Well, there we were.
After spending the morning running around checking auto shops and finally scheduling with Midas we were official in pause mode. The rules to this waiting game were simple: We couldn’t drive far and we didn’t want to wear out our welcome anywhere. So we wanted to avoid spending the night in one place for more than one night.
We started by heading over to Walmart, knowing that most Walmart locations were RV friendly. There we found a nice back corner of the parking lot and decided to settle in. It wasn’t much longer though that we noticed a large building right next door with a bold sign on the side that read: Extreme Fun Center.
Laura and I walked over to check it out, and found it was open. There were also no signs in the parking lot saying no overnight parking.
There is an Extreme Fun Center in Kenai. In fact, we stopped by it and got a pass card when we went through Kenai at the beginning of our journey. It was okay… an arcade similar to a Dave & Busters but with less stuff. Nonetheless, we had time to burn so we figured we would see what this one was like.
Man, were we shocked when we walked in.
This center was huge! Just at the entrance we could see a big indoor go-kart race track, a climbing wall, and games galore. We stood out away from the front counter for awhile, debating if we wanted to spend the money. Normally we might go out and spend $20 at a place like this, but we were going to spend the whole day here.
We ran the numbers and found that the Extreme Pass was the way to go, allowing you one round of all the larger attractions. For the two of us it was $90, which was way more than we would normally ever spend. But when you looked at the fact that the go-kart track was $20 each time per person alone, the Extreme Pass made sense.
So after we made our purchase we headed back to The Ohana, and officially brought her over to the Fun Center parking lot for the night.
Then we were headed inside for the day.
We started off easy, and since we still had credit for the arcade games on our card from the Kenai fun center we decided to try out this big shooting range. This normally wouldn’t be my thing, but it was pretty cool.
It was set up all with animatronics, with each item having its own little target on it. When you used your gun to shoot the target with a laser, each display would react. So cans would fly in the air, air horns would go off, lights would flash, animatronic animals and cars would react by moving. It was cheesy, but it was awesome. It reminded me of all of the animatronics from the Disney World of old. In fact, I think it was directly themed as a cross between Disney’s Cars and Country Bear Jamboree…
Next we did a round of glow in the dark mini bowling.
Laura smoked me on this one! I couldn’t stop wanting to treat the smaller balls like a bowling ball. That mixed with my need to powerhouse every one of my shots, I was all over the place. Meanwhile, Laura finessed her shots like a pro.
After, we attempted the climbing wall. We have never actually gotten to go up a climbing wall before, over 6 ft anyway.
On most of the walls we had seen, there was usually a person on the ground belaying the climbers. (Being on the other end of the rope to help balance and slowly guide them down.)
This wall used a mechanical braking system, so no other person was holding you up. When we both made it to the top and hit the button, we continued to shakily hold on until Laura called out, “How do we get down?”
The attendant below said, “You Let Go!”
Laura and I looked at each other in a moment of panic. I could tell she was not going to move. I didn’t want to move…
Though I am also deathly afraid of heights I steeled myself up, inhaled quickly, thought “Here We Go!”, and pushed off!
Or at least I tried, the moment my body went to move away from the wall my muscles tightened up and glued me in place. I laughed for a moment, took a few more deep breathes, and then tried again.
This time the tumbling feeling of vertigo filled my stomach as I pushed away and allowed the harness to completely take my weight. I briskly floated to the ground to be greeted by the common practice of gravity; solid ground under my feet accompanying the beating of my heart.
With that, Laura was able to make the jump and went for it. She came down and happily exited the constraints of her harness.
We had finally done a climbing wall!
Since we wanted to pace ourselves on the big attractions, and the place was pretty much empty, we decided it was the