Our Last Alaskan Birthday Run- Good Gaming 🎲 With Great Friends

Alright! Glad to be back in the writing seat again after some much needed E&E. (Exploration and Enlightenment) This post is going to cover a chunk of September and the first of part of October.

Laura had been debating what appliances we might want to take on the road with us. There were 3 things she was interested in; an insta-pot, an air fryer, and maaaaaybe a microwave.

We had debated on buying a minature insta-pot- but Laura had been going back and forth about being able to use the large one like a skillet. After thinking about it, we already had an fully functional oven and stove top- so cooking on a skillet was easy on that. For not wasting power, we evaluated and decided on a microwave to speed up cooking from frozen, which would only use shorter bouts of power to do the job. So for the time being we decided to hold off on the insta-pot. We researched the most compact microwave we could find, but since my dad is an appliance dealer he opted to pick up the perfect model for my upcoming birthday- Thanks Dad!

As for the air-fryer, we came up with another interesting idea. An air-fryer is really just a miniature convection oven, which is simply an oven with a fan in it to circulate the air; cooking the food more evenly and quicker. So we decided to research ideas and stumbled across The NordicWare Oven Fan.

Years ago NordicWare had came up with this interesting little idea. It’s a hand crank, spring tension driven fan you put in your oven that moves the air around inside while baking- hence turning your oven into a convection oven.

The only challenge we ran into was availability and price. They were available online for very high prices due to the product not having been in production for a long time. After awhile I ended up finding a vendor that was selling one that was missing the hand crank for it. Due to that fact he was willing to sell me one at a dramatically reduced price!

I knew that most likely I could engineer or find something that would be able to replace the crank. In the end all it took was a 3/8″ drive adapter for a screwdriver, and then we could just pop it in our screwdriver we already carried with us on our travels!

An easy and compact fix that now allowed us to make our current oven cook even better!

What happened next ushered in our most sad time of year; we began to have a large temperature drop. Forecasts predicted freezing temperatures in the upcoming week, so we had to go ahead and winterize The Ohana, emptying all water and filling all the lines and water related devices with RV Antifreeze. Along with the process we also had to stage all container liquids and battery items that would not last the cold in the winter so we could take them out after our last planned big trip of the season; my birthday weekend which was only two weekends away.

With the new oven fan in though- we were itching for a reason to go out and test it. I know… we could always yard camp it and test it out, but it’s just not the same as driving somewhere else and testing things! So that weekend we made up the excuse to drive to Soldotna.

After all, we had not left town since we had moved the battery over to the other side of the hood or installed the new oil pressure gauge. All perfect reasons for a drive!

Well, this small test drive did not start off as planned. I had a menagerie of small hiccups that occurred halfway up the road to Soldotna!

1) First the driver’s side windshield wiper arm came loose from when we had taken them off to clean out the windshield drainage. 🤦‍♂️ I easily set it back and place and properly tightened down the fastening nut for it at the gas station in Anchor Point.

2) When driving North before you get into Ninilchik, there is a large steep incline. Remember how I had told you the throttle had stuck randomly. Well, before this I had it happen one more time, so I went and lubricated the throttle assembly and had not had a problem since. But… headed up the hill it stuck and then continued to throttle up. In danger of it high-revving the vehicle for too long I threw on the hazard lights and pulled over and shut it off. As traffic flew by, I popped the hood open and carefully got out of the vehicle and manually toggled the throttle. That’s how I had reset the problem before. After I hopped back in the cab…

3) The vehicle wouldn’t start! 😬 Bright lights were still illuminating the dash though. I sat for a moment gritting my teeth. We were in a bad spot, on a steep incline with traffic flying by… what were we going to do? Once we had an open spot in traffic I decided to try something; I put the vehicle in reverse and let it roll! Once we had gained momentum I popped the clutch and we started right up.

With that being done I drove us to a safe pull-over spot where we could turn around. The decision was to continue up to Soldotna and address things or turn tail home and fix them there. We voted for home and headed South. When we arrived home I started diagnosing the issues.

To begin with, once we shut the vehicle off it would not start again, but I was still getting bright dash lights. I started going through our battery connections and immediately found the issue. We had not full tightened down the ground to the chassis. I tightened everything snug this time and she fired right back up. First issue solved!

Second I decided to remove the air box assembly and clean the throttle body. Once I removed the assembly I immediately found my problem.

See above the filter and sensor where the previous owner had installed a piece of red hose to connect it to the air intake line? Well once I removed that air intake line I found another piece of that same red hose, about a quarter inch wide ring of it, stuck inside the throttle. The previous owner must have slipped it inside the intake line when he snugged the clamp down to hold it in place, maybe to make sure it cinched down with any gapping.

Well, that piece was now inside the line, and in certain circumstances was jamming into and forcing the throttle wide open and random. Otherwise, everything inside the the throttle body seemed pretty clean. I removed the red rubber piece and made sure everything moved alright. After confirming it did I reassembled the air intake system- and we haven’t had a problem since!

Within an hour I had everything back together, and now the decision was if we still wanted to run up to Soldotna. We voted yes! It was not necessarily the most exciting trip after that point, but we did cruise up with no hiccups, and that night we tested the Nordic-Ware Oven fan.

That night I randomly thought of the idea to try the fan directly on the hot wood-stove top of Kalcifer, thinking we could multi-task the fan to move the stove heat around the camper.

The result is that it got too hot on the extreme direct heat of the wood stove- so we used it in the oven to a happy success and left it at that. I researched and ordered a heat-sink stove pipe fan to try out for heating circulation.

Later the next day we headed back home. We had put things to the test and gotten to scratch the itch to get out of town for an evening. Plus there was one other thing we needed to accomplish back at home.

