The next leg of our journey would be up to Anchorage to meet with our friends Nick & Whitney again. This would add another 213 miles to our 2nd shakedown, totaling 229.3 miles.
So the next morning we arose, enjoyed some coffee and mellow ukulele time, and started packing up our camp site.
I spotted for RJ as she backed out of our parking spot, we all bid each other fond farewells and safe travels, and Laura and I were off to Anchorage for the second time in recent events.
I noticed Laura snapped the below picture, and it made me remember that this is the moment she fell in love with our “cigarette windows”. That’s what I grew up knowing them as, but a better term for them is wing windows. I missed having a rig with them, because I generally run very hot blooded. When the cab fan can’t cut it- you can always rely on these for plenty of air flow. Wing windows are the way to go!
Honestly, we had snapped and posted a lot of pictures of the road to Anchorage so we didn’t take many this time.
And since we had just recently been to Anchorage, we were also not itching to do anything in particular accept land there for the night and hang our with our friends.
So with that being said- the monumental thing we did in Anchorage on this day was…
…Go To 🚿 The Car Wash! 🚿 Yep, that’s right!
✋ Wai… Wai… Wait! ✋ Bear with me a second!
There is a valid point of why this was a monumental moment for us; this was the first time we had pressure washed and scrubbed down the Ohana since she had been upgraded to her Dolphin skin!
I’m sure there are other open bay, or tall bay, self service car washes hiding in Anchorage we could fit The Ohana into, but to this day this has been the only one we can find.
It works though- and we hands down love the smell of the soap they use!
Laura had thought we did not need to bring her in for a maiden cleaning quite yet, but was extremely happy we did as she watched the road dust and grit wash off of our, now waterproofed, moving home. 🧽
I’ve never been a consistent car cleaner myself, but there is something about cleaning off our Toyhomes that just makes us super happy! 😁
FYI: This is were we used to bring Serenity to give her a scrub down too. The first round of for sale 😟 pictures we took of Serenity were in the parking lot of this car wash…
…And coincidentally a reminder of our old ship. (I’m glad she has a new, happy home with Wendy Lou 😊🧡)
So with that Our Ohana received her first wash down.
Shiny and clean we went to hit the grocery store, because Laura wanted to grill some burgers for everyone that night.
When we arrived we finally got to meet Nick’s sister Carrie! (Who Is Awesome By The Way!)
We even shared some of “our” burgers (Beyond Burgers) with Nick & Whitney- and the review was they thought the beyond tasted super good!
In case you didn’t know, we tried going vegan on the New Year. We ended up like it so much we stuck with it; but eventually added seafood into our diet. I guess it’s called Seagan. It sounds a bit dorky, but we love it! So to simplify; our diet is no meats except for seafood, no dairy, no eggs, and we also still try to exercise regularly and limit our self to healthy amounts of complex carbs as well as constantly working on removing sugar from our diet. So in case it comes up, now you all know. 😉
Tomorrow we would have to make the final decision on our route- and would be in for the first real long haul of our second shakedown.
But as for that night, we filled it with fun conversations, great food, awesome friends, and the perfect set of tunes.
Sometimes with the right people; driveway camping can be a blast!
Geoff Murphy 8/19/2020