The Adventures of Myron and Dorcas: North to Alaska

Dorcas and I traveled in our motor home to Alaska in 2011 (click here to read blog entries for that trip) and had a great time. We had planned to return to Alaska in 2016, but circumstances conspired against us, and we just didn't make it. So we tried again for 2017. This year was looking tough too. We didn't arrive home from Florida until Saturday April 22. The following week was clogged with a total of 6 doctors appointments, and I was determined to play pickleball for 3 hours each Monday, Wednesday and Friday mornings. Additionally, I had follow-up doctor appointments, labs and a chest scan in the following weeks. If anything would prevent us from taking this trip, it would be concerns about my continued health monitoring and care on the long trip, and while passing through Canada. Thankfully, all my specialists gave me the green light to go. Several said they would love to make house calls along the way!

There were a large number of chores to perform including social obligations and time-consuming maintenance and repairs to the coach. In addition to going to Alaska, we would return through Minnesota for our traditional annual Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness adventure, which by itself takes the better part of a week to pack for. We set a target date of Saturday May 13 to leave, which would allow us less than 3 weeks to prepare. Even then we would be leaving a little more a week later in the month than we did in 2011. We will have no specific itinerary, but are intending to follow a similar route to the one we took in 2011. We expect to spend the latter part of May in the US and Canadian Rockies, June on the inside passage island hopping via the Alaska Marine Highway, July in southern Alaska proper, including Anchorage, the Kenai Peninsula, Denali NP and Fairbanks, and August working our way down the Alaska Highway through the Yukon Territory and British Columbia, eventually landing in Minnesota towards the end of August. We will be home in mid September for a few days before attending two back-to-back Country Coach motor home rallies in the tidewater Virginia area. Whew!!! No moss on these rolling stones!

It went down to the wire. Motor home chores that should have taken an hour or two took half a day. (Note to self: motor home crankcase holds 28 quarts of motor oil: my drain pan holds only 25 quarts. CRAP!!!! Next time do the math and pay attention!) As the 13th approached we thought we might actually make it. The LP gauge in the coach read zero. No LP means no refrigerator while driving down the road. A local RV dealer sells LP at a loss for $0.99 per gallon. The market price is closer to $3.00, so I really wanted to buy LP there on Saturday. That left us a specific time to leave home and still be able to pump ~20 gallons of LP at the sale price. On Saturday we both busted our humps doing last minute chores, and at the end, just throwing things into the coach and the Honda. The RV shop would be closed on Sunday, so if we didn't make it on Saturday, we would have to wait until Monday to get cheap LP there. Plan B was to buy LP at the Flying J in Wytheville VA, but that is a difficult place to get into, and the LP supply tank is almost always blocked by some moron in the store buying cigarettes. Besides, their price was $2.90 per gallon. Thankfully, we were able to get away about 3:30 and managed to buy LP before closing time.

The drive north up I-77 through Virginia and West Virginia was very pleasant and the weather was cool and clear. Temperatures dropped into the 50's on the drive through the WV mountains, and I actually turned on some heat in the coach. We spent the night at Tamarack, a WV gift and craft center, in Beckley after driving about 165 miles. Tamarack is a great place to over-night, and we have stayed there several times in past years. We parked in one of their designated RV spaces along with about 6 other RVs, and enjoyed a cool and quiet night as the temperature dropped to 48 degrees. West Virginia is very scenic, and admittance is free, however, they hit you up for $10 in tolls on your way out the door.

Camp Tamarack

Today, we continued northward on I-77 and then west on I-64 before taking US 35 north to Dayton OH. Along the way we entered the first of the dreaded midwest "vowel" states: Ohio, Indiana, Illinois and Iowa. There is nothing particularly bad about any of these states, but the scenery along the interstates is rather boring. We also enjoyed a stiff headwind, which sometimes was a stiff cross wind, reducing our fuel economy and resulting in a few abrupt sideways maneuvers, causing Dorcas to make her dreaded sucky-hissy sounds. We stopped for a break about every 2 hours. Matilda loves to break! In Octa OH we stopped for lunch and noticed that the price for diesel here was significantly less than what we had seen anywhere else so far. We topped off with about 55 gallons at $2.18/gal, while it was in the high $2.40s everywhere else we passed. I love driving with a full tank of cheap diesel! We finally stopped for the night at the Walmart Supercenter in Bloomington IL, after driving 536 uneventful miles. Here we will buy all the groceries that we didn't have time to load from home yesterday. I expect we will have another long diving day tomorrow, before eventually slowing down in South Dakota.