It is nothing unusual. There are elements like parks and a few roads and buildings that make you say "isn’t that nice?", but overall it is a regular town, sprawling, struggling to organize things through zoning and dealing with change. There are one way streets and marginal roads that make access to a newcomer frustrating. None of this failed to meet expectation. This is our new home town and it is a convenient place to live since we want access to the rest that Alaska has to offer. Of course, the views of the surrounding mountains that can be seen from almost anywhere in town don’t hurt the atmosphere.

The apartment met our expectations. It, too, is unspectacular. It is a place to live. It is neat and clean, but it is a rental unit. It would be tough to mistake it for anything more. The manager for our complex, Andy, is a nice, conscientious person. He is from Indiana, southern Indiana to be exact. He even called to check up on us during our trip up. He seems very concerned with our satisfaction in our living accomodations.

We began unloading yesterday evening and soon we had as big a mess in our apartment as we had in the living room of our old house when we were trying to pack. Organization has a way of coming about. You move things in, you move them into a general area, then you slowly fine tune their location. We have too much stuff for a one bedroom apartment. Sure, it fit in a small trailer, but when you spread it out it covers a lot of area.

Last night we ran out to do some quick shopping. We bought some groceries and were impressed by the store that we happened upon. The prices seemed to be reasonable and the sale items seemed downright cheap. We also stopped at a liquor store to buy a bottle of wine. The grocery stores don’t seem to carry beer and wine up here. I am not yet aware of the laws involved. Wine seemed to have similar pricing to Ohio. I could only compare a few items that I know. Finally, we found a Walmart so that we could get a lightbulb for our floor lamp and a shower curtain.

We cooked our first meal in our new apartment, spaghetti with hot italian sausage. It was pretty late by the time we ate and it was frustrating trying to move around all the boxes.

Our stuff was a mess. 4000 miles is a long way and the construction zones had sprayed a coating of dust and mud on the things that were uncovered. Most of our stuff was in plastic boxes, but the boxes were covered with dirt. The boxes had been stacked in the trailer and the bouncing ground the dirt into the lids and bottoms where things were contacting and rubbing. The permanent damage, other than to the boxes, was less than I was expecting, given the road conditions. We had one broken wine glass and one broken champagne flute. We had one picture frame that was wrapped in plastic. The bumping rubbed a whole in the plastic. Rain and mud got the mat wet and probably irreparably stained. These are the damages of using a trailer with limited suspension on a 4000 mile trip over bumpy and dippy roads. We were not disappointed. Most of our stuff made it fine.

We had a good night’s sleep on our new queen air mattress. We had a lovely breakfast and things started coming together. We moved things, organized things, cleaned things. Late morning, we took a break to go investigate communications, phone, cell phone, and internet. We went with ACS (Alaska Communications Systems), a local company that had been recommended for cell phone coverage to us by many people on the internet. We got a cell phone, a land line with voicemail, and DSL for internet. Packaged altogether, it seemed like a reasonable deal. The young woman who helped us was from Toledo.

We stopped in an Allstate office and had our insurance changed to Alaska. The agent was very nice. Auto insurance is higher in Alaska, probably due to the frequency of broken windshields.

We rented a parking space at a storage place for our trailer until we can get it sold. The manager was from Indianapolis. He was very talkative, but very nice.

Tonight we had dinner at the Moose’s Tooth, a pizza and beer place. They have locally brewed beers that were excellent and the pizza did not disappoint.

So we made it to Anchorage with minimal challenge. We have begun a period of setting up our new life, dealing with things we haven’t had to think about for years. Our mindset has changed from that of vacation travellers. We are striving to not let this take over our lives and prevent us from jumping in and enjoying the very things that brought us up here. Kris is noticing what I noticed after quitting my job. It is the same thing that many retirees that I have known have noticed. There is never enough time in the day. There is never a shortage of things that need to be done. We just need to set our priorities.