July 21, 2016 by Lee and Tracy

First Time in Denali

The Denali Hwy was beautiful, but we were very glad to make it to Denali National Park, and our room at McKinley Lodge. As anxious as we were to get to our room, we did stop a couple of times though, taking advantage of the good light to get some pictures. Since rain was called for the next day, I knew we had to grab those moments when we could.

There was a wooden marker at this spot and the scene reminded me of a painting I had seen somewhere. If anyone knows it please let me know

We also got delayed a little because Lee was fascinated by this huge raven and fed it crackers. They are really smart but at this point I was pretty pooped.

Finally we made it to McKinley Lodge, and I have to say I thought it was very nice. Lee is pretty particular about hotel rooms and he was less impressed, but I thought for where it was it was pretty good. It did cost $221 for the night, which is crazy I know, but I was willing to pay that much to get a known quantity and didn’t really regret it. I will say though there were tons of empty rooms in the lodge and I would have probably been better off waiting until the day of and then booking a room. I have never been great at planning trips that way though (too much ambiguity), so I don’t regret locking it in.

The lobby

The rooms are in buildings surrounding a very nice courtyard

The view from our room

Walk a few feet down though and see this

Sitting room was small and cramped

Shower was nice and big, but it took forever for water to come out hot. Once it did though it was hot enough

The bedroom was actually ok and the mattresses were comfortable

I really liked that they had a fan. I brought one but ended up using theirs

The view from the bedroom window

Nice fenced in walkway all around the property

Got to see the train go by and the buildings below are for staff. We looked at jobs in this area initially, but didn’t want to stay in dorm-style accommodations

I guess they haven’t changed the name yet..but as an Ohioan I didn’t mind. For those who don’t know big drama in parts of Ohio with the name change because President McKinley was from Ohio.

These are the cars they used to use to tour the area

So the hotel was nice, but dinner was a mixed bag. Part of the cost we knew would be eating meals out since there was no kitchen in the hotel and we certainly could have picked a cheaper option, but decided to splurge and eat at their steakhouse. The meal was $95 before tip and although it had its high points (the crab bisque was the best I have ever had), Lee’s $50 steak dinner was extremely mediocre. Needless to say, he was not pleased.

Canyon Steakhouse was attached to the hotel

Fantastic crab bisque and a bargain at only $8

$50 for this thin steak…uh no. The fish was from my $19 appetizer I ate for my dinner and it was pretty greasy

We ate early and then watched a documentary about Alaska that was running on a loop on the TV in our hotel, then we crashed hard. The next morning we were up bright and early though, and skipped buying a big breakfast to recoup some of the money from the previous night. I did grab a bagel though, and off we went into the park. We like to get up and going early, but this was early even for us. I was hoping that the early entrance might garner us an animal sighting, but that was not to be.

The thing about Denali is only 21 miles are open for the public to drive, and beyond that you have to use their bus system. These bus rides range from 6 – 11 hours and are on slightly upgraded school buses. Almost all the people I have talked to had at least one bear sighting, but since I saw bears up close and personal in Glacier, neither one of us really wanted to sacrifice an entire day for that. I’m not saying don’t do it, just don’t do it lightly, and know your limits. There are also bus tours that go deep in the park from outside companies and many people say those tours are actually better. Either way, we wanted to drive what we could, hit the Visitors Center and then be on our way.

My expectation set was already pretty low because I knew you could barely drive into the park and we also knew it was all about seeing Mt. Denali (formerly McKinley). It is only visible two out of three days in the summer and we knew with the forecast it was extremely unlikely we would see it. We didn’t expect the tons of active construction at 6am. We were stopped three times and thank heavens there was hardly anyone else on the road or the delays would have been much longer. Even with the delays it only took us 30 minutes to reach the end, largely because there were only a couple of places to pull off and take pictures. And of course no animal sighting because of all the construction racket.

Mt Denali should have been seen from here

Uh nope. It was behind the big ball of clouds in the middle

Honestly the views didn’t wow me after the day before, so we decided to go see if the Visitors Center was open. We reached it by 7am and although I really wanted to get a fleece there decided I wasn’t going to wait an hour to check it out. So after taking a couple of pictures we decided to head down the road.

Really huge visitors center would have liked to have gone inside

Since no one was there I did get to hang out with the grizzly which was fun

Oh and Cactus Joe met a friend in the parking lot. I am pretty sure her name was Cactus Sue

I never ever go into these situations expecting animal or view sightings. I remember when I did, and I get it. You work hard, spend tons on a vacation and by God you feel cheated if you don’t see something extremely cool. But I learned very early on in this lifestyle that feeling entitled is a sure way to be unhappy. Every animal sighting, every spectacular view, every wondrous moment is a gift and I try to always treat it like that, but I am human and so to be honest I was a little bummed. I shook myself out of it though and we headed down the road, with the thought that now we would have plenty of time to hook-up with Kelly and Bill. We were less than 10 miles outside the park when we saw a beautiful bull moose and a pretty great view. See that’s how life is, when you least expect it, you get the magical moments.

Lee’s pic

Right outside of Glacier National Forest is Glacier State Forest. We have seen this phenomenon before and always recommend checking out the state parks as well, because you never know what you might find in them. In this case they had two places where you could see Mt. Denali, so we stopped at both the north and south viewpoints. Apparently I am a glutton for punishment.

North View ….Uh nope

Well apparently there is

South view …at least I still had my sense of humor

At the south viewpoint we met this very nice couple who are native to Alaska and they apologized that we didn’t get to see the view. I thought that was so sweet because they generally seemed bummed for us and took the time to give us some information about things they liked to do in the state. Jan seemed really interested in the full-time lifestyle and I gave her my blog card so she could check our adventure out. So Jan if you are reading this, meeting you and your husband was a highlight of our day and keep reading because I think it will make you happy!

We also stopped and saw Hurricane Gulch which was an unexpected little treasure. There is a dirt path leading to a scary if spectacular view, and Lee even pulled out his drone hoping to get some video. Once he was over the gorge though he got this weird power message he had never seen before and decided not to chance it. I don’t blame him, that was one deep gorge.

Cool bridge

You can see why he didn’t chance it

Would have made for some great video though

By this time we had given up on seeing the mountain, but were looking forward to going to Talkeetna with Kelly and Bill. We stopped at the campground they were staying at Trapper Creek, which seemed very nice, although side to side the rigs were very tight, and then we showed B/K our caribou skull (oh yeah, that was still in the back of our truck) and headed out.

Bill waving to us

B/K’s site

Kelly had heard about the premier site to see Denali on the way to Talkeetna so we were like sure why not. At this point I thought at least I will get a funny picture out of the deal, and sharing disappointment with good friends can take the sting out. So we stopped at this pull out with a great bench and took some pics.

Where’s the mountain??

Right after we took this pick we sat on the bench and I am not kidding you, in that moment we started seeing some faint images. At first we thought it was imagination, but no it started to get clearer. Holy crap! We all saw it faintly and even though these pics aren’t anywhere as beautiful as so many I have seen, they are worth more to me because I will always have the moment that went with it.

Hanging out on the bench

The faint outline started to appear

Little bit more

Voila!!

So this is what it looked like with the naked eye..well the naked eye with binoculars or a long lens, and I did get some better pictures by playing with tone and contrast. But this is what we saw and that’s enough to add us to the 30% club of people who actually get to see the mountain. So Jan thanks for telling me to keep looking throughout the day, and Kelly’s friend (sorry don’t remember your name) thanks for telling us about the spot. But most importantly thanks to Kelly and Bill for being there with us. Love you guys.

After our exciting sighting we were all starving and we headed into Talkeetna. We had all heard good things about this town, which lies at the end of a road and is a major tourist attraction in the Denali area. It was a super cute town with lots of shops and sight-seeing vendors, but unlike McCarthy, I really liked the vibe there. We decided to eat at the Denali Brewing Company restaurant (brewery is right down the street and they make some nice beers) and had a nice lunch. Kelly and my halibut was greasy but Lee loved his reindeer meatloaf and Bill enjoyed his pretzel loaf roast beef, plus it was much more reasonably priced than the dinner the night before.

Denali Brewing Company Restaurant

Reindeer meatloaf was a combination of beef, pork, and reindeer meat. It definitely had a spicy kick

Afterwards we walked through town and in and out of tons of shops. At some point the guys gave up and just sat down, but I think Kelly and I could have kept going, Really neat stuff. Plus the weather was absolutely beautiful. It may have called for rain in Denali, but down in Talkeetna the weather was just fine.

The general store was very cool

Loved the old fashioned shelves

And neat stuff hanging on the walls and ceilings

Lots of moose sightings 🙂

Really nice high-end art store

Where Lee found some Blueberry/Rhubarab crumble for sale

Where Lee found some Blueberry/Rhubarb crumble for sale. That face is because it was tart, not because he didn’t like it.

We had a nice time, but knew we had lots of driving still ahead of us so we said our goodbyes. On the way back we stopped at the Walmart in Wasilla and this is by far the best grocery store we have been to. Amazing selection, very reasonable prices, and super clean. As we were in the store though Lee got a phone call from American Express and they did a three-way call with him and a lady who had found his wallet in Talkeetna. I had borrowed the wallet when the guys took a shopping break and when we were saying our goodbyes I handed it back to Lee and it ended up in the parking lot. An Alaska resident, she called American Express immediately and the customer service agent allowed Lee and her to work out a deal where she would return it. That’s why I like American Express so much, I can’t imagine any other credit card company doing that. She is sending it (we have a tracking number) and she saved us tons of hassle for cancelling all of the cards. See, some people are good!

