The Re-Write (Day 10) 🌅 One More Moment In Hope

So we awoke to the slamming of car doors 🚘 and the metallic rattling of shopping carts. 🛒

We went through our morning routine ☕ and decided we would start the day simply; with breakfast. Laura opted that her last birthday meal would be at Village Inn. We absolutely used to love eating at there- so it wasn’t hard to twist my arm into joining her for some awesome vittles that fine morning.

Since the car wash was right by the Village Inn, we gave The Ohana a much earned final bath before heading towards Homer.

Upon completion of our little scrub and bubbles chore- it was time to eat one last big ‘ol unhealthy meal before returning to our diet of greens and seafood.

It was soooo good. 🤤

I could do that once a year… 😂

By this point we had touched base with Nick & Whitney and made a plan to stop by after we finished running errands. Not only to see them, but I had to pick up a ladder to bring home with us.

That’s right, let me tell you that story real quick:

So remember the aluminum stair I found up at the landfill?

Yep – That One!

Well, I had played around with step tread ideas for it, and decided the a really nice design would be to use the aluminum steps from an actual aluminum step ladder. I had chased a bunch of loose ends locally down in the Homer area to no avail for a cheap ladder. After all, I didn’t want to spend a bunch of money on a nice one if I was just going to tear it apart, let alone waste a nice ladder in the process.

After a few weeks of searching one popped up on the Facebook Marketplace in Anchorage. I made arrangements to buy it when we headed up on our trip. So I met the gentleman when we first drove up to Anchorage and bought his ladder.

Ironically, as soon as we went to Nick and Whitney’s that night, we found out Nick had broken his aluminum step ladder that very day. So I gave him the fully functional ladder I had just purchased and he gave me the half broken one. Luckily, they let us keep the ladder there for the duration of our trip.

So not only did we want to see our friends before we left town, I needed to pick up my busted ladder so I could do the next project on The Ohana.

And that’s the story of the busted ladder, so now you know.

Laura and I headed to Costco and loaded up groceries for us, family, and friends. Then we swung by Target to be tempted by some board games. While we were there we met this lady that had something we had never seen before; a plastic bubble backpack for carrying around a dog. How cool is that?

So of course we had to take a picture.

Still holding strong- we managed to get through Target without finding a game we absolutely had to have.

When we were finished with our big town shopping moments we headed to Nick and Whitney’s to retrieve the ladder.

I went home with a bit more in the end than I expected, while we were there Nick gave me a drill press that needed a little bit of work.

I have super wanted a drill press, so Thank You So Much Nick for making me finally get one!

And we headed home with The Ohana loaded inside with a ton of groceries, half a busted ladder, and a drill press. Fueled and good to go all the way home- we set out.

But… we really didn’t want to have to go home.

We liked our little life traveling, and we did have one more day before we absolutely had to be back, so we decided we would stay somewhere along the way.

Laura had wanted to check out the area by the junction to Hope, so we voted we would take a look around there.

We weren’t sure how we would situate all of our cargo for the night- but we knew we would figure that out later.

So our trip that day was to take us another 71 miles – putting our trip at 1,566 straight road miles.

So when we arrived at the Hope Junction we were pleasantly surprised, a simple turn on to the Hope access road and another one right away and we pulled into a large parking area. Off to one side we saw a small road, so we slowly drove down this little path.

After a few twists and turns we were rewarded with the bottom of the bridge and Six Mile Creek right there.

After enjoying the river for a moment, we drove a bit closer towards the bridge.

As cool as I thought it would be to stay under the bridge, we decided to wander down the other way to distance ourselves from the road noise above. First we cam across a nice tight little pull-off spot.

After that it opened up into a nice open area in a grove of trees with a beautiful canopy above.

Down past the trees there appeared to be another spot by the river, but someone else’s back window was already posted up there for the night, so we voted on the first little river spot. I snuggled The Ohana in between the trees and we started stacking groceries to accommodate some living space for us in the camper that night.

Most our cargo fit right in the bathroom. I stashed the busted ladder under the trees for the evening, and the drill press happily fit in the diamond plate box on the back.

So we spent the evening soaking in the ever-changing patterns of the swirling current every time we looked at the water.

Once again we were enjoying the sweet sounds and calm breeze that comes along with moving current. It always makes a magical evening.

So we had managed to hold out one more night before we had to return to our regularly scheduled programming- er, I mean lives.

Here was Kalcifer’s 🔥 last evening road view from our trip.

Geoff Murphy 9/14/2020