I am going to try to summarize the whole trip to our new home in one post. So it may be a little long, but I promise it will be thoroughly enjoyable!
"Follow your dreams, follow your heart. Live your life to its fullest and above all be happy" Although it was never directly said in this manner, this was the message my parents always gave me. Life is to short to not enjoy every aspect of it. It is your choice to make your life and live your life how you want it to be.
Finally, it was finally going to happen. We were going to make the move from Washington to Alaska. I could not wait to return to my home. I had always been drawn, called, and pulled by my heart strings towards the great state of Alaska, my birth state.
The housing market in Washington had become insane, houses where selling fast and for a lot. We chatted with a realtor and realized we could not only easily sell our house, but make enough from the sale to pay off our loan and purchase something out right in Alaska! What freedom that would bring our family! We went for it and started working with a realtor to sell our house and working with another to buy in Alaska.
Now the process of selling home while still living in it with 6 kids and 6 dogs was a little challenging. While we had requested at least 2 hours notice for a showing, I always felt like the house needed to be viewing ready just in case we had a request to show that was less then the given window. We were able to work together and keep it mostly clean and leave when the time was necessary. After a few months on the market, we received an offer and signed closing papers at the end of July.
Of course buying a home from 2500 miles away has its own set of challenges as well. Thankfully we found a fantastic realtor, Jay Bruzas, who was more then willing to check places out for us, giving us his honest professional opinion. We looked for a few months but kept feeling drawn back to this sweet house on about 6 acres in Sutton, Alaska. The house needed a little work, nothing we couldnt manage ourselves, and it looked perfect. We decided to put an offer in, making it contingent on Paul and my father seeing it in person. We booked their flight then waited in anticipation for the viewing. Once seeing it in person Paul knew it was perfect. By August 25th it was ours! This was also the day we started our drive home!
We had spent some time planning out a general time outline of where we wanted to be by when. To give us goals for the day and to keep us moving. Making the drive with 6 kids and 6 dogs was going to be challenging and planning it to be as short as we could make it was a must.
Our set up was our Ford E350 van hauling an old horse trailer (housing all our belongings and the dogs) and our Dodge Durango hauling the camper trailer we would be using for the trip to make nights comfortable for everyone. The van Paul drove and the Durango, my father in law Ben drove. We had 4 dogs in the horse trailer and Ben had 2 in the Durango.
We had hoped to be on the road by 9am on the August 25th, but we didn't get going until about Noon. We had a few parts for our camper that we were waiting on that we could not leave without. Because of this delay we hit some pretty heavy traffic through Seattle and stopped in Bellingham for the night. Just 20 min south of the Canadian border. We parked in the back of a Wal*Mart parking lot (Thanks Wal*Mart for the free camping space) it was about 10 pm when we arrived. It had been a long day and I knew it would be a couple more hours before we were all tucked into bed for the night. I Got the kids started into bedtime routines and Paul got started letting the dogs out, they had had a long ride and each needed a walk and a feeding. By the time all was said and done it was midnight, a bed never felt so good.
We were up by 7 am the next morning. Breakfast, dogs ran on the bike, geared up car for the day (snacks, games, books, movies), then headed to Canada! The border crossing was quick with no issues. Once across, we headed for the nearest Costco, we had not packed much food in the camper to avoid any problems at the border so needed to stock up for our week. I learned 2 things at this Canadian Costco. First, Costco's in the US only accept Visa cards, and in Canada, Costco's only accept Mastercards..Whoever thought that was a good idea needs to re-evaluate the situation. So I had to pull cash from their ATM, which leads me to the 2nd thing. Canada has beautiful money, seriously, and they round up, so no pennies, plus $1 and $2 coins. All pretty sweet!
CANADA!
After Costco we traveled until we needed gas, stopping at Boston Bar for gas and a quick lunch. Then pushed on towards Cache Creek. The drive was beautiful, follows along Thompson River for a while, beautiful canyons. Loved every minute of it. We ended up driving to Quesnel and camped overnight. Adjusted our plans a little to leave extra early to try to catch up on our original route.
Fuel stop and leg stretches
The next morning(the 27th) we headed for Bell 2, the only place we actually had a reservation for so needed to make it as planned. This stretch of drive was lovely as well! Canada really is a beautiful country. This was the first stretch that we ran into a little road construction, but nothing too bad. We found a rest stop where we pulled over for a bathroom break. It had a ton of fun boulders and the kids loved climbing them, so I snagged a few pictures.
We then went on, stopped and fueled up at Frasier Lake then hit The white swans park for lunch. The park was right along side a lake and had a perfect little play structure for the kids to get some energy out. Paul gave the dogs each a quick little walk while I put together lunch and Grandpa Ben played with the kids. It was a great stop with some very friendly people. I did notice the farther north we got, the nicer people were, just very friendly, love seeing the dogs and the kids! They always spark up conversation.
