Oh boy do I have some catch-up to do! Summer is so crazy busy- and we need to catch up from the very beginning of the month.
So we had a nice big trip planned, for at least the better part of a week, right at the beginning of June.
Needless to say- it was time to fill the travel sized bottle of Sriracha again! It’s travelin’ time!
Before we headed out- I had to make a point to spend a few moments with our daughter Lia- so here is a pic I snapped that day before we left. Lia went out and had lunch in The Ohana. We snagged up some sweet grub from A Bus Named Sue and ate it right by the harbor.
I had been super wanting to try out their “carrot bacon”. It turned out to be an awesome surprise!
Not much later we were tripping North again- headed up to Cooper Lake to meet up with some friends. If everything went right, we would be staying up there for a couple of days.
On the way up we hit a traffic stop. They had a crane extracting a semi that been hauling a trailer loaded with lumber from a ditch on the side of the road.
We patiently waited for over an hour while they painstakingly maneuvered the trailer and tractor as not to hurt things anymore. Our friend Joey had headed up earlier that day- so in turn she patiently waited on us.
Almost up to Soldotna, I had to make a quick stop at the local scrap yard: Alaska Auto Wrecking. The guys there are super cool to work with and they usually have parts for our girl.
As always- they had the little things we were looking for- a switch panel that I had been missing a clutch pedal cover. 😁 Sweet!
While I did a quick treasure hunting run, Laura hooked up some radish chips and hummus for the next leg of the road. Laura likes to point out this is the beauty of traveling with a kitchen!
Eventually our travels brought us to the lake…
And as the elevation increased a bit we came across an unwanted surprise for it being June… Snow. 🥶
Now mind ya, it wasn’t everywhere- but we did have to drive through a bit of it to reach our final destination.
The point was though- our little stay at the lake was going to be a bit cooler than hope for.
Nonetheless, it wasn’t long until we were greeted by the beautiful and calm waters of Cooper Lake; that we had such wonderful memories of from last year. 😊
We were meeting up with a few friends of mine I had grown up with: Luke Roberts & Joe Pfiel. They had already started working on pitching tents by the lake entrance, but we knew there was a more secluded spot just a little further down along the lake.
They both informed us somebody was already down there: in which we chuckled about because that was the other friend we were meeting: Joey! (They just hadn’t all met yet 😂)
So we rolled a little further on down…
Minus the colder than summer temperature it turned out to be a really nice night! We were surrounded by laughter… 😆😆😆
… Good music… 🎶🎶🎶
… And a nice fire… 🔥🔥🔥
… in which we kicked back and enjoyed the setting sun. 🌄
Which in Alaska tends to be at least till 11:30 at night. So we had plenty of time to enjoy it.
About here is where Laura would appreciate if I give honorable mention of the fact that we all need to appreciate: Joe The Mallow Master!
It turns out Joe has a huge hidden passion for creating the perfect Marshmallows and S’mores!
So it became very apparent to our group that night, as Joe produced endless S’More after S’more, that Joe had missed his calling in life. Really, it had never made more sense than for him to abandon his life of audio engineering and recording to pursue one of pushing a street cart in New York to sell Mallows & Smores to the urban masses. This way he could not only ultimately truly express himself, but bring a piece of the wild camping experience to the suppressed urbanites day to day dining experience.
But Alas… We digress. Let us move on and not question the current lot in life of Joe The Mallow Master.
… A beautiful night at the lake, that’s where we were at!
We stayed up late, talked, played games, and lit a few tiny fireworks until the darkness fully surrounded us. As the late night temperature dropped we all agreed it was time to hit the hay.
The next morning we awoke to Joe having already left. Luke informed us that outside our heated camper ice had formed on his tent, and that it was “Pretty damned cold” over the course of the night.
We all hung out for awhile, hoping the day would warm up and that the light rain that had begun would cease.
Luke had places to be that next day, so it was between Joey, Laura, and myself of whether we wanted to stay another night.
Joey had another lake in the Cooper’s Landing area she wanted to explore that was at a lower elevation- so with hopes of a warmer night there we packed up camp and headed down out of the hills.
To fight the fact that I cannot weather the storm of a good hangover as well as I used to be able to, we found a good meal at Gwin’s Lodge in hopes of settling my stomach.
The rain continued to pour down as we awaited the weather to reveal if things were going to get better. After food Laura & Joey went for a small hike, and I attempted to power-nap off the last effects from the night before. Here is some nice moments from by the river on their walk:
Upon their return I was awakened to feel slightly more human again.
With the damp and the cold not letting the day go- Joey opted to head back home. Laura had heard of a Renaissance Fair that was supposed to be happening in Anchorage that weekend- so if the fair seemed cool we planned to meet up with Joey once again there.
So our party parted ways- and Laura and I headed North again. We opted to try out spending the night at the creek by the Hope bridge.
Which turned out to be an awesome idea!
The weather turned out to be perfect, with a warm pleasant breeze coming off of the Six Mile Creek.
We traded up a bit of the spruce wood we had packed with us for some birch that had been left behind by the firepit, and started a perfect and happily crackling fire immediately.
We wandered and talked along the banks of the creek, wishing we had known the weather would have been so good as to have brought our friends along as well. Ultimately though, we were happy being there with just the two of us. 🥰
Later as we snuggled into the camper for the night- we decided to finally take some time and play around with the functions of our new LED light strips!
Here’s a clip of it fading between different colors to some SOJA. 😀
And here is me goofing around with the sound activated feature:
The next morning we arose to a mother moose and calf wandering by as we groggily sipped upon our morning coffee.
