Our First Year

Less than 3 months after posting…

“I don’t see any reason to ‘settle down’ at this point — there are too many things to see, places to visit and people to meet. How could you trade those things for a house fastened to the ground?”

…it may come as a surprise when I tell you that we’re settling down — in a house fastened to the ground — for at least the next two years.

While I still believe that traveling as a family is, in general, the best thing in the world for kids, my son Tom is going to be 18 in less than two years and it’s going to be easier to “get him ready for life on his own” if we’re in one spot.

That will give us a chance to help him finish his schooling and figure out what he’d like to do to make a living. Sure you can make a living on the road, but you have fewer options.

Alaska has always been “home base” for our travels and it’s where Tom intends to live when he leaves home so sticking around here for the next couple years makes sense to us right now.

I already miss “the road” and seeing new sites every week or even every day — but getting a kid ready to launch into life is an adventure all by itself.

And in two years? It will surprise me if we don’t hit the road for at least another year at that point. But we’ll see about that when the time comes.

Until then this blog will basically go into mothballs. I may post one more “wrap-up” message when I get some time, but for now this is it.

Thanks to everyone who followed our fun.

Tonight I watched Captain Ron again (for about the 10th time in the last 12 months) — and let Chelsea watch it for the first time. I decided the story made up for the language and the slightly inappropriate shower scene. Partly because Chelsea’s now 14, and partly because the shower scene is just darn good comedy. =:)

The story of Captain Ron is so freaking awesome: the Harvey family of Chicago inherits an old sailboat and decides to throw caution to the wind and sail it from somewhere in the Caribbean to Miami where they’ll sell it. Since they’re not sailors, they hire “Captain Ron” to sail the boat and teach them how along the way.

It stars Martin Short as Mr. Harvey and Kurt Russell (in a Speedo) as Captain Ron. It’s a funny movie with a great moral: Get out of your rut and go DO something as a family!

When we started this whole “living on the road thing” I hoped to be in a trailer for about a year and then graduate to a sailboat. Due to business slowing down the sailboat piggy bank hasn’t filled up yet, but I’m still working toward that.

I’m starting to feel more than a little pressure because Tom turned 16 last February and while I don’t know that he’ll take off as soon as he turns 18, I want to get us on a boat for a while before he is eligible to escape my clutches.

Why? Because I think people who have “typical” upbringings are at a disadvantage in life. They see things in a very narrow way which limits their choices. After all, how can you make a sharp left when everybody else is veering right if you don’t even know that left is an option?

When we started this journey we didn’t have enough money saved up. But if we had waited until things were “better” we’d never have hit the road and experienced new things…

Places

We played on the beach in Santa Cruz.

Picked oranges outside our trailer in Bakersfield.

Walked the rim of the Grand Canyon (and got some great photos).

Watched the moon rise over the Superstition Mountains (and talked about the Lost Dutchman Gold Mine hidden there).

Wandered the streets of Tombstone where the Gunfight at the OK Corral took place.

Cheered Tom as he followed in his Uncle Nick’s footsteps and chased down an armadillo (it was catch and release, folks).

Saw the Alamo where so many American heroes lost their lives.

Visited the UFO Museum in Roswell. (“UFOs aren’t real, Dad.” Five minutes later, “Are UFOs real, Dad?”)

Drove across the London Bridge (brought brick by brick from London to Arizona).

People

And we met some wonderful people on the trip, including the Sauers family in Santa Nella. We ended up parked next to each other in an RV park and while there was a pretty big age gap between their kids and ours, they were still all kids and got along pretty well. After we left we continued following their travels via their blog.

And we met — and juggled with — both members of the Raspyni Brothers. Barry invited us to his house for the day to meet his family and play and Dan let us stop by his place for some juggling and an impromptu piano concert. I’d been fans of the Raspyni Bros for-freakin’-ever, so the chance to actually spend some time with them was the coolness.

Plus many more people — the families in Bastrop, the gunfighters near Tombstone, the jugglers in Austin, etc.

When you live in a house, and go to the same job every day, and see the same people all the time, you don’t have adventures. You just skate through life. And at age 47 I’m realizing life’s too short for that kind of skating — I regret the time I didn’t spend seeing new things and meeting new people.

Which is why if we had the opportunity to move onto a sailboat tomorrow, I’d do it — even though none of us know how to sail. We’d stay anchored (mostly) until we could figure out how to work the thing, but at least we’d be on the way.

I don’t see any reason to “settle down” at this point — there are too many things to see, places to visit and people to meet. How could you trade those things for a house fastened to the ground?