Lee handled the incident extremely well, chalking it up to the flurry of activity at the end of the visit, and our drive back was very pleasant, especially because the condition of the roads between Denali and Wasilla were the best we have seen. It was also interesting though how the drive between Palmer and Glennallen compared to what we had just seen and I have to say from a sheer landscape perspective that is still the most beautiful road we have seen here. The lighting was absolutely beautiful I just had to take another picture. We ended up getting home around 7pm and just collapsed. It was a long couple of days, but I am really glad we did it.

Highway 1 between Palmer and Glennallen

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July 18, 2016 by Lee and Tracy

First Time on the Denali Highway (Alaska Route 8)

Over time, most RVers develop preferences for how they like to see an area. Some of the favorites are hiking, canoeing, fishing, ATV’s, or jeeps, and although we will try variety, we do all seem to have our favorites. For Lee and I, our absolute favorite is scenic drives. These drives are generally on the kinds of road we would never take our rig on and are often twisty, turny, bumpy, and sometimes scary, but the views and the things we see are always very special. They are literally the roads less traveled, and we love to explore them when we get a chance.

I am telling you all that to give some context to my next statement, which is that this road was in the top 5 scenic roads I have traveled on in my life. The pictures I am going to show you don’t come anywhere close to doing justice to what we saw, and honestly I don’t even care. I will forever have the pictures in my mind of this place and nothing we could ever take can come close to that. In an effort to do it justice though I did tweak the tone and contrast on some of the pictures, which helped sharpen the images and compensate for a cloudy day, but in no cases have I enhanced the color. It was even greener than you will see in the pics…truly.

We also started out the trip with a BLM guide to Denali that has 27 points of interest. You can pick up this pamphlet for free at the Glenallen field office or the visitors center and I highly recommend it. It is hands down the best pamphlet of it’s type I have ever used and added exponentially to the enjoyment of the day. I felt so strongly about it that I called the BLM office this morning and thanked them. It was that good.

A little more background and then I swear I will get to to it. Highway 8 is the road the locals use for hunting and recreation. It is paved for 20 miles on either end, but is 100 miles of dirt and gravel in the middle. I knew this was going to be a long trip (roughly 5 hours estimated) so decided to spend some of our unexpected tax return on a room in Denali that we could stay at when we arrived. I have been on the fence about seeing Denali National Park at all (I’ll talk about that more in the next post), but since I knew it would be too long for us to drive round-trip, I thought I would kill two birds with one stone. The reason that is important is because we couldn’t just do this drive on any day. We had a reservation, so when the forecast was cloudy and rain, I was a bit bummed. Luckily, the day cleared as we went on, and anyway it truly didn’t matter. The vistas were so vast and the colors so rich, overcast or not, it was still amazing. And more importantly it was not one landscape for many miles. It kept changing and surprising us.

MP 6.5 Gulkana Glacier

According to the BLM pamphlet glacier erosion created the jagged appearance of the Alaskan range

The Wrangel Mountains were largely obscured by clouds but there is a great viewpoint on a clear day at MP13

MP 13 The Wrangel Mountains were largely obscured by clouds but there is a great viewpoint of Sanford, Wrangell, and Drum on a clear day

We started at Paxson, and the first 21 miles of the road were paved and in really good shape. There are multiple lakes in the beginning of the journey and a group of them called Tangle Lakes. Right after the road ends there is a pretty awesome BLM campground that is $12 a night and has a river, views of the lakes, and even had a camp host on site. I loved the vibe of the place and would absolutely recommend staying there if you need to drop your big rig before exploring the road. I wouldn’t take anything larger than a Super C on this road by the way and wouldn’t recommend trailers of any kind at all, unless they are beat up already and you don’t really mind what happens to them.

MP 21 Where the road ends, In places it was graded and actually quite pleasant but those sections never lasted for long

MP21.5 Tangle Lakes Campground. Some of the sites looked down on the lakes

I’ve never been to the Scottish Highlands, just seen pictures and movies of it, but the terrain quickly turned into views that I imagine look just like it. Rolling green hills that go on forever with lakes and ridges and mountains in the background.

The little houses give you some feel for the scope '

The houses give you some feel for the scale. The green unfortunately I couldn’t come close to capturing

MP 22.5 Landmark Gap which was formed in an Ice Age more than 10,000 years ago. This gap was a favorite Inidna hunting area and the Nelchina caribou herd still migrates through this area.

MP 22.5 Landmark Gap which was formed in an Ice Age more than 10,000 years ago. This gap was a favorite Indian hunting area and the Nelchina caribou herd still migrates through this area.

We had heard that there was some discussion at one point about paving this road but a combination of cost, the fact that the road is closed in winter, and unpopularity with the locals caused it to never happen. It’s unpopular with the locals because this is where they come to hunt, and my understanding is that in the fall there are tons of people. It can support that many because you can park and camp almost anywhere and we must have seen over 50 fire rings in pull offs right off the road. It’s also a great route for bicyclists because the traffic is sparse and traveling slowly. Remember to check your spare tire before you take off though, because cell coverage is minimal and you really need to be able to rely on yourself if you have a problem.

The McLaren Summit is a great place to see the McLaren river and get a panoramic view of the Alaska Range.

MP 37 has the McLaren Summit which is a great place to see the McLaren river and get a panoramic view of the Alaska Range.

Alaska range. On clear days you can see the McClaren Glacier and Mount Hayes

The McLaren River

The BLM pamphlet isn’t just about cool vistas though. It also talks about geological points of interest like Palsa’s which are “small, dome-like mounds” 10-20 feet high which contain peat. I have read about peat in many books but never actually seen it and was very interested when we ran across this one around MP 41. It was so big I didn’t know what it was at first.

Palsa

The pamphlet also talks about kettle lakes which are formed when ice breaks off from a receding glacier and eventually melts leaving a circular depression. There were tons of these along the drive, but here is one of my favorites.

Kettle Lake

Next up was the McLaren River bridge and one of the most beautiful views we saw all day. The McLaren Glacier is only 16 miles away and the view was spectacular. We actually crossed the bridge and turned right into a small camp/picnic area, but we also saw people stopping and walking right out on the bridge to take pics. It is also the only spot we saw along the entire highway with a small concentration of businesses. A couple lodges and a small store are located here. No gas though, so don’t forget to fill up before you enter the highway.

McLaren River Lodge

The bridge

How would you like to live here 🙂

The McLaren Glacier

We spent several minutes here and then headed down the road towards Crazy Notch. This lateral moraine (buildup of rocks on the sides of glaciers) was cut by a stream and created a natural snow catch. It has several twists and turns inside and is the main reason the highway is closed in the winter because of the difficulty of clearing the pass of snow. It was fun to drive though, I really enjoyed it. Oh I should probably mention that I drove almost the whole way. Lee’s arm was really bothering him from all the painting he has been doing, so when the road got rough I took the wheel so he could rest his arm as much as possible.

MP 46. The entrance to Crazy Notch

Around MM50 there are a series of small lakes, several of which had ducks on them and the literature saif to look for shorebirds, moose, caribou, beaver, and fox in the vicinity. Sure enough, a little while later we had our only animal sighting of the day, a fox which was walking down the road. It was a great sighting though as the fox allowed us to take some great pics and it was our first fox in the wild sighting ever.

We even got to see him poop!!

Around MP 59 we started seeing eskers which are sinuous ridges of silt, sand, and gravel that were deposited by a stream flowing within a glacier. They were confined by walls of ice, but when the glacier melted away the mounds were left and they were beautiful and fun to drive on.

As you can see from the previous picture, the dark clouds were clearing up and we started to get even more beautiful views.

The road looks deceptively smooth. It was pothole heaven lol.

Some sections were recently graded though and those were a little better.

Around MP 79 we saw the Susitna River which runs from the Susitna Glacier and is a major drainage system

Around MM 88.5 we stopped at a huge pull out with great views of the Alaska Range and an unexpected surprise.

One of the many campsites we saw

My favorite lake of the day

Lee found an intact caribou skull. Very rare to find these with the horns still on them

We decided to take it with us and I know one young man who will be very happy once we figure out how to clean the darn thing

The views continued to be stunning but I was getting a little tired and was glad when we finally reached the Brushkana Creek Campground which is another BLM campground about 20 miles from the Cantwell entrance to the highway. I didn’t like this campground at all, but the road got much better from this point forward. And then something really magical happened. Between MP 107 and 108 we found an unexpected Roadside Attraction. You know how much I love those, and out here in the middle of nowhere there was a tree with lots of little special trinkets on it.

The mentos cracked me up for some reason

I thought bug spray was particularly appropriate 🙂

The sighting refreshed us and we knew we were in the home stretch. What I didn’t count on was another different terrain and some of the most beautiful views of the day.

I loved, loved this one

And if that wasn’t enough when we got closer to the end we got to see the Nanana Glacier at MP 116.

Nanana River

Finally we hit the end of the road. It took 4 hours and 48 minutes to travel 138 miles, but it was worth every moment of it. Next up you get to see what happened when we entered Glacier National Park. Thanks so much for following along, I hope you enjoyed it.

July 16, 2016 by Lee and Tracy

First Time at Lake Louise

After the marathon day Saturday, we were both pretty tired, but I was still feeling a little restless. Lee had to edit all day, so I decided to take the truck and explore a little on my own. We had seen some trumpeter swans about half an hour away but the timing wasn’t right for a pic, so I headed out that way. I also wanted to take the road to Lake Louise which several locals had talked to me about and I had heard there were animal sightings. So off I went with my tunes cranked up (when you are sharing one vehicle getting to blast your music is a treat) and came to the lake. Didn’t see the swans at all. Total bummer, so I turned around and headed down the road to Lake Louise. Less than three miles in I had a fantastic surprise. On an ill kept turn out I saw arguably my most beautiful glacier sighting to date. I didn’t even know there was a glacier here, or what glacier it was (after much internet research and finally a call to the Forest Service I determined it was Tazlina Glacier) and really, just, wow.

