🍂 The Colors Of Fall Bring A Satisfied Mind 😊

So in the dark we arrived at our destination and picked a far edge of the parking area to settle in for the night.

We fired up Kalcifer and got the RV nice and toasty inside.

After the first round of firewood we spent a bit of time trying to get the next piece of wood burning hot as well, but with no luck. I decided that night that I would start going through every aspect of the stove when we got home to see if anything needed fixed. Though Kalcifer always did a first good round of heat, he always petered out on keeping a continuous burn going.

Nonetheless, We spent the evening hanging out and chatting until we decided to go to bed.

In the middle of the night we awoke to a knock at the door. I hopped out of bed and put on a shirt to the announcement of “Anchorage PD!”

When I opened the door I was greeted by two clean cut officers that introduced themselves and explained that I was in an area that didn’t allow overnight parking.

I politely explained we had arrived in the dark, but I had checked for no overnight parking signs and hadn’t seen any.

They explained that there was no overnight parking in Anchorage Municipality Parks. (Which surprised me because we were still North of Eagle River)

But immediately after, they told me I was fine to stay the night 😌, and that they just wanted to make me aware. 🤘

I thanked them and then after an awkward moment one said, “This is a really nice RV you got here.” I smiled and explained to him that we were really proud of it and told him a brief moment about how we repair old Toyotas Motorhomes. We chatted for another couple of minutes and they wished me a good night, where I happily proceeded to roll back into bed and doze off.

The next morning we awoke to not so cold and overcast day- excited to be at…

So have you guessed yet where we decided to go?

I’ll give you a clue: we wanted to come to this place before, but never made it.

Alright one more clue ☝️ but after this next photo I’m giving you the answer. 😉

We finally made it to Thunderbird Falls!

I would find out later, from someone who had lived in the area before, that there was 2 reasons the police had stopped by.

1) To make sure we were not vagrants.
2) To make sure we were okay.

It turns out this area of Thunderbird Falls had a rough past. A past that included a lot of people not respecting the area or it’s residents and causing a lot of trouble. Due to the steep drop offs of along the ravine to the falls, there had even been a few deaths. ☠️

So the officers saying we could finish staying the night was kind of a “Well, you can finish staying the night here if you really want to…” 😬

But if the area had been misused before there were no signs of it now. I’ll tell you a little about it and then let the pictures do the rest.

The hike is a simple mile to get to a platform overlooking the falls, but if you want to go a little further you can go down the ravine and follow the creek to the base of the falls themselves. Without wading into the water you can’t get right next them, but you can get decently close.

(In fact, there were people that had gone swimming in the water heading up the trail when we were heading down. 😆 Good for them!)

Anyway, here are the pictures from our beautiful fall stroll to Thunderbird Falls.

And (hopefully) for your enjoyment a little impromptu accompaniment to go along with our impromptu visit; a new tune. I just sat down and recorded this while typing this blog, so it will be an unedited rough run through, but I hope you enjoy. 🤞 Just hit play and enjoy strolling (or scrolling 😅) through the autumn leaves. 😉

By around noon we were headed back towards Anchorage. Our plan for the day was to retrieve the Tundra, load up on all the “end of season groceries” everyone had asked us to pick up, hopefully meet up with Nick & Whitney, and head on South.

We were greeted at the Toyota lot with a scenario very similar to last time. A different set of attendants than on Friday were all amazed to see and learn of the existence of Our Ohana. Many smiles, laughs, and of course another tour of our rig ensued. Then we were off to load up the goods!

Luckily we were able to meet up with Nick & Whitney! I was having a bit of a rubbing issue in the wheel well on my driver’s side so I had Nick take a look at it. Since we had replaced the control arms and the vehicle had gotten an alignment, the Ohana was no longer leaning and she was driving a whole lot smoother. But… a pinch weld under the driver’s cab was rubbing the tire if I turned too tight. I had been avoiding rubbing it, but I ultimately wanted to take care of the issue. Nick evaluated the vehicle and then agreed that the best approach was to try and cut back the pinch weld. So I had another chore to do when I got home! Ce La Vie! 🤷

We wished our friends a fond farewell, knowing we were headed South for the winter back to Homer. If we did come up for another visit, at this point, it would be an unplanned one.

The fog lights being raised up as secondary high beams worked amazingly well! I could see incredibly far away when they were on, and that was in comparison to my already LED headlights! It was like day driving at night, and it felt incredibly safe. Happy we tried it out!

The other nice perk is even from a good distance cars shut their brights off, they didn’t want to compete with mine!

FYI – Don’t worry, I’m super cautious about blinding people. But… at least I no longer had to compete in the game of, “Will They Turn Their Brights Off Before I’m Blind?” 😂

The drive down went smoothly, and we arrived home very late that night. We were saddened our travel season was over, but happy to be home.

Now it was time to get some work done before the cold painfully set in for the winter. 🥶

Geoff Murphy 11/19/2020