It has been interesting addressing the little things for getting ready for our big 10-12 month launch. Sure, we have done some small upgrades and repairs in the last few weeks- but now we are down to packing our lives into our future 7 x 15 ft living space. It has also been quite the puzzle of an experience going through our things and evaluating what is useful and important enough to take along with us as we travel the country in our 105 square feet of space. The last few weeks has not only been packing The Ohana but making sure the rest of our lives are buttoned up as well. We’ve been working hard to do our best to make sure our caretakers are as set up as possible to be successful in our absence.
From inside to out we have sorted and made everything as organized and efficient as possible. Now that we know how to use Kalcifer efficiently, I decided to cut all of our birch down to the pencil and cigar sizes we need to run the stove. We are still running off some of the wood the RV came with, and the pieces are much too large to fire up the stove effectively. So I decided it was time to just prep everything we had so at least for awhile no chopping would be necessary on the road. Unfortunately on the pencil size pieces I slipped and hacked my thumb open with a hatchet, but it seems to be healing up just fine. 🪓👍🤦♂️🩹
Other than lots of “home” work, Laura just finished up her final days of working for the Kenai Peninsula School District. We took a boat load of awesome kids on a field trip across the Kachemak Bay over to Peterson Bay for an overnight with Alaska Coastal Studies.
This was Laura’s first (and most likely last) real outdoor experience across the bay; minus a trip we took to dip net over at China Poot Bay a few years back. I decided to throw up some pictures of the field trip for all of you. From hikes, to campfires, and a beautiful morning of tide pooling it was a wonderful trip; and a nice little send off to Alaska for us.
One night we were invited over for a goodbye get-together of board gaming and hanging out by our friends Mike & Heidi. It turned out to be a much larger surprise when even more people started to show up to hang out and send us off with a Good-Bye. One of them pointed out that the rear passenger drive tire on The Ohana was showing signs of wear and was concerned for us during our big trip. I had failed to notice it up till this point, so once it was pointed out to me I couldn’t help but investigate. Thanks Ralph for catch!
The next day I went and checked with Robert at Sunny Services and he confirmed I should get a new set. Laura and I were prepared; having discussed the likelihood of needing to buy tires the night before we definitely agreed now was the time. Especially since Robert was willing to be so awesome and do the swap before we left on our trip. I pulled the trigger on a new set of tires. They just arrived today and we are going to put them on the morning of our launch. 😯🤞
If worse comes to worst though- we will hustle all the way up to Anchorage the next day instead of doing an overnight in Hope; like we had hoped. 😆
On another awesome note I randomly received a screen shot from David Dooley via text. It looks like his Facebook reminded him of the fact that on this particular day, 7 years ago, the Ohana received her heart transplant! On May 16th, 2015 she was upgraded to the 5VZ-FE 3.4L engine she has today.
I love finding out history about our girl! This was quite the awesome surprise to get right before we are taking off.
As the time has gotten shorter we have been getting lots of love and shout outs from friends and family. We drove The Ohana up to Ninilchik and spent a wonderful night right on the ocean at Laura’s co-worker and friend Betsy’s home. This is where we were originally going to land for the first night of of our big trip- so we were excited to get to still spend the night here before we left Alaska.
We went from Homer with wind blowing sideways to a calm and gorgeous sunny day in Ninilchik. Which was unexpected due to the fact that it is usually blowing along the shores up there. At the end of a wonderful evening we drifted off to sleep, lulled gently by the calming sound of the sea.
The next morning we woke up, sipped our coffee, and decided we should finally try out setting up the umbrella we had picked up for the roof chairs. I cut a little padding for inside the clamp so it wouldn’t mar the top of the backrest on the boat chairs.
The last picture below is one we took with my Dad after an awesome dinner on The Homer Spit. Us leaving is a big change for everyone- but we are all definitely going to miss each other. 😥💗
So for now I leave all of you with a dollar Laura left pinned up on the ceiling (as per tradition) at The Salty Dawg. As I said before, we are 7 days and counting! After this my posts will getting a bit shorter than usual; with lots of pictures as we share our journey. Hopefully we will have more to report from the road miles we cover than the repairs I will have to do; but I anticipate plenty of both! 😀
It has been a long 5 years planning and work to make this happen- so here we go! As I like to tell others; “It’s never scarier than before you take the leap, but afterwards it has never felt better.” Be in touch soon everyone!
Geoff Murphy 5/24/2022