When we’re on the road for real (as opposed to acting as park hosts in one spot for a few months) I work at the Starbucks nearest to where we park for the night. My AT&T Wireless account for $20 a month gave me all the access I needed.

But now working on the road has gotten a little cheaper. Here’s something I just read:

“There’s big Starbucks news today that may help customers more easily swallow those venti lattes which can cost more than $5 in some places — the chain is going to offer unlimited free Wi-Fi at all its U.S. locations starting July 1.” — NPR Website

In the past you could get a Starbucks card and get 2 free hours a day — now you can get (supposedly) free and unlimited wi-fi.

Due to tethering my smart phone I can work from the trailer at times, but since I do a lot of audio and video work I deal with larger files. For those I seek out a wi-fi hotspot, so this news is nice for me — I won’t renew my AT&T Wireless account when we head south again.

I just found a couple new blogs containing the adventures of more families on the road — and it really made me miss traveling. Staying in Alaska — in the trailer! — over the winter was an adventure, but I don’t want to do it again. Not necessarily because of the cold, but because I honestly don’t like staying in one place for so long!

Alaska in the summer is absolutely the best place in the world, but I can’t wait for mid-September when we’ll hook up and head south again!

About 12:30 this morning Chelsea and I were awakened by a loud knocking on the door.

“Yes?” I said, trying to sound awake and alert.

“It’s the Palmer Police Department.”

I threw on some clothes and found out they needed the overflow parking area unlocked — they wanted to use it as a staging area for investigating a possible abduction that happened near the park. (We’re the closest place to get down to some areas of the river.)

Before we knew it there were multiple police cars, a fire truck, a trailer with “RESCUE” on the side, and more coming into the park. By the time we woke back up this morning they were all gone but we’ve seen police roaming the park at times during the morning.

From what I’ve heard, they haven’t turned up any evidence of an actual abduction yet, so they’re leaning toward thinking it was a hoax — probably bored (and stupid) teenagers. But since they don’t know for sure they’re continuing to do some snooping around just in case.

There are some days when things are very quiet here — and then there are those “other” days that make up for it.

- – -

People are getting ready for the Memorial Day weekend — I’ve had several people stop in to ask about reservations, which we don’t do, so they’re planning on coming back Thursday and paying for the weekend. And also paying for Thursday night when nobody will be camping there. But at only $10 per night it’s a cheap way to make sure you get a spot for Friday.

- – -

Tom and his friend Jacob are camping in a tent here in the campground. They told me they had marshmallows for breakfast. MMmm!

We’re closing out our 3rd day as Park Hosts at Matanuska River Park in Palmer, Alaska. We’ve been here since last Monday, but the park didn’t open until Friday, so we had a few days to “get ready.”

As it turns out, we’re only going to be here for another week — through Memorial Day weekend — and then we’re moving to Alcantra Park up close to Wasilla. The big difference between the two parks is that Alcantra is just a recreation area, there is no camping available. Just two baseball fields, two softball fields, and four soccer fields.

Oh, and a disc golf course off through the woods (that’s what I’m looking forward to).

Instead of being a Park Host I’ll be a Facilities Host — we’re there mainly to act as a deterrant to vandalism. We’ll also have to pick up trash in the parking lot and walk the trails to watch for downed limbs/trees.

My biggest reason for the move is that I can get an internet connection there and the cell service here at Mat-River is up and down more than a Duncan. If I don’t have internet access it means I have to go away each day to get work done and that’s just a hassle. And during the weekend at Mat-River, not even possible.

What I Will Miss

Talking to the campers is probably the biggest plus to Mat-River. It’s just cool to be able to find out where people have come from, where they’re going on their trips, etc. We met some nice people last summer and were looking forward to meeting more this summer.

I’ll also miss the airplanes. MRP is on the approach to the Palmer airport and we get airplanes coming over — very low — all day. Most are the small “bush planes” that are so typical of Alaska, but every so often a HUGE cargo plane comes in and it’s just so cool to see seemingly scraping the tops of the trees.

Since we’re on the end where they’re landing 90% of the time (because of the wind patterns in Palmer) it’s not all that noisy. They’re throttling back to prep for landing. Well, the helicopters coming in are a tad noisy, but there aren’t too many of those.

What I Won’t Miss

Cleaning the bathrooms isn’t all that hard, and it’s all done in less than an hour (all three of us pitch in), but I won’t miss that in the slightest. I think it *has* been good for the kids to experience scrubbing toilets and mopping floors for a time, but it still won’t be missed.