Laura had wanted to throw an outdoor bonfire celebration once our house was finished being painted. Well, as always projects took way longer than planned, but the previous week we had finally finished painting. With the house finished I had reminded Laura we needed to do her bonfire pronto- the weather was about to become way too cold for people to want to actually spend any amount of time outside.

So that’s what we were up to that weekend!

The following week we prepared around the house for winter, and the fan I ordered showed up as well! So before out trip up to Anchorage and The Valley for my birthday, I installed the new fan and cleaned out the woodstove to make sure we were toasty on our travels.

Speaking of keeping warm, our daughter Lia was thinking along the same lines! Right before we were about to leave she stopped by to give me my birthday present. Isn’t this awesome! She made me this beautiful, plush, and super warm blanket all by herself!

I’m so lucky to have such a sweet, thoughtful, and talented daughter in my life. ☺️

If you happen to read this, Thank You So Much Kiddo! I Love Ya!

Our first stop on our trip was Mickey’s Custom Sewing and Upholstery! A little while back we had left our awning room with Mickey to add a 3 foot wall extension all the way around. We met up with a friendly Mickey to pick up out awning room, and were surprised by an awesomely affordable price to go with the great service! The only bummer is we wouldn’t be pulling the tent out any time soon 😔. With the weather quickly going from fall to winter, everything was very consistently wet, so were going to have to wait to set the room up until the weather dried up a bit. Don’t worry though- we will show you all the details when we get the chance!

Our next stop was right nearby at Alaska Auto Wrecking, where since we had good luck and friendly service finding parts here I decided to donate our stock air box to them. Hopefully they would find it a good home after all the hard work and questing we had went through to get it. 😆😅

When we arrived in Soldotna, we decided to pick up a good ‘ol fashion pizza from “Da Hut!” We would be breaking our diet for my birthday weekend anyway, so this was a perfect beginning to an unhealthy weekend. 😜

While we were waiting on our pizza we decided to wander around next door at the Sportsman’s Warehouse. While we were there I ran into an old co-worker I hadn’t seen in years, and of course he was excited to finally get to check out The Ohana as well. So after another tour we enjoyed our pizza.

That night we went ahead and drove closer to Anchorage. We decided to use a pullover spot as soon as we entered Turnagain Arm to spend the night.

The next morning we were greeted by the rain; a typical Alaskan morning.

We ran a few errands in Anchorage and bounced up to Eagle River to be hosted by 2 super awesome people- Erin & Tadd Galusha. Erin made the most amazing dinner of Hawaiian pulled pork, macaroni salad with fresh rolls. We laughed the night away telling jokes and stories. I was supposed to have brought Godzilla: Tokyo Clash the board game with us but I totally forgot it at home somehow. 🤪🤦‍♂️

But I had remembered to bring something else… which happened to be my favorite game EVER… Sentinels of the Multiverse! (And I swear I didn’t forget Godzilla on purpose for an excuse! 😆😉) Of course Tadd was totally down for some super hero cooperative gaming action. And I think they really liked the game overall!

**The next morning we were once again spoiled by Erin’s amazing cooking with a breakfast of Frittata & Dutch Babies!**

The Galusha’s are a couple of awesome people- and if you happen to not know who Tadd is- I should tell you. Tadd Galusha is an amazing artist who has worked on and creates amazing comics! That’s why I had wanted to play the Godzilla game with him, because he used to draw for those comics! So- check out his site for sure; and maybe decided to buy something and support and awesome person!

https://www.taddgalusha.com/

We took off early afternoon to go hang out with another buddy of ours in Wasilla: Josh Krull! He and his awesome wife Kerston are always a happy couple to visit along our travels when we are up North. Not only that, but they are always super kind and generous hosts as well as great people. Last time we had been up here, Josh sent us home with his copy of Marvel Champions. We had offered to take it home, learn how to play it, and teach him when we came back up. Well, now it was time to get our game of Champions on!

**A Game Of Marvel Champions At The Krulls**

After another wonderful night playing board games with friends and sharing some awesome company, we were headed over to Palmer for our next evening of gaming. This time it was with Ray and Jennie Weber. Though they were pretty tired we were able to get another good game of Sentinels of the Multiverse in with them, as well as a game of The Shipwreck Arcana.

After they hit the hay, Laura and I retired out to our toasty Ohana. We had been collecting stickers for our bathroom wallpaper project, so we started applying the ones we had collected while listening to music and relaxing.

Speaking of Our Toasty Ohana- we had Kalcifer rip roaring every evening of this whole trip! So with that our new little stove pipe fan was humming along and circulating air wondrously!!! Plus it was really quiet as well! Here’s a video of it in action:

The next morning we enjoyed coffee and bartering games with our friends, and new with this Sunday morning it was the end to my birthday weekend; which also meant it was time to once more head South.

When we had been playing with stickers the night before, I had realized Tadd Galusha was selling some awesome stickers of his art. So I contacted him and saw if it was cool if I could buy some on our way back through Eagle River. Of course it was! So we got to spend some more time having another good chat with Tadd before heading back home. 😊

The ride home was smooth, with a few small stops in Anchorage and Soldotna to scoop up our last minute supplies. It was a slightly saddening ride knowing it was our last big planned one of the season, but it was a beautiful ride.

When we arrived home we made sure to add some of Tadd’s stickers into our collage.

**We Have So Many More To Go-**
**But I Think Our Collection Is Looking Pretty Sweet Already!**

I will try to do another update soon. With winter in full swing, and reminding us of how bad we want to never see it again, Ohana work is pretty much at a stop. Nonetheless- we are going to take her out for the fireworks on New Year’s Eve- so I’ll update after that.

We are wishing all of you out there a Happy Holiday Season!!!! May it be filled with peace and happiness wherever you are at. 💖💖

Geoff Murphy 12/22/2021