There were no signs and no clearing so I had to park and walk quite a ways back to get this shot. What made this glacier so special was the huge glacier lake at the end of it.

I couldn’t put the truck on the steep edge that had a break in the trees.

I can’t wait to go back and retake these on a clear day

Despite missing the swans I was very excited about this view and surprised no one had ever mentioned it. Feeling good, I kept going down the road. Ok, so the Lake Louise road has to be the worst one I have been on yet. It is well paved and marked, but has so many frost heaves it looks like ribbon taffy. Unlike a road that is completely torn up, you want to go too fast on this road, and if you are not super careful you end up bottoming out. Thus the 22 mile road took me about 45 minutes to traverse.

The road to Lake Louise. These “ditches” were worse than they looked

There are lots and lots of little lakes on the road and active signs of fishing, but no animal sightings unfortunately. It was pretty heavily traveled for a side road on a Sunday morning, but after a couple of nasty jolts I stuck with a slower speed and let folks go around me if they wanted. The small lakes were pretty though, and they were all slightly different.

Because of all the water this was the first place I have experienced big flies. They were about the size of a bumble bee and whenever I stopped the truck to take a pic they were right on me. No bites, but the mosquitoes and flies definitely took some of the fun out of it. Then I finally hit Lake Louise campground and the Lake. The sites are $30 a night and there were some that fit big rigs, but I didn’t think it was anything special. And the Lake itself is very large, accommodating bigger boats, but again no big deal. I should say though I am not a fan of most lakes (Tahoe being a notable exception) probably because I neither boat nor fish. And since the day use fee was $7, I stopped only long enough to check out the campground, use the pit toilet (which was clean and well stocked), and take a pic.

Lake Louise

Then I turned back and drove back up that crazy road (definitely not worth it), but did stop again for more glacier pictures. I decided since I was so close I would check out the small swan pond again and score!! The family with their cygnets (rarely get to use that word!) are living on this small island in the back. I was just able to get a pic of the adults at least. I heard that 95% of the world’s trumpeter swan population nest in this area, which is very cool, and I am so glad I got to see them even from far away.

The family is on a large island well away from HWY 1

You can kind of see the babies, the feather balls to the left

This was my best shot

Going to go back there to and hopefully catch them in the water. It’s on the left about 1-2 miles past the road to Lake Louise towards Anchorage, FYI. Don’t know if they come back to the same spot every year. After that fun, I came home and tried to keep quiet while Lee finished editing. It always takes him longer than he estimates and once he is side tracked it’s hard for him to get back into the rhythm of it. Luckily we have had active participation in our “Take a Book, Leave a book” area and I had picked up a new book to read.

Monday was another dessert night and although I have been having better than expected success I finally ran into my first disaster. I have never made a lemon meringue pie before but the directions seemed straight forward and I thought I could easily use a sugar substitute and make it sugar free. Well it turns out that only a few sugar substitutes will work, and I could have beat the thing all day and never made a meringue. I punted, and cooked it anyway and ended up serving sort of a lemon soup/souffle. I did have a second desert which turned out just fine thankfully and near the last minute I sent Lee to the store on an emergency watermelon run. Still I served it and several brave souls tried it. To a person they said it “tasted” good, but I think they were just being polite. Still when the mother of a large Mennonite family gave the taste a thumbs up I felt better. I have no doubt she knows how to make a pie. It was fun though and folks seem to get a kick over my baking successes and failures, and I am pretty honest with them that I am a new baker.

Here’s my lemon “soup”. Linda I thought you would get a kick out of this!

Love talking to people on desert night

Oh and something else super exciting happened. A new food truck opened by the visitors center with Mexican Food and I tried it and it was fantastic!! The owner (who is originally from Mexico City) had a restaurant in Valdez for many years, but he got tired of all the hassle with dealing with a restaurant as he got a little older, so as a semi-retirement he sold the restaurant and decided to open a food truck. His crab and seafood enchiladas were outstanding and at $12.99 were reasonably priced. Still I need to be good, so I am forcing myself to not go down there, but finally there is some food in town I am actually tempted by.

Crab and seafood enchilada

After this work week is done we will be spending a weekend in Denali. We have exhausted most of the day trips in the area, so will need to go further afield. Since Lee really doesn’t want to move the rig, we decided to splurge and get one night at a resort right in Denali park. To be honest I am more excited about seeing HWY 5 than Denali itself as that is a popular hunting road with the locals. It’s 100 miles of unpaved road though and driving that twice in one day would be to much even for us. Originally I wanted our tax return splurge activity to be a air tour of Wrangell-St. Elias, but when I found out taking pictures or video would be extremely difficult I decided to go this route instead. It will cost a little more since we will have to pay for some meals as well, but we figure the OT we have been getting will cover that.

Anyway, it will be a few days probably before I can get a post out. I am guessing this is going to be a 600-700 picture trip, so stay tuned. It should be spectacular, and please cross your fingers that despite the forecast it won’t rain the entire three days we are there!!

July 14, 2016 by Lee and Tracy

First Time in Anchorage with Kelly and Bill

When we originally started seriously discussing Alaska for this summer we knew we would have to work kamp, and when we found out our friends Kelly and Bill were going to Alaska also and they needed to work as well, it seemed like kismet. Right away Kelly started looking for work kamping jobs we could all do together, but our list of requirements made it tough. We knew we needed 5 day work weeks with pay to make it work financially, and we also wanted a decent internet connection. Sounds simple but not so much up here. Plus there was a wrinkle we hadn’t counted on when Kelly found a promising job and when she called they told her they would not hire couples who were friends. Apparently they had done so in the past and when one couple decided to leave they lost both of them which really caused a problem. I get it, and can totally see that happening, but that was just one restriction too many so I told Kelly to not worry about us and find what was best for them, which she reluctantly did.

Fast forward and they are work kamping in Seward and we are in Glenallen. The planning phases were fun as we were able to help each other get ready, and even though we weren’t able to travel together because of our work commitments we did end up meeting near the end of the journey. We knew from looking at a map we were 5 hours away from each other, but we didn’t really understand it’s 5 hours of beautiful but rugged driving. We also thought we would frequently meet at the halfway point in Alaska but weren’t counting on our different days off and other work commitments, so it took some planning to get together but we finally did on Friday, July 8th!

Since they have Sam’s Club and we have Costco, one of our purposes for the long drive was a joint shopping spree, but really we just wanted to be together. I really have missed her. And since if you are going to make that drive you might as well have some fun, we also planned a few fun events together. It was a looong day starting at 6am for us and ending at 11pm, so settle in 🙂

Our oil change light came on about 5 days before the trip and since the nearest Ford dealership is in Wasilla we booked a 9 am appt. This required that we get up early and out the door by 6am so I was pretty sleepy as we made our way to Anchorage. I hadn’t been in over a month though, so the views were all fresh again, and it was pretty pleasant until we got near Palmer. It’s a short construction season up here and since Palmer, Wasilla, and Anchorage are all relatively affluent towns we saw lots of construction. Still we made it in time and I enjoyed the free wifi in the waiting room. Afterwards, we backtracked to Palmer and managed (despite significant construction) to meet them at the reindeer farm close to 11am. The place was very busy with a tour group so we decided to each lunch first and enjoy the really pretty views. Plus they had a small petting zoo near the lunch area and we especially enjoyed the pigs that obligingly laid down next to the fence for a belly scratch.

The puppy hung out with us all through lunch and I fed him pieces of my PB&J

After lunch the crowd had died down and we went in with a much smaller group. This is a kid activity though, so expect that, and we certainly had a brat or two in our group, but the experience was cool enough that we all could ignore most of it. You walk in, get a speech, and then they give you a small cup of feed and turn you loose. Reindeer can’t kick at all, so all we were asked was to not touch their antlers as they are sensitive. Soon we were surrounded by reindeer and all 4 of us really had a blast.

Kelly on a surprisingly comfortable reindeer seat

Part of the 140 head herd. They rotate them out to pasture for rests

The antlers were really interesting as we got to see them very close up (Lee’s pic)

Lee with one of the two big males in the herd. That is not an optical illusion, those antlers were ginormous

Bill trying to get a pic with a baby right beside him

Aggressive little boogers

I was a little nervous to be honest taking this pic but they were actually [pretty gentle

Next we saw a bison which has started out as a runt and was raised by the family. It lived in their house with them until she got to big

Next we saw a bison which had started out as a runt and was raised by the family. It lived in their house with them until she got too big

She really liked Lee

And finally Rocky Mountain Elk which were really beautiful as well. We only got to watch from the fence, but our guide allowed the 4 of us to linger and watch them be fed fresh grass which the locals bring after mowing their lawns.

The babies were about a month old and still pretty skittish

The dominant male in the herd. When the younger males get bigger they are separated during rutting season

It was definitely worth the $9 and next up was the Palmer farmers market!! Since this is on Friday’s which we never have off I didn’t think we would ever get to see it, but was glad I did. Palmer is where all the giant vegetables are grown and everything in the farmers market was locally made, or in season. I really enjoyed it and we bought a couple of wood items and a tomato plant.