Then it was time for morning routine: getting ready for the day and packing up camp. 😁
Next stop: Anchorage!
When we had stopped for gas on the way up, Laura had went to check the oil level and the oil dip stick snapped off in the tube! 😟
After checking around to see if I would be okay to keep driving- we headed straight to an O’Reillys to see if we could get a proper magnet to try and fish the piece out of the tube.
They did not- so I took a large neodymium magnet and tried running upward along the tube.
No luck. So the hunt for the piece would have to wait. My oil levels were fresh and sufficient for now- so it could wait until after our trip was over.
We drove back over to Target to do a quick board game hunt…
… And then settled in next door at Cabela’s for the night.
We had traveled up to 6 Robblees that day, and I had picked up a new control board for our refrigerator.
Having done the research, and knowing this was a relatively easy swap, I got to work.
The next day was pretty chill, we just enjoyed our time around Anchorage and that night we went to meet up for dinner with Laura’s Aunt Kat. We walked around down town for a bit while we waited for our reservation to be ready.
When we finally got into the restaurant we were taken to the roof- and got to enjoy our meal surrounded by a gorgeous view. After dinner we walked around down town a bit more and got to enjoy some live music at the park.
Check out the slides below 🤩
That night we spent the evening at Laura’s Aunt Kat’s driveway.
That night I coordinated a super sweet board game deal up in Palmer. We were already scheduled to meet a friend at a food truck meet-up in Wasilla, which was right next door to Palmer. Sadly at the same time, Laura discovered the Renaissance Fair had been canceled due to Covid- so we would not get to look forward to that or meeting up with Joey again on this trip.
The next day, we spent the morning with Aunt Kat perusing a weekly artisan fair, then said our goodbyes before heading even further North.
Laura had always wanted to drive the Old Glenn Highway, so on our way up we cruised around that way. Here are the photos she took: Our friend ended up having to cancel on the meet-up, but with Laura jazzed about the food trucks (to help make up for no Renaissance Fair 😔) and sweet board games to be had we were happy we had made the trip.
The food truck meet-up turned out to be right next to a Home Depot, so we parked there and walked over. We were hoping the oncoming stormy weather was not a foretelling of how the event would go; but it was awfully pretty.
There were not as many food trucks as we expected; 2 and a dessert truck. We voted to break diet and partake in the local fairs. We chose to give some sweat potato biscuits and gravy a try- and honestly they were really good!
And since we were breaking the diet anyway…
After feeling very spoiled and gluttonous, we loaded back up and headed to pick up some board games!
Afterwards, we took a moment on the way back to Anchorage for Laura to stretch her legs and for me to look through our massive haul of awesome tabletop moments to come. 🤤
Once we were back South in Anchorage we headed over to our friends house; Luke we had met up with at Cooper Lake and his wife Nic.
They started off the evening with feeding me randomly & deadly hot sauces from their fridge. Luckily I survived this process….
Nic made the most amazing dinner of doubles!!! 😋 And shared with us some of the prettiest drink I have ever seen. 🍹
And to top off an amazing night we laughed and played some board games out of our new haul! We had an awesome time with Luke & Nic, not only are they 2 of the smartest people I know- but just great people all around!
The next day we were scheduled to meet up with our friend Whitney! So as we waited until meeting up for dinner we spent some time deep cleaning the RV and playing some games!
That night we took Whitney out for Sushi- to say Thank Ya for her picking up some shower doors for us and keeping them in her storage unit until we could make it up to Anchorage.
Then, we settled in at Cabelas again for one more night. Tomorrow it was time to head back towards home.
The next day Costco got the best of us, and we did some impulse purchasing we had not planned on…
We picked up a grip of totes so we could start packing up our home for our big trip next year! This was a big moment in Laura’s book, for it meant the first huge steps that we were really planning on moving elsewhere in our lives.
The other big deal was that we picked up a solar generator for The Ohana and solar panels on a crazy deal! But that’s enough of that for now- more details on all that exciting stuff later. 🤫
Along with our shopping and impulse purchasing we were picking up a lot of items for family as well- so after Costco we were pretty fully loaded with our shopping and board game haul. But we were scheduled to meet Whitney at her storage unit to scoop up those shower doors…
Due to space and weight concerns, I decided to leave one massively heavy set of doors in her care- and we vowed we would have to return soon to retrieve them.
After many Thanks And Hugs Goodbye we were once again head Southbound and Down for home.
That day I had contacted an old friend of mine, back from when I worked up on the North Slope; Chester Dyson. He started up this super cool company called Lime Solar. I had contacted him for recommendations on power situations we could do with our rig.
He referred me down to one of his partners that owned a company called Midnight Solar in Soldotna. He said hands down it was the place to go for off-grid setups. So as we drove down, Laura called in and scheduled a meet-up with them.
When we got down to Soldotna we were greeted by not only 2 awesome technicians, but awesome people too! They helped us line out a bunch of details with our setup- and gave us ideas and their contacts for help not only with Solar, but recommendations of Toyota work too!!!!
It turned out to be an extremely beneficial and informative visit! A huge thanks to Chester Dyson & Midnight Sun for all of the help!!!
That evening we pulled up to our property a very tired Laura & Geoff 🥱- and were greeted with a few surprises too that had appeared since we were gone.
But once again, I have to do that thing to ya where I am saving those details for next time. 😛
Geoff Murphy 6/25/2021