Our last days at Mt McKinley

Yesterday we had our last of work in uniform. There were less than one hundred guests on property, and it was pretty boring. Today we worked a half  day cleaning up after the guests left at 10 a.m. Now we are done!!! We met many wonderful people and saw some awesome sights, but we're ready to get "on the road again."

Dan is outside cleaning up the RV for the trip, and I'm doing laundry and cleaning up inside. Fortunately it is a beautiful fall day, sunny and in the 60's. Tomorrow we will start our adventure back to Florida. In addition to nightly stops along the way, we plan to stop in Ohio and South Carolina to see kids and grand kids. So far we have our campgrounds planned through Alaska, Yukon Territory, British Columbia, and Alberta. The trick is to find ones that are opened. Many close down in the middle of September. We expect to see some colorful fall foliage as we travel south and hope to miss the snow. Our arrival back home should be near the end of October.
Here is a picture of Mt McKinley that we took recently when the leaves were beginning to change. It is magnificent to see all 20,320 ft of it.




I wanted to share some pictures of a very interesting Alaskan flower called Fireweed. I didn't know until recently that its name comes from the fact that it is the first plant to grow after a fire. In the spring it is green and appears abundantly all around.



In July beautiful rose colored flowers burst out and stay until the end of August.



Then the flowers die off and white puffy seed pods take their place. There are thousands of seeds on each plant.



While the seed pods are still on the plant the bottom part turns red. some of them drop off and some of them stay. While driving down the road we could see many areas bursting with the red fireweed.



We found one area on property where we photographed fireweed in all the stages: the green leaf, the flower, the seed pods, and the red bottom.



As you can tell I was fascinated by the fireweed and hope I didn't bore you with it.

Misc info: Daylight is rapidly decreasing. The last couple of weeks when we worked mornings we drove down to the lodge because it was totally dark at 6 a.m. This past week when we ended at 9 p.m. we also drove because it was totally dark. Bears and moose have been seen on property, and we didn't want a close encounter in the dark. Temperatures have been mostly in the low 50's as highs and 40's as lows. Today is the exception since it is in the 60's. One morning it went down to 32 and there was frost on the Blazer. We'd like not to experience that again!

And the adventure continues.......

The countdown is on

We have 18 days until we leave on our journey back to Florida. We hope to get out of Alaska before the snow starts to fly. The temperature is topping out at 60 with lows mostly in the 40's. The other morning the low was 35. We are losing about five minutes of daylight every day so the color of trees is turning to mostly yellow and the leaves are falling. Winter is quickly approaching.

The only adventure that we experienced since I last posted a blog was last Sunday morning when we went to start the Blazer to go to church. The key fob would not open the door. When Dan tried to start it, it turned over but would not stay running. After trying over and over for the next several hours with no success, we decided to use our Good Sam starting and towing service. Dan reached someone in Texas who, after a long wait, said they would send someone from Fairbanks to help. Although he told them Fairbanks is 260 miles away and Wasilla is only 90 miles they insisted on sending someone from Fairbanks. About an hour later someone else called telling us the truck from Fairbanks would not be coming, and they were trying to find someone closer. Dan finally convinced them that we are in the wilderness and the nearest tow service is in Wasilla which is two hours away not 30 miles away. They found a service in Wasilla and sent a man to try to start it or tow it for service. He was not able to start the Blazer so he towed it away. After he talked to a friend who is a locksmith he thought that possibly the security system was causing the problem. The next morning he reset the security system, but it still would not start. He then put in a used DieHard battery that he had on hand with no success. So he towed it to the Chevy dealer. When Dan called the Chevy dealer to find out the status the man asked what the problem was. After Dan explained what happened the mechanic said the Blazer started and ran fine. So we still don't really know what the problem was, but think it may have been the battery. On our day off on Thursday we hitched a ride on a Princess coach heading to Anchorage. They dropped us off in Wasilla and we picked up the Blazer. It has been starting and running since, and we hope that is the end of the Blazer problems.

We realize that we miss our life in Florida. Some of the things that we are missing: warmth and sunshine and the comforts of home which include two bathrooms, large shower with lots of pressure, washer and dryer, home cooking, daily paper, large TV with Dish and DVR, clean Cadillac in the garage, and stores close by, not two hours away. We are looking forward to not setting the alarm, and Dan will enjoy not putting on a tie each day. We're also anxious to get back to our routine of Church and breakfast out on Sundays and trips to the YMCA during the week.

We'll spend the next two weeks planning our trip home in our spare time. We're ready to get on the road again.