August 8, 2010

The plan continues moving forward.  We are in transition from our summer of travelling around Alaska to our trip to the lower 48.

The storage unit is empty.  Everything fit in the van as planned.  The van is stuffed floor to ceiling.  We shipped two large boxes via parcel post to my parents, but everything else we own will soon be heading down the road.  Packing the van was a painstaking process of trial and error.  I am pretty tired.

We left Nabesna Road on Thursday.  It took over an hour to cover the 28 miles back to the main road.  Our window of beautiful weather ended fortuitously at the end of our adventure.  We put on some miles, and with the slow start, some hours.  We drove to Palmer where we set up at one of the commercial campgrounds we stayed at earlier this year.  We emptied and filled our tanks, and recharged our battery.

Friday was a short drive from Palmer to Eagle River.  We found a nice campsite where we are staying for the maximum allowed, four days.  After setting up, we made some long lists of things we needed to do before leaving the Anchorage area.  We knocked a bunch of them off on Friday afternoon, taking care of our mail arrangements, buying a few items, stopping at the bank, getting the oil changed on the van, and picking up the car.  We used our last coupon for Los Arcos, one of the Mexican restaurants around the corner from our old home.

We had a pleasant surprise in our mail.  We are pretty smart with money, but with everything going on in our lives, we both forgot that closing on the condo didn’t include closing out the escrow account for our taxes and insurance.  Because of an odd billing cycle for taxes, our account held a pretty healthy balance.  It was our money, but neither of us had thought about it.  It was a pretty exciting check.

We split up on Saturday.  Kris ran to the grocery store while I worked on packing boxes in our living room.  In the afternoon, we headed for Anchorage where I sold my gun to a dealer on our way to the going away party.  It was a little painful.  I couldn’t take a handgun through Canada and shipping a gun to the lower 48 was proving to be too much effort.  I am not even sure it could be done at all.  After spending over five years routinely carrying a gun, I now don’t even own one.  I do find a sense of security in owning a gun.  I know that it is unlikely that I will ever encounter a situation in which I would use such a weapon, but I also know that such situations do still occur in our less than completely civilized world.  There are many other defensive weapons still at our disposal, but my sense of security is a little lower today.

The party was great.  We didn’t get to see everyone we hoped, but we had a nice visit with some of the fascinating people we met in our short time in Alaska.  We have found some great friends here.  There is this common value in chasing our dreams, dreams that in many ways differ from the traditional American dream.  The partygoers had a diversity of ages, backgrounds, and even dreams, but a commonality in the sometimes reckless pursuit of our goals.  These are adventurous people.  Everyone has taken some interesting chances with some fascinating results.  We fit in here, but fitting in often means moving on.  What a great life experience it was to have met all of these people.  What an honor it was to have them stop by to say farewell.