#2-The Basics

The Players: Janet & Stacy (J&S) plus their 2 long haired Chihuahua brothers and Janet’s niece, Kelly (17), who is joining them for 2 weeks for the Calgary to Anchorage leg. We wanted to bring a cat/kitten, but have pretty much decided that we should simplify our life for the trip—rather an interesting concept for us. We just go through fuzzy withdrawal if we don’t get our appropriate critter fix. So don’t be surprised if a feline gets picked up along the way—stranger things have happened.

The Why: We’ve always dreamed of doing it. For those familiar with our life—they will probably agree that we have had our share of stress over the last decade. We could use some “our time” and not worry about others. Because of a recent death, our finances now give us the opportunity to do it. Not necessarily a wise responsible financial decision but money comes and goes—karma & memories are forever. And it’s time for our dream…

In the 19 years Stacy & I have been together we have never taken a vacation without a show, so our goal was no schedule or shows—but then Kelly wanted to come…thus a schedule… and then I found out about a show in Anchorage. Well Duh…We are going for the “write off” and doing a show the weekend we have to send Kelly home. But it’s ok. There is still a lot of “vacation”—we just decided to be smart about it.

The How: Our vehicle is a Quad cab 2006 Dodge 3500 pickup/with our work topper. It is diesel; I wanted to pay as much for gas as I could, but it only has 40,000 miles and pulls our trailer easily.

Our trailer is a new 24ft with most of the bells and whistles. It’s very cool and homey with all the modern conveniences.

We have generators, a flat screen TV, lots of movies, and all our electronics. We also are taking a canoe. Hoping to camp along lakes and canoeing should improve our wildlife sighting chances. The boys even have their own lifejackets!

We are taking our shotgun for that extra protection and have done our best to anticipate taking extra things for those “just in case” times.
Since we will also have our inventory we are hoping that our decorated topper will encourage questions from other campers and we will hopefully peddle some trinkets along the way.

The Details: Our departure date is Wednesday, August 6th. After seeing some friends and relatives on our way through Missouri & Iowa we head to Calgary, AB. On August 15th we pick up the niece and wander up through Alberta & British Columbia or where ever we wish. Our next commitment is Labor Day weekend in Anchorage where we will do a weekend show and send Kelly back home. Then we are wandering bums until we need to be in Albuquerque, NM on October 2 to do our Balloon festival show for the first two weekends of October. We’re planning on hitting Seattle, WA to see some friends on the way south but otherwise don’t really have a set plan. It’s always good when you have an opportunity to meander and we plan on making the most of it.

The Blog: I do plan on posting pictures either here or on a web page. And I hope to keep it daily. Feel free to send others to our website since the more traffic the better off for our search engine status.

The Home front: Melissa, Terre, & family are house sitting so any animals that have to stay home will be well taken care of. Melissa is anxiously waiting to get “her” house back. I have no doubt our patio and grill will be well used while we are away. Audrey and Lori will still be working in the studio so hopefully we can shift right into making copper critters when we get home the middle of October. We do have to shift into serious business mode in October to try to start paying for our Alaska experience.

So those are the basics…stay tune for the adventures.

#1- Our test blog

Hey folks--we are just getting this started and this is just a test. Looks like it might be easy so hopefully I will entertain you with exciting adventures daily. Keep in mind that we are traveling through some pretty desolate area so if I miss a day or three it could mean several things:

A. J&S have been kidnapped by the local backwoodsmen and are now being used as slaves.

B. Bears have taken over their trailer and truck and J&S are now wandering aimlessly to tell someone of their story.

C. Internet hasn't been found recently and J&S are just hanging out in some pretty country.

And I don't even want to think about what D. could be. After all--it is J&S's Great Alaska Adventure...come along for the ride.