Getting up at 7AM for the morning rounds is also something on my “won’t miss it” list. Working for myself and homeschooling means we’ve not had to get up at a specific time, so this summer change is really hard. I think we’ll continue to keep a “kind of” schdule, but switch to something less insane than 7AM. (I know, some of you folks get up at 5 or 6AM, but I can’t help you with that.)

Okay, time to run empty the trash from the lower bathrooms, and then Chelsea and I will start cleaning the bathrooms (Tom ran away to a friend’s house for the night). We’ve found that cleaning at night is *much* nicer than cleaning in the morning — fewer people taking showers, etc., at night.

It’s springtime here in Alaska. I was driving down the road today and everything’s finally turned green! Well, except for the snow-covered mountains, of course, but even those are showing through to the rocks in many places.

In about a week we’ll be heading back to Mat River park as Park Hosts. We may be there only for a few weeks until the 2nd set of park hosts arrive from Montana (last year we did it solo) — at that point we’ll decide whether to stay there or come back over here. My sister and her husband offered the side of their house for the rest of the summer.

So while it’s fun at the park, I’d get more work done here since I could concentrate solely on that (and I have free wireless internet here). But since we have to be at the park for a few weeks anyway, I’m putting off the decision until the last minute, mainly because being Park Host is fun. Talking to the campers, finding out where they’re from and where they’re going on their trip, etc.

We’ll see what happens, but next week we’ll hook the trailer up for the first time in about 8 months and head a few miles down the road.

Last year about this time we were camped out in Bellingham, WA, trying to make it back home to Alaska. But it wouldn’t stop snowing and freezing around Whitehorse, YT, and we didn’t want to take a chance on pipes in the trailer freezing up. So we waited for the weather to break.

Meanwhile, we talked to the family in Alaska who told us how nice the weather was…

…and here we are a year later, in Alaska, with nice 40-50 degree days, sunny skies, and freezing nights. There’s still a lot of snow on the mountains and even Anchorage has snow, but out here in the valley it’s just in patches here and there.

We still have another 2-4 weeks before I’ll chance de-winterizing the trailer, but after that it will be SO nice to have water in here once again (water that we didn’t carry in in jugs).

Mid-May is when we’ll be headed back to the Matanuska River Park and taking over as Park Hosts again, and I recently heard from my boss that we’ll have a couple from Montana coming to help us starting in mid-June, so that will be nice. Last year we did it solo, but having a few more days off every once in a while will be cool.

And having someone else to help on the really heavy weekends will be *very* nice.

While we’re looking forward to getting back to the park, I think all three of us are really looking forward to the fall when we can it the road again, snag Wanda as we go through WA, and then head south to see what we can find!

…it’s 40 below.

So says the song. I’m happy to say that it’s not 40 below — although it’s not springtime, either. But, we did have a week or so in the mid-upper 30s (maybe even some 40s snuck in there) before it dipped back down for a few days. Now it’s rising again and should be in the mid-30s for the next week or so.

It’s actually 41 degrees right now, so that’s very nice. Shirtsleeves weather in Alaska!

We never did bundle up the trailer again. I figured we were on the backside of winter and didn’t want to spend several hundred dollars on stuff we might not have needed. So far I think that was the right decision.

We’re still dry-camping, although in an emergency we’ll use the toilet in the trailer. About once a month we have a septic truck come in and dump us out. At just $40 a pop it’s not too bad.

Over the winter the refrigerator quit working. In Alaska that’s not so bad because you can just set your food outside. =:) We put our cooler by the front door and have used that for our fridge (no ice needed, either!) but that’s not going to work for too much longer. I’m kind of waiting until the last minute and then will try to take care of all that maintenance at once.

The plan at this point is still for me and the kids to manage the park this summer and then head south next September. Probably hit Florida by mid-December.

The trailer just got a little bigger, but also a lot lonelier. Instead of looking for a job up here in Alaska, Wanda decided to head for Seattle and find work there (that’s code for visit her family!). Mainly because the Alaska winters and Wanda just do NOT get along. She can take the grey days of Washington, but not the black days of Alaska.

The plan right now is for the kids and I to stay here and do the Park Host job again for the summer (assuming the Borough hires me again) and then in September we’ll head south and snag Wanda as we race south on the way to… well, that’s still to be determined. For next winter at least, probably Arizona and Texas — that worked out pretty well last time.

The kids already take turns doing the dishes — now they get to add laundry to their to-do lists. (Insert evil parental laughter here.)