Pretty nicely sized for a smallish town

Beautiful veggies. I ended up buying some onions

We bought a spatula and tongs from this shop, but I was tempted by the husband beater stick. Bill said it could easily be taken away and my response was who said you would be awake. Bill seemed a little taken aback 🙂

Bill also jumped right on the roasted corn

This was really cool. These spoons are created by a guy and he has a left hand and right hand version of them. Never seen anything like it and beautifully made, but to expensive for me. I was tempted since I have three lefties in my immediate family. . https://www.facebook.com/alaskawoodenspoon/

One of the things I like about this state is their strict regulations as to what can be sold as native art, hence the carefully worded sign

After the farmer’s market we went to Sam’s Club and Lee and I wandered every aisle (Kelly and Bill were very patient). About 15% of their merchandise by Bill’s calculations were different than Costco and we ended up spending $300 on those items we couldn’t get at Costco…I know, yikes. Then Kelly and I went to get haircuts as neither one of us had had one since we started the Alaska trek and I introduced her to Great Clips. For $15 couldn’t beat my haircut and although they did a nice job on hers I don’t ever think that will be her first choice. Still I think we both enjoyed the “girl time” and the boys went to get us a table at Moose’s Tooth Pub.

Their boss had recommended it and it was a popular place with a line forming at 4pm on a Friday. The timing was perfect though as the guys got the table just as we got there and we ordered. I am not usually a fan of artisan pizza places at all but this place was GOOD! Plus they had a beer sampler (4-40z glasses) which Bill helped me with and a Mississippi Mud Pie (called Moose mud pie) that Lee loved. Plus the company was fantastic and we really, really had a good time.

Bigger on the inside than it looks on the outside

Loved their plates. Would have bought some if they weren’t breakable

Me, Lee, Bill, and Kelly

The Moose Mud pie

Lee’s expression says it all

Afterwards we went to Costco and spent another $300 (I know, I know) although I felt better about it when Bill said I needed to take the long view. We have enough groceries we hope to last through the end of August and I am crossing my fingers that it will all work out in the end. The thing Lee said that made me feel the best about it was, “We were spending almost this much money before and I was unhappy because I felt we never had anything to eat, and now we have food.” That made sense to me and settled me somewhat.

We said our goodbyes which was sad, although we will see them again in a few weeks and headed home. It was a long drive going back and we didn’t get home until 11pm and then had to put some of the groceries away before collapsing into bed. I didn’t mind the long day though because it was so worth it to be with friends.

July 10, 2016 by Lee and Tracy

Fourth of July in Glenallen and Catching up

Before I get started talking about Fourth of July there are several little items I have been meaning to share, but they haven’t really fit in well with any particular post. I felt they are important enough that I wanted to mention them though, so please bear with me as the beginning is going to be a little all over the place.

First off Lee has been redoing all of the signage here and it looks pretty terrific. He has never done signs like this before but with a router and some stencils he ordered I think he did an amazing job.

My favorite two new signs because I will never again have to answer the question which water spigot is to fill and which is for the dump. These had no signs before. Thanks honey!!

Oh and I mentioned awhile back that we went to Costco before Memorial Day Weekend and they were totally out of meat. We had a guest here who was a supervisor at Costco and he explained that many of the small local businesses stock up using the Anchorage Costco on the Thursday before holiday weekends and they couldn’t possibly keep up with the demand. For example during Fourth of July weekend they sell a full pallet of charcoal briquettes an hour. The Anchorage Costco is number two in volume in the country, second only behind the one in Hawaii. Nice guy and I felt better after talking to him. The information also helped us delay our next trip to Costco until July 8th, rather than going in the end of June as we originally planned.

Speaking of food Lee has been doing almost all the cooking and doing a wonderful job. He’s even trying some of the new recipes I have collected and his plate presentation has even gotten a little fancy. I really appreciate the meals he is making and will be sharing some of the recipes at the end of this post.

Look how fancy Cori and it tasted delicious

Staying with the food thing we tried salmon a second time when this nice young man Bob who works on plumbing issues at the campground brought us a piece fresh from the river that he had gotten from a fish wheel. It was a beautiful piece of fish, so I asked him how he cooked it and decided to give it a try. We cooked it for 10 minutes at 400 degrees in the oven coated only in salt and lemon juice. It really was a delicious piece of fish, but salmon just looks totally unappetizing to me. Still it was the best salmon I have ever had and I am glad I got to try it again.

Salmon cooked Bob’s way

Oh and speaking of fishing (I am excited about how all these things are seguing together), Chris and Miranda from Copper Central are a young couple who I have mentioned before had started a fish cleaning, supplies, and tours business. I have been sending a lot of our guests there and they always call and let me know how grateful they are. Super cute couple and very committed to customer service so I am happy to send folks their way. I stopped in and got a picture of Chris…Miranda was out getting supplies…and truly if you are looking for info on fishing in the Copper River Valley, these guys are a great resource. If you are coming into the area give them a call at 907-822-4315. They are happy to answer any questions.

Chris from Copper Central

Ok I am totally out of seques but the next one is important. Remember how much I complained about The Milepost Book on our way through Canada, well Kelly from Milepost stopped into the campground. As I suspected she was traveling in a conversion van, but when I mentioned I had concerns she listened to me very carefully and promised to pass it along to the managers. I talked pretty passionately about how they needed more detailed information on the steep grades because larger and larger fifth wheels were becoming more common. I also said it’s obvious you want a good product since you have gone to so much trouble in other areas, but this area is important and needs more work. Like I said she listened and promised to pass it up the food chain and in any event I felt better having told someone from the company. After meeting her I am even more convinced that the companies intentions are good I think they have just missed the mark in this one area.

Ok onto a couple more serious items. I’ve talked a little bit about how my sister fostered and was trying to adopt a little boy. We attended the adoption party before we came to Alaska. Well the adoption was finally approved right after we got here and we can finally post pictures of Abram’s face on the internet. So for those of you who wondered what that cutie pie actually looks like…here you go. I took this pic and am super proud of it!

Such a cutie

As someone new enters our lives we also are saying goodbye to someone else. Four years ago our friend Mike died from esophageal cancer. This death at the age of 45 had a huge impact on us and started us on the path to changing our lives and becoming full timers. Lee was given some of his ashes after his cremation and we have carried them with us in our rig on our journey. I’ve talked to him, put little pieces of our travels (rocks, shells, feathers) on the gold box that held him and generally felt like in some way he was coming with us. A few months ago our two youngest daughters started planning a trip to Europe this summer and since they were starting in Scotland Lee and I started talking about sending his ashes with them. Mike was of Scottish descent and his long time dream was to visit the ancestral homes of Clan Lamont. He never got to make that wish come true, but we thought we could make it happen now, so Lee and Mike’s widow worked for weeks to get all the paperwork together that would be needed for the girls to take his ashes.

Turns out it’s not that easy and you need multiple pieces of paper to make it happen. If you know my husband though, you know nothing was going to stop it from happening and a couple of weeks ago we had to send the ashes to our youngest Kay. I couldn’t do it, but Lee took care of it and in a lot of ways it felt like we were losing him all over again in a way. It was tough. Then the girls arrived in Scotland and although I haven’t heard the whole story yet, went to heroic efforts to find the right area, and after slogging through Scottish mud spread his ashes. Mike would have loved it.

Mike with his son Ian when we were young

Mike with his son Ian at the Renaissance Fest when we were young

Alright, thanks for letting me talk about all that, now back to the Fourth of July. This is a big holiday here in Glennallen starting with a VFW breakfast in the morning, a parade, and then games and a salmon bake at the local park put on by the lions club. I was excited about the day’s activities but unfortunately completely overslept, so by the time I got to the breakfast all they had left were sausages and hard biscuits. Still I saw a couple of very nice campground guests there (Merope and Jim) and since Lee had decided not to come I was glad to have someone to watch the parade with.

I was late so most everyone had left

Luckily we could watch the parade right from where we were at and the sites filled up quick with lots of families. This is an old fashioned parade where they throw candy and the kids were all ready to go with their bags.

Jim and Merope who I discovered are full time RVers. Maripe is originally from Scotland, but they home base out of Alexandria, VA and their blog is Shanahan Shenanigans.

I thought the parade was absolutely great and very impressive for a town of only 585 people. It was no Rose Bowl Parade to be sure, but it absolutely reminded me of my childhood and made me smile.

Led off by American Legion

The kids all waiting for their goodies. The ones next to us cleaned up because they got our candy and theirs.

Park ranger “float”. A for effort

Plus they threw out these toilet kits and I snagged one

Lots of churches were represented

Local Urgent Care

And cool classic cars

My favorite was this old Rolls Royce follwed by a VW convertible

The best float of the day was owned by the local sanitation company

HE threw candy and toilet paper out to folks. Never seen that before

The mom next to us grabbed that toilet paper right up. With two boys I don’t blame her lol

The only animals in the parade

This insurance company came all the way from Fairbanks

Smokey was a big hit

My other favorite was this fire truck. You can see behind them how they blocked the main roads for this.

They had fun squirting people along the way

It was really fun and afterwards I went in the opposite direction of the crowd to see if Lee wanted to go to the Salmon Bake. He wasn’t very interested so I decided to go off on my own and try to find a closer view of the elusive fish wheels. People are pretty territorial about them and since almost everyone was at the salmon bake I thought now might be a good time, but after following Bob’s vague directions on where he got the salmon (and hitting at least 20 dead end roads) I decided to go and visit Chris and Miranda. They were working and Chris mentioned that I might be able to see fish wheels from the Lutheran Church parking lot in Silver Springs. So off I went and with Chris’s much better directions at least found the church. Since I am Lutheran I like seeing Lutheran churches anyways and this one was tiny but cool. I especially liked the wooden cross in the field next to it.

I walked down to see the cross and the river and voila, around the corner I could finally get close enough to fish wheels to see them in action. I couldn’t real see if they caught any fish, but it was cool that every house along that river bank had one. Then a big dog wandered up and said hello and I sat for awhile enjoying the river and the peace and quiet.

Victory!!

Beautiful dog

Nice backyard view

So I can finally say I got sort of up close to a fish wheel and I learned a lot about the local communities by driving around. It wasn’t the best day I have had here by any means but it was ok and looking forward to some big trips we have coming up in the future. Oh and as promised here are two delicious new recipes that Lee made for me. So So good.

Crawfish or Shrimp Beignets (Lee made the shrimp version so good)

1 egg; beaten
1 lb chopped crawfish tail meat or shrimp
4 green onions; chopped
1-1/2 tsp butter; melted
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 tsp cayenne pepper
1/3 cup flour

In a large bowl combine meat, egg, onions, butter, salt, and cayenne
Stir in flour until blended
Heat oil to 375 in wok, deep skillet, or fryer
Drop tablespoons of mixture into oil a few at a time
Fry until golden brown on both sides
Drain on paper towels

We used purchased Louisiana dipping sauce, but you can make your own by mixing the following:

3/4 cup mayonnaise
1/2 cup ketchup
1/4 tsp prepared horseradish
1/4 tsp pepper sauce

Smothered Chicken

4 boneless chicken thighs
Sprinkles of garlic powder and seasoning salt
1 TBL vegetable oil
4-1/2 ounces of sliced mushrooms (fresh or canned; drained)
1 cup (4 oz) Mexican shredded cheese blend
1/2 cup chopped green onions
1/2 cup bacon bits

If desired flatten chicken to 1/4″ thickness (Lee skipped this step and it still tasted great)
Sprinkle chicken with garlic powder and seasoning salt
Brown chicken in oil for 4 minutes over medium heat in large, nonstick skillet
Top chicken with mushrooms, cheese, green onions, and bacon
Cover and cook until juices run clear and cheese is melted; about 4 minutes
Serve

July 7, 2016 by Lee and Tracy

First Time at Kennecott Mine

One of the many day trips I had scheduled was Kennicott Mine. To be honest, I wasn’t expecting much. I knew it was a long drive on a poorly maintained road, and mines in general are really not my thing. Still since so many of our guests take this day trip from the campground I wanted to give it a try so I could give my honest opinion about it, and since it was an overcast day it seemed like a good choice. Overall I was pleasantly surprised, not in small part because my expectations were so low. I wouldn’t rush to do it again, but it ended up being a three-moose-sighting day and that’s never a bad thing!

Instead of taking Richardson Hwy all the way down to Edgerton Hwy we decided to take Old Edgerton Hwy instead. The road was rougher and mostly woods, but along the way we did pass this family graveyard and I stopped to take a couple of pictures. Many of the cemeteries here follow the Russian tradition which is a reminder of the impact that Russians have had on the culture up here. Next to the cemetery are the ruins of a log cabin, but the graves themselves were obviously tended. Perhaps the descendants decided to move a little closer into town.

The Bell Family cemetery

Once we entered the new Edgerton highway (at Kenney Lake) the drive was the same as previously covered in the post First Time at Liberty Falls and Chitina with the notable exception of a native gift store that we stopped at this time along the way. This little store wasn’t open the last time we came through, and it was so worth the stop. There is a sign along the road right before the yak farm (yes that’s how we give directions out here in Alaska lol) and it was not only native owned, but contained some absolutely beautiful pieces of art. The owner of Tonsina Native Arts and Crafts also had a small case of historical items at the store, and really it was everything I had been hoping to find in a store. I ended up buying something for one of my nephews but there were many beautiful pieces I wish I could have been able to afford. They also had a basket full of pieces of moose horn priced from $22 -$35. Many people want a piece of moose horn to use in a craft or take back with them, and this is the first place I have seen the raw material for sale.

These spirit masks were absolutely beautiful and this one was priced at $90 which I felt was reasonable for the amount of effort and materials that had gone into it. I would have loved to have bought it, but simply have no where to put something like this. DeDe if you want it …I’ll be happy to go back and pick it up for you!!

The hand made beaver caps were extremely well made and the beaver gloves (on top shelf to the left) were so beautiful and soft. At $350 -$300 an item it was steep, but again I thought those prices were fair, considering they are hand made and are incredibly warm.

They also sold the furs and the black coat was made in the “traditional” style.

I could have spent more time in there, but Lee was getting a little restless, so on we went towards Chitina. This time we saw a moose right outside of town before we got there and we got a few shots of her as she crossed the road.

We didn’t linger in Chitina, but headed straight for McCarthy Road, which is right across the long bridge. The road has tons of warning signs, is completely torn up, and made us hesitate a bit before driving up it. After the first couple of miles though it was much better and it was obvious someone had graded the road through that section. I am not sure why they didn’t complete the job all the way down to Chitina but I am guessing they are actually trying to deter motorists from using this road. I had read that there were several small lakes between MM 12 -16 and a guest had told me he saw a moose there. We were not disappointed as we got to see our first bull moose who is growing his horns. He couldn’t have cared less about us, and since he was across the road, Lee got several beautiful pics of him feeding. So far the day was definitely exceeding expectations!

My favorite beaver dam so far

After the moose the road was still relatively decent until we reached the huge trestle bridge at Mile 27. The bridge is absolutely beautiful and there is a large pullout which we used to take some photos and eat lunch. The moose and the bridge were absolutely great, and I definitely recommend the first 27 miles of the road. That being said, if you just wanted a short day trip you could absolutely cross the bridge and turn around on the other side, because the road from that point gets significantly rougher. Not 4-wheel drive rough, but 20 mph rough, which is why a 62 mile drive takes at least 2 hours. A lot of people also just like to park on the near side of the bridge and then walk across and then back again. It’s not for the faint of heart, while it’s a very sturdy and solid, well made bridge, it’s also just barely wide enough for a single vehicle, and although there’s a low guard rail, there’s no waist high railing. And it’s very, very, very high, and long, with a raging river at the bottom in the gorge.

Stopped on the bridge real quick to take this pic

Next up was an abandoned trestle bridge near a narrow but fast flowing river. This one was really cool, as it reminded me of roller coaster tracks and Lee and I took several shots. Couldn’t help but go black and white on a few of them as it gives the feel of it.

Lee’s shot

The next section was unfortunately the worst piece of road so far and not much great to look at. There was a long lake at one point with a beautiful vista but largely it was just trees and no animal sightings.

Finally we made it to the end of the road and this is where it gets a little strange. There is a foot bridge across the Kennecott River that you walk over to get a shuttle ($5 each way per person). The shuttle runs every half hour and first stops at McCarthy and then at the Kennecott Mine. You can walk to McCarthy and pick up the shuttle there (3/4 of a mile) but I wouldn’t recommend it. The road was muddy and congested with cars, bikes, people, and 4 wheelers. We learned later there is a private bridge that businesses and locals can purchase passage on, but the costs runs as high as $500 a season to use that bridge so most people working there for the summer leave their cars on the other side. We parked in the visitors center (which was almost full) and then walked to the pedestrian bridge. It’s a pretty terrible system, but the roads are so bad it takes each shuttle just under an an hour to make the round trip drive from the bridge, to McCarthy, to Kennecott and back (which is right around 12 miles, round trip) and honestly I’m not sure how else they could do it. The foot bridge was cool though, with a great view of both the Root and Kennecott Glaciers.

Root Glacier

Kennecott River

Kennecutt Glacier

McCarthy though was really disappointing for me and in the end we didn’t even get off the bus. The roads are mud and the buildings were ramshackle, probably because the place started out as a saloon/brothel town for the mine. Historically restored building isn’t that impressive when the original building wasn’t that great. Still, lots of young people found it interesting, and there were tons of hikers in and out of the place. We kept going though and finally made it to Kennecott in time to take the 3:30 tour.

I wasn’t really planning on taking the tour since it was $27 a piece and walking the town itself was free, but Lee in an uncustomary fashion put his foot down and said “I didn’t drive all that way to not do the thing.” OK then, we are taking the tour. I briefly considering passing, but the town isn’t large enough to keep me entertained for the two hours, so off we went on the tour, both of us feeling a little cranky about the whole thing. In the end I am glad we took the tour as that is the only way you can get inside the 14 story tall refinery building, and it was more interesting than I thought it would be.

Our tour guide was Nells and this was obviously not his calling. Sweet guy, but pretty dry. Later we found out he was a geologist who previously worked for a start-up geotech company. Once I understood he was a scientist I was a little more forgiving. He knew all the stuff about the rocks though which was neat.

Nells. Behind him if the gravel left behind as the glaciers have receded. There was miles of that.

What remains of the old dam which is obviously no longer needed because no glacier

Here's an historical picture from 1919 that shows how the glacier was bvery tlal and came right up to the town

Here’s an historical picture from 1919 that shows how the glacier was very tall and came right up to the town

After the introduction we wandered through the town seeing the supporting buildings (some have been restored and others have not) and heard a little of its history. The town was abandoned after the initial rich ore strikes were played out and sat empty for many years until in the 70’s an enterprising bush pilot starting conducting informal tours there. When the company who owned it found out they sent a man to burn it to the ground, but he ended up stripping it of valuables and largely left it standing instead. Finally, the Kennecott Mine company (which still exists today) donated it to the National Park Service and luckily for us they understood it’s significance. They hired a concessionaire to run the doors and have slowly been restoring buildings with the profits.

The ore processing building

Although all workers were single men the management team was allowed to have families there and this was the children’s schoolhouse

One of the men’s bunkhouses

Remains of the hospital on the left and another dormitory on the right

Remains of the hospital on the left and another bunkhouse (being repaired) on the right

We didn’t tour the all of the buildings, but we did go into the managers office which Lee and several others on the tour liked. They found what looked like a passage to get into the ore refinery (although it was closed off) and a really old safe. Since they had to remove everything by train they only took what was cost effective to take, so most of the machinery was left behind. And speaking of the train, it cost 100 million dollars in 1909 to build the train tracks from Cordova, but they ended up making a profit of 200 million which is billions in today’s currency.