White Swans Park
We continued to the cutoff for Hwy 37 where we stopped for fuel and a quick photo op at the sign. This was our last stretch to Bell 2 and we were making good time! The drive was nice but slow. It was cloudy so we missed out on all the mountain views, but we did spot 9 bears, including mama with 3 cubs! Bell 2 was a perfect spot, I had the chance to do a load of laundry and Paul gave the van a cleanup (even organized, a drive this long with 6 kids is messy!) We all got a good nights rest!
Monday morning we headed out to Jade city and possibly Watson Lake. On our way out of Bell 2 we spot 2 more black bears!
We stopped in Iskut for fuel as we were told that the mid way gas station was out of order and would not have gas for us. We were not going to take any chances. Shortly after getting fuel we hit our first real sketchy section of gravel road. It only lasted about a mile, but all the road after that was pretty bumpy with many patches of gravel all the way into Jade City. We took some time at Jade City to go into the Jade City store (literally, this is the city, just this store) A family mines the nearby mountains for Jade, they only have to mine right off the side of the mountain and do so about 6 months out of the year. They make some of the most beautiful things and I learned that Jade comes in more then just green! We let each of the kids pick out a special Jade bear and a crystal. Syler and Katara instead picked out a bag of Jade pieces to make up a traditional Inukshuk (stone man) The wonderful ladies at the store suggested we hit a park that was about 20 miles down the road at Boya lake. We decided that would be our lunch stop. Oh my was it beautiful, the lake was this amazing aqua green color, and there was a perfect little playground. There were Kayaks and canoes with life vest just sitting there to use. We were a bit sad we were on a time crunch, but made note of this location as a great place to camp next time we come through... After lunch we headed to our destination of Watson lake, made it there by 6 pm It was really nice to arrive there early like that. Plenty of time for dinner, running the dogs with the bikes and settling in for the night. In the morning we visited the famous signs, the kids ran around and we got a few picture. Then it was back on the road and push as far as we can for the day.
We stopped in Teslin for gas, then continued on our way. But about 20-30 min outside Teslin, Ben noticed the horse trailer we were hauling was leaning to one side a little. So we pulled over to see what might be going on. To our surprise we were missing a whole tire! We have no idea when it happened as we did not notice anything while driving. Thankfully there was this AMAZING pull out on the side of the road, off of the highway that we were able to pull into to analyze and figure out a plan. There was room for the dogs to be let out on their lines for some stretching and let the kids run.
What we found when we pulled over..
The large off the road pull out we found
We had a spare tire, so thought it would be a quick fix, of just getting the spare on.... But upon further inspection there was a lot more damage then we thought. We had lost all the lug nuts, they had snapped off with the tire, so Ben drove back into Teslin to see if they had any. No luck there. Their only suggestion was to get into Whitehorse, where we would find everything we needed. It was about 2.5 hour drive. The decision was made to take a couple lug nuts off of each of the other tires and use on the spare for the trip to Whitehorse. This was a bit of a process, as this trailer has brakes, so to get the lug nuts off, you also have to remove the brakes as well. During this process we also found that we had lost some leaves off the leaf springs at that location as well.
Kids rock pile
Missing pieces on Spring leaf
Temporary dust cap, as we lost that too!
SO Ben and Paul managed to rig up some chain, wire and tow straps to hold it together so we could inch our way into Whitehorse to repair the trailer. It was about 80 miles and we took it slow and steady keeping it at 40mph or less. It sure made the drive long, and I was constantly worried about the tire situation, because the roads were pretty rough the whole way. It was late when we finally arrived into Whitehorse, but we made it. We all went to bed and knew the next day would be long and needing a good nights rest.
In the morning Ben and Paul went around town checking out all the places that might have what we needed. Thankfully they found a welding shop that was able to custom make our leaf spring for us. It was basically an all day process to get the old broken one off and the new one on. The old one had some tack welding that did not want to break free for us, so it took some extra effort to break through them.
Getting the old leaf spring off to put that beautiful custom welded one on!
Some pieces after removal
This should be round.....
A cut we had to make to get the tack welded bolts off
While the repair was taking place, the kids played with Legos, I walked the dogs a few times and took a stroll in Walmart (where we had parked) The repair took most of the day, but we were anxious to get some road under our wheels. So we decided to make the short trip to Haines Junction and stay there for the night.
Thursday morning we left bright and early, we were determined to make it Home. It had been a long trip and we were beyond ready to be home... Just a few stops for fuel and crossing the border into Alaska, it was all smooth sailing and we pushed through...
WE MADE IT!
We arrived home about 8:30pm Thursday night. Our realtor Jay and his family met us at the house with Pizza and our keys. Oh did it feel good to be home. We were all exhausted and ready for bed, so just crashed the camper and knew we would get to house stuff in the morning....
WE ARE HOME!!