Took me forever to get this picture with no people in it 🙂

Managers House

Old Safe

To start the processing tour we had to walk up a pretty narrow trail and a steep hill. There were plenty of breaks along the way, but keep this in mind if you plan on doing the tour. Also, there is large vegetation along that path that looks like huge Queen Anne’s Lace that we were warned would cause blisters if we touched it. I kept my hands in my pockets.

Path to the top of the refinery

These plants were about as tall as I am

The climb was worth it though as we had really spectacular views of both glaciers and the town below. The National Park has reinforced the main walkway but you have to wear a hard hat when going through the building. You start on the 11th floor and then walk down 10 flights of very narrow stairs. The building isn’t heated either, and most of the windows are gone, so it can get quite chilly. Definitely wear a jacket.

The top of the ore processing plant

This was to the left of the walkway a little scary. The thick cables are where the ore came in from the mines in the hills above

The walkway

Cool view down on the town

We followed the processing process as we went down each floor which was actually pretty interesting. This is where Nells’ geological knowledge really came in handy and I ended up finding the tour interesting. Lee loved it.

The initial sorting machine

These straps were two stories tall and were wrapped to help stop them from coming off

These straps were two stories tall and were twisted to help stop them from coming off

There were three floors of these shaker machines, for scale, each one is about 5 feet wide and 30 feet long.

The size of the machinery was amazing

To give you some scale

The power plant was next door and the furnaces were still in pretty amazing condition. According to some local experts this plant could be up and running again with minimal effort. Each one of these furnaces was about 25 feet on a side and around 18 feet tall.

The furnaces were made in Erie, Penn

After the tour we were starving, but we also needed to make the next shuttle, so we grabbed some food at a food truck, the Meatza Wagon (which was really quite good), and barely made it to the van in time. It was 6pm at this point and there were twice as many people as there was van space, but luckily we got in the first one while others had to wait 20 minutes until a supplemental van arrived. Then it was back to McCarthy and then back to the footbridge and the walk to the car then the loooong drive back. We didn’t get home until 10pm and although I enjoyed the day I will say we could have gone as far as the trestle bridge at Mile 27 then turned around and I would have been just fine. We were lucky enough to see Moose #3 on the way home though right outside the ranger station in Chitina where we think we saw the same moose the last time we came through. This one is pretty chill and I had lots of time to take some pics. A three moose day is never a bad thing though and I am very glad we did it so I can help our guests when they are planning a trip to the area.

Food Truck. We had pork carnitas which were very good

Loved the chefs sign

On a side note, Lee took tons of video in the refinery but has not had a change to put it together for me. We have been having some issues with the local help showing up for work this week and he’s had to work some overtime. If he gets it done in future though I’ll mention it in that post and link it back here as well. Lee says it takes longer to edit than write!

Moose #3

She posed for me

July 4, 2016 by Lee and Tracy

June 2016 Budget (with work kamping revenue)

This is the first month I will be sharing both our costs and our revenue. I can’t promise I will always do that going forward, but in this case the revenue was 100% generated by a traditional work kamping job, and I think it would be good to share it. Along those lines, some folks have been asking about RV Tech revenue, and I wanted to share that thus far we have only made $45 from tech work. We have been advertising heavily here at the campground and Lee has been called to look at problems 5 times in the last month, but in most cases the fix was extremely easy (under 10 minutes of his time) and he has chosen not to charge the person. Certainly you could charge a one hour minimum in these cases (which would have been $500 in additional revenue), but Lee personally did not feel right about charging for things that he can do so quickly and without the need to pick up a tool. He considers it “karma in the bank”. We get many new RVers coming through here, often from other countries, and they often have a limited understanding of the systems in the RV’s they have rented. Lee takes a few minutes and educates them (in one case he switched a power switch from off to on) and he feels that this is just the human thing to do. I agree, and since we are making plenty of money to cover our expenses we can afford to do that. In the future it could of course change.

So how did we do in our first ever month of paying as we go. Well, pretty fantastic!! We netted $3710.77 from our work kamping job and our costs were only $2803.71. Holy cow. Seriously, I am as shocked as you are, and I double checked the numbers. Before we all get too excited though, we should have bought camper tags this month (we sort of blew that off) and this did NOT include a run into Costco as we are doing that next month with Kelly and Bill. We also thankfully had no repairs of any kind. Almost got whacked with $1,100 for brake repairs on the truck which would have made this a different story, but the warranty I purchased covered all that so we only had to pay for the gas. Even knowing those things it is an extremely promising month and even more so because we still got to explore and see some pretty terrific stuff on this budget. Lee’s been telling me for many, many months this was possible, and to be honest I was extremely skeptical, but the proof is in the pudding. One month does not a budget make, but wow I feel pretty great about this. For more details please see below.

Campground Fees- One of the benefits of work kamping is no campground fees, which saved $600. If you counted this savings into our monthly wage we made over $4,300 this month!

Groceries – All that stocking up finally paid off, and despite the higher prices in local stores here we saved $232.75. We ate what we had supplemented a bit with some spinach Darlene is growing, and two meals of fresh salmon which was given to us. Also, Lee has been cooking most of the meals since I work so late and his meals require less additional ingredients than mine do. They’ve been awesome, but he tends to make do with what we have.

Dining Out – We ended up $25 to the good in this category and I feel great about that. We rigidly controlled spending on our numerous day trips by packing lunches, and more importantly resisted the urge to eat locally out of boredom. This is an area many full timers overspend in when sitting in one place for awhile, so I am glad that we did well. Since we have more overnight trips in July I fully expect this category to go up, but we have shown it can be done…at least for us.

Entertainment – We ended up $19.90 to the good, mainly by focusing on nature related activities that didn’t cost money. The big ticket item in this category was $89.95 for the Alaska Tour Saver book which will help us save money the rest of the season by offering numerous “two for one” deals. The book is pretty pricey but since we are taking a Glacier Tour in August, the book more than pays for itself with that one trip.

Truck Fuel – I was concerned about truck fuel costs going up since we took so many long drives to keep entertainment costs down, but I was pleased to see truck fuel was $177 under budget. This is mainly because we are consolidating our trips and during the work week are hardly using the vehicle at all.

Cigarettes – The good news in this category is they must have changed the rules or something because we can now purchase loose tobacco online and have it shipped. We know this doesn’t apply to a lot of people, but it’s an expense for us, and typically Lee looks for places to buy tobacco everywhere we go, with varying degrees of luck. In Anchorage the price of loose tobacco is three times the price in the lower 48, and the selection is pretty meager. We brought quite a bit with us, but not enough to get us all the way to mid-September, so it’s nice to know that even with the shipping, it’s cheaper to buy online. And going forward, we don’t have to worry about hunting it down everywhere we go.

Home Equipment – We did great in this category $155 under budget, our best ever. When you are sitting still less things break and Lee is getting his puttering fix by working on so much in the campground.

So again, I know it’s just one data point, but feeling good about things overall. July we have longer trips, more seeing friends, income tax preparation to pay, along with tags, so things will go up, but it definitely did prove to me that we could stay under budget and still have fun, which was one of the major things I wanted to get out of this work kamping experience.

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June 30, 2016 by Lee and Tracy

What Am I Doing With My Life?

Over the past several weeks I have given the impression to many readers that this is the perfect job for me. It isn’t, and knowing there was a misconception has weighed heavily on me as I have tried to figure out how to write about how I have been feeling, without being disrespectful to my employer. I’ve never felt it was appropriate to write on social media about problems with a job, and since in this case that job is also tied up with completely personal feelings about my life changes it’s even more difficult to sort it all out. Since I have been here a month, I am going to give this a try though, for two main reasons. First, I have always written this blog with the goal of providing information. I write the blog I wish I could have read. Second, I use it as a form of self therapy. When I am struggling I share what I am feeling, because the process of writing it down helps me to clarify where I am emotionally, and when I am lucky it helps me figure out what to do about it. I have always been somewhat cautious about writing about work aspects, trying to stay on the positive side, and hoping folks could read between the lines on the more negative aspects. Striking that balance was easier to some extent when I had a corporate job on the road because that was a huge and largely faceless corporation. It is much more difficult in these circumstances. All that being said I have come to the point where I feel I need to give this a try. Partly because of comments I have received about previous posts and partly out of concern that the beautiful pictures from our days off will completely skew the readers perspective on this experience.

First of all, it’s a perfectly nice campground and Alaska in general is one of the most beautiful places I have ever been. I have limited experience working in a campground, but I think the environment here is typical of what we will find in campgrounds in general (with the notable exception being we don’t have any seasonal campers here which I have seen does change things). Most campgrounds are small businesses. They have limited funds, are designed to maximize profit in a relatively short period of time, and use the work kamper force to fill a temporary labor need. The work is generally divided into male/female roles, with the man doing maintenance work and the woman doing office work and/or cleaning. For Lee this has been great. He is given a list of projects, and allowed a large amount of freedom throughout the day to complete those tasks. Once he proved to them that he knew what he was doing, they have largely left him alone and have been very generous in their praise for what he has accomplished. It’s well deserved as he really has a terrific skill set for this type of work, and largely it is a good fit for his personality, although I should mention that if you are a guy and not mechanically inclined by nature this could definitely be a struggle. My job, on the other hand, is helping guests, administrative tasks, and baking for the three “free dessert nights” each week. After the initial training and reorganizing this involves a significant amount of downtime. I really enjoy helping the guests, and since they tend to come in batches throughout the day those busy moments come the closest to how I used to feel in my previous professional position. The downtime however has been more difficult. I have tried to fill this time with small maintenance tasks outside that are located near the office, but to do anything more complicated requires someone else watch the office which negates my primary function. The office tasks can easily be done by either of the owners (not all maintenance tasks could be), so the value I provide is primarily relieving them of the need to do it themselves. Lee on the other hand routinely saves them money by performing tasks that they would need to hire an expensive outside professional to perform. So in a nutshell I am performing a task of low value with lots of downtime. Historically not a great combination for me.

I have never been a person who just punched a clock. Whether I was pumping gas when I was 18, or running multi-million dollar projects in my 40’s, I rarely phoned it in. Don’t get me wrong, I’m human and certainly had my slacker days, but I can honestly say almost every day of my life I have felt that I have given more than I received in a work environment and I liked it that way. Add to that I was mostly lucky enough to work jobs that I felt passionate about, and my jobs ended up being a huge part of my feelings of accomplishment in life. Between working, raising three kids, and completing my education, I always had plenty of activities that both kept me busy and made me feel good about myself. Looking back on that period, I feel almost exhausted by the pace of it all, but as exhausting as it often was I rarely felt adrift. As a massive overachiever I put myself in positions where I knew my value and felt confident in what I was contributing, both personally and professionally. It’s as if I was working from an invisible “success” checklist and I was checking all the boxes. Occasionally during a brief “down” period I might start to feel restless, and then I would amp up my workload in one of the three pillars of my life. Take extra classes, volunteer for an assignment at work, or get more involved in my kids’ lives (which I am sure in retrospect they were thrilled about) and I would feel like I was back in the “win” column. This also had the dual benefit of reducing the amount of time I had for self- reflection (which I have no doubt was subconsciously intentional) and my personal equilibrium such as it was would be restored.

What’s truly interesting to me is how when I wasn’t working at all how this was largely a non-issue. I was very close to being content and we filled our time with lots of travel, friends, and personal hobbies to the point where those things in a way became my job. I loved blogging more frequently and the experiences that fed into the content were very precious to me. Plus the travel pace we set for ourselves certainly kept me very distracted. Now, with lots of time in one place, and lots of time to think, I am evaluating what I am doing with my life. Lee says that is a pretty dramatic way to put it, and maybe it is, but that is the question that pops into my mind at least once a day. The mental tone of that question varies depending on my feelings in the moment (sometimes derogatory, sometimes merely quizzical), but the core of it remains the same and it needs to be answered.

I do have this vague list of things that I wanted to get to someday; write a book, travel, learn to do something artistic, and in the past that list was mostly placed on hold to deal with the more immediate needs. But now there is no immediate need, and the only thing standing in the way is my fear. It’s ironic that here I am with more time (and to some extent resources) than I have had in my entire adult life, and I am struggling. All that choice is somewhat scary, and actually trying things opens yourself up to the possibility of failing at them. For all of my hard work, to be honest I never was what I could consider a brave and adventurous person. Diving into something I knew little about was always extremely intimidating and somewhat painful. There were some moments of bravery of course, but these were almost always attached to a necessary step in my career path, marriage, or parenthood. Even this lifestyle, which is arguably one of the bravest things I have ever done, was directly related in my mind to my maintaining my marriage. I could look ahead and see what our marriage might look like long-term if we didn’t make a major change, and this lifestyle seemed like a good next step. I have said many times, and absolutely know it to be true, that left to my own devices I would never have had the courage or frankly the imagination to do something like this. But Lee did, the timing worked out well, and here we are.

The last couple of years has been a flurry of activity. Keeping my existing job and then leaving that job, adjusting to and learning how to live in this life, and dealing with both “empty nest” and learning how to manage family relationships from afar has kept me pretty busy. Add to that some wonderful new friendships and at times what felt like an unrelenting pace, and there wasn’t much time to sit back and really think about what I was doing. Well, that’s not exactly fair, I spent tons of time reflecting, you’ve all been privy to some of those thoughts through posts and my friends have been privy to so much more, but the reflecting was largely about dealing with the moment or near future. Overall, I know the last two years have been very good for me in so many ways. I have grown as a person, expanded my awareness of the world around me, and had experiences I could never have dreamed of. All of that made answering the question “What am I doing with my life?” pretty easy. It was self evident.

Now things are different. For the summer at least, we have settled in and settled down, except those feelings of being settled are mainly making me feel unsettled. I’ve always been contrary like that. The job is largely fine, but certainly not enough for me to completely throw myself into. At least one day off a week is pretty amazing, and the fact that we managed to make it to Alaska at all is still pretty amazing, although the realities of limited services, small town living, and being held to one place do mitigate that some. And of course there is just day-to day living; cooking, cleaning, sleeping, shopping, all take some time. This is where it gets interesting. I recognize that many, many people would be perfectly content, maybe even most people. Life is just life, and those rare and small moments of absolute wonder are more than they need to feel content. That has just never been who I am, and apparently the full time lifestyle has not really changed that.

I thought maybe at first that I was out of practice on how to relax. Then I thought I needed constant activity, sort of like a junky needs their next fix, and over time that would change. Maybe both of those things were true to a certain extent, but I have definitely learned how to just “be” in the last two years. Not that I don’t still stray into the melodramatic and high strung areas on occasion, I haven’t changed that much, but I truly do know how to just exist, and I have made huge strides in learning to live in the moment. And having experienced those things I can truly say, at least for right now, that it isn’t enough for me. I’ve met plenty of people who it is more than enough for, to the point where I thought maybe I wasn’t doing it right, but after a ton of thought that’s just not who I am and never has been. That may change as I get older or do this longer, but for right now I really need to own where I am and who I am. Actually, what has made me feel OK about that is my relationship with the Xscapers group. They are a group of RVrs who are largely Gen X and Millennials and their approach to this lifestyle is very different than those who are retired. Almost all of them know they have to generate revenue of some sort, and most are finding a way to do that on their terms. I admire that. I don’t always get it, to be honest, but I admire it. But I definitely feel that that is where I ultimately need to end up, if I am capable of it.

As a person who is on the very top of the Gen X age range it is easy to look at the younger generation and think “Wait until life teaches them different.” I know I have certainly been guilty of that. But the more I experience this lifestyle, the more I think they have some things right. They seem to take more risks, and in general accept failure as a natural consequence of doing so. Money isn’t the main driving factor, something I share in philosophy, but they also don’t seem to allow fear of not having money drive the bulk of their choices. This is an area I have been sorely lacking in, although I am coming to this mindset later in life. Plus, there is just this quirky, fun outlook that I really appreciate. Nowhere is this more evident than a Facebook group I am involved in called RV Interiors. The page is largely a group of younger people who have bought old, old rigs and are gutting them, and recreating them in their own image. The before and after pictures are striking, and what’s even more impressive to me is that many people are living in these rigs. They decided what they wanted, worked within their financial means, and created something really beautiful and unique. They didn’t seem to spend tons of time creating the perfect circumstance to pursue their dreams, they just jumped in and figured it out. There is a lot for me to learn in that.

So to get back to the original point, “What am I doing with my life?”, well I know it needs to be something more. I need to work at something that has intrinsic value to me, and if I am lucky that thing will also generate some revenue. To achieve that I have to take risks, and most importantly, I have to learn to accept failure with grace.

Choose a thing, be prepared to fail, and try another, and hopefully along the way discover my passion. At almost 50 I would say its about time.

To end on a positive note, I have been waiting a month to receive some sort of customer review for our work here, and here is the first one we have seen, on Trip Advisor. Definitely worth the wait, and I was glad to see that despite my personal turmoil we are getting it done and having a positive impact on the guest experience.

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June 29, 2016 by Lee and Tracy

First Time in Valdez

I covered the first 3/4 of the road to Valdez in my previous post First Time Walking on a Glacier so I won’t cover the first part of the journey again, but I will say that every drive is different depending on the light and the clouds and how much water has melted. The last 40 miles of the trip which was all new territory was absolutely amazing and definitely proved that this Highway deserves its designation as one of the most beautiful in America. It was cloudy going down and over Thompson Pass, but it was clear that the views on a clear day would be spectacular. Along with just seeing Valdez we also had a mission, to visit the campgrounds in the area and see which one would be best to stay at for my birthday. Kellie, Bill, Jo, and Ben will all be here and since we have booked a Glacier cruise in Valdez for one of the four days we are taking off, we all thought it would be best to stay close to Valdez. Plus I figure by that point I will want a change of scenery, so I had a list of campgrounds to check out along the way.

The first one is called Blueberry Lake and is a first come, first serve dry campground that costs $15 a night. The sits were well spaced and the views would be spectacular, but they only had a few sites that would fit our and Bill/Kelly’s rig. Since it was first-come, first-serve we regretfully had to pass but I would absolutely recommend staying here if you are passing through the area and it has space. It is buggy though because of the dense foliage so definitely come prepared.

The views from Thompson Pass

Blueberry lake campsite

Blueberry Lake

Next up was Keystone Pass which I was really looking forward to. I had been told that two major waterfalls were right off the road, but no description prepared me for the sheer majesty of these falls. I absolutely loved both of them and particularly enjoyed that there was plenty of parking and unlike most major falls you could walk right up to them. Phenomenal!!

The Keystone Canyon was beautiful even without the falls. See the water running alongside on the left

Bridal Veil stood over 300 feet tall and was stunning

You can see why it’s got its name

Then right down the road was Horsetail Falls. It was hard to pick a favorite, but I think I liked Horsetail better because you could climb the rocks and get “inside” the falls.

It was hard to tear ourselves away, but I knew we had to drive back through the pass to get home so next stop was Allison’s Point. To get to the campground we turned onto Dayville Road prior to reaching Valdez. Whether or not you are going to the campground I definitely recommend the drive as this is a major fish hatchery area and wildlife abounds. We didn’t see any bears but saw an eagle with it’s nest in a tree and two eagles down on a log in the bay. We spent lots of time getting pictures and Lee walked down on the bay and got VERY close to the two eagles getting some amazing shots.

My shot of the eagle flying to its nest

The nest …couldn’t see any babies but could hear them

The eagle stayed on watch and was not happy we were down below

Lee’s shot of the eagle on watch.

The bay

My shot from the road was ok

Lee’s from the ground was better

And this one was fantastic!!

The bay even without the eagles was beautiful and it’s a shame the campground is little more a pull off on the road. The views from the campground weren’t that great either although you could walk down to the water and see some amazing views.

Allison’s Point “campground”

The walk to the bay

If the sites would have been on the ocean proper I couldn’t have resisted, but we still thought we could do better. I was getting hungry though so we went straight to Valdez and ate at a local place called the Alaska Halibut House. It has been around for some time and at $21 for a full halibut basket (4 pieces of fish and some fries) the prices were pretty steep. The fish was local, and tasted ok plus my half order price of $11.75 was way more reasonable, still I certainly wasn’t blown away.

Alaska Halibut House

This was the $21 dollar portion size

The dock was pretty though and we went to a fantastic gift shop called Orca Bay Gifts. The place was crammed full of native alaskan made items and Lee was very patient as I went and looked at every single thing. They also had a small army surplus section in the back which kept Lee entertained and we ended up buying a couple of things for the beet harvest.

The view from the docks

Amphitheater at the docks

Civic Center

Marmots living in the rocks by the dock were very cool

The babies

Lee’s pic

Ferry Station

Orca Bay

The town was so beautiful with mountains and or water on all sides but unfortunately we didn’t much care for the town itself. I was really looking forward to visiting the Safeway and found it to be dirty and cramped with some empty shelves (they were out of milk) and rude staff. Plus the prices were no better than the small IGA we have in our town so definitely grocery runs to Valdez are off the table. The folks at the Halibut House weren’t that nice, the in town campgrounds were cramped little parking lots and really the whole town (except for that one gift shop) was a serious disappointment. So we headed back out of town and stopped out our last campground on the way, Glacier Campground. Glacier Campground is a military campground that is also open to the public and they had some sites with electric ($30 for 30 amp and $50 for 50 amp) and some older well wooded dry sites. It wasn’t bad by any stretch and was out of town so we thought this might be a good choice.

Safeway in Valdez

One of the group camping sites was really cool

One of the day use areas was really cool and had a little waterfall.

After getting some information to take back to the group (it’s first come, first serve), we continued down the road because there was a sign that said Valdez Glacier. Wow amd I glad we did, because stumbled across an amazing site. There is a lake that you can kayak on and pieces of glacier in the water that you can walk right up to. So, so cool and completely unexpected. Plus there is a large parking lot back there and no signs that say no overnight camping so we may try some boondocking back there if the group is up for it.

What we saw at the end of the road!

This piece had a huge rock in hit. For scale it was about the size of a car tire

Lee was fascinated by how the pieces of crystallized ice fit together like a puzzle

I wanted to walk on it

Success!!

You could see the water flowing under the ice

Can’t wait to do some kayaking

The professional outfit that was there had our exact same Sea Eagle

They even had a huge fire pit. This spot was awesome

Then we stopped in Old Valdez which is where the town stood prior to being completely destroyed by the Good Friday Tsunami of 1964. It was amazing how the land was taken over in such a short period of time. They had signs showing where the old buildings were and the views were once again spectacular.

Feeling excited we got to drive through Keystone Canyon again and this time we stopped at a tunnel in the rocks that was never finished because of a gun battle. Lee was very excited, but I refused to go all the way in. Instead I wandered down to another great waterfall and we sat on a rock chair overlooking to river and did some smooching. It was a great way to end a wonderful day and whatever you do if you visit Alaska, I definitely recommend the road to Valdez if not Valdez itself.

the “little” waterfall that didn’t even have a name

Lee was fascinated by the US Geological Survey camera

Cool rock chair someone built

The river view.

June 25, 2016 by Lee and Tracy

First Time Filing Taxes as a Small Business

Let me start by saying I am in no way a tax expert and everyone’s situation is completely unique, but I wanted to share our first experience with filing taxes as a small business as it might help others who are thinking of starting small businesses on the road. I should also say that I tend to be extremely conservative when it comes to filing. When we were kids, Lee worked for a small company that didn’t take taxes out and because we didn’t understand the self-employment rules we ended up owing the IRS $1,000, which was a significant amount of money to us back then. That was a truly unpleasant experience and one I will personally go to great lengths to avoid, so I always stay on the more conservative side of the line. For most of the years of our marriage, Lee and I both worked jobs where taxes were taken out, and since we had a mortgage and three kids, generally did fine with those deductions. As each child left though, we ended up owing more and more each year (despite adjusting what was taken out) so I have been extremely nervous about what this year would look like.

The first thing I did was get a tax accountant who understands the RV lifestyle. Our friends Jo and Ben who are traveling nurses recommended Travel Tax and after having a free conversation with Joe the owner, I decided he was the person for me. I talked to him at the beginning of the year to make sure I was collecting the information he would need as the year went along, and I also talked to my friend Howard of RV-Dreams who is an accountant and a lawyer and runs his own small businesses, to get his advice. Plus, just to be on the safe side, we put aside 50% of everything our small business made in a savings account just in case. Yes, I know that is overkill, but we were able to do that because I was still making money at my corporate job, and it gave me peace of mind. Despite all that preparation however, I was still nervous, and it didn’t help that we had to file an extension because we were traveling and working during the tax period and there was no time to have a meeting with him. Extensions are no big deal of course, but I really wanted to know how bad of a hit we were going to take.

This morning I finally had my meeting with Joe and imagine my surprise when I found out not only did we not owe, but would be getting a refund of $3,682!! How awesome is that?? The timing couldn’t be better as it more than covers the costs for getting up here, and gives us a little extra to splurge on a couple of day trips I really wanted to do but wasn’t sure I could absorb into our budget. I am not going to go crazy or anything, but a little bit should go towards something fun since it is unexpected money! I thought I would take a minute to explain how we are handling the business, just please keep in mind as I said earlier that I am in no way an expert.

We decided to setup Lee’s business as a sole proprietorship because we didn’t want to mess with filing an LLC in multiple states. We created Open Road, which is an umbrella company covering both the RV Repair and video production business and we filed a Schedule C using Lee’s social security number as the business ID. Lots of folks think you should file an LLC and I am not going to tell you any different, but it is a huge pain to file in multiple states when you travel a lot, and the additional protection people think they get from an LLC isn’t always the case. It was the simplest approach and starting out that’s what I needed and wanted…simple. We may change it later, but for right now it’s working for us. Because we don’t spend enough months in any one state we were unable to establish a tax home, and as such could not claim the mileage traveling from one job to another. That would have been a significant deduction and is well worth investigating with an accountant, but we didn’t want to be tied down to any place in particular. Again, that might change in time, but for right now it worked for us. We were able to deduct all of Lee’s purchases in equipment and supplies, and the costs for the websites, business cards, etc. The start up costs for everything ran around $6,000 (equipment in the video world is expensive), and although we turned a profit last year, it was a small one. Most importantly for us we were able to deduct a portion of our internet costs. Lee needs to upload and download videos and we have 80 GB a month which runs us around $363 per month in internet costs. We calculated about 40% of those costs are going to the business, and this was a major deduction as well.

I was concerned about not showing a big profit, but as the accountant explained there is an expectation businesses will lose or make little money the first several years. What you can’t do though is have a business that loses money year after year and is obviously a tax shelter. That shouldn’t be a problem for us though, as this is how we will be funding the lifestyle in part so it needs to be profitable to exist. I also got some clarification on what we can deduct for the jobs we are working where taxes are being taken out. Again, no mileage to get to the position or for the commute, but if we travel for the job (ie: run to Anchorage to pick up supplies) we can deduct that mileage. There is a lot of grey in the tax code around small businesses, so my major lesson out of these conversations is that your decisions need to pass a “reasonable” test in case you get audited. Since that’s where my head goes anyway, we should be OK. One cool thing I did learn is we can start a retirement fund for the business and if we were in a situation where our income was getting on the high side (that would be awesome) we can put money in a retirement account up until October of the following year. This is nice because you can get to the end of the year, see your tax situation and decide if you want to take some of the revenue and put it into the small business version of a 401K. That would be a great problem to have and it’s good to know we can wait until the end of the year to decide.

Oh, and we got a very nice deduction because we put solar on the RV. Last year RV Solar Solutions put a system on for us and we got a 30% tax credit on the full amount. This was a great bonus, and a big part of our refund this year. If you live in your RV it is your primary residence, and both solar and the interest paid on an RV loan are tax deductible just like if you had a sticks and bricks home.

So it was a good year, and we are leaving the tax money we have set aside right where it is for 2016. Looking ahead I want to make sure we have plenty to cover 2016 especially because I am going to end up paying the tax penalty on our health insurance for several months. Back in April my COBRA costs jumped to $1,000 and we decided to buy a catastrophic plan for $361 a month and pay the penalty instead of taking the higher costing COBRA. Starting in 2017 we will get on the Affordable Care Plan (if it still exists). I feel like we are in a good place though, and I certainly am much better informed about taxes than I used to be. My only piece of advice about this is if you become a full time RVer you might want to get a new accountant. We loved the guy we had in New Hampshire, but he simply didn’t know enough about the other state rules or how the rules applied to full time RVers, or mobile workers. You don’t want to lose out on deductions, or worse, get yourself into trouble because your accountant is simply unaware. Yes, you can absolutely do it yourself, and at some point I may go that route, but at least in the beginning I wanted an expert to provide me with their expertise.

Take care and next time we will get back to the pretty pictures and the fun stuff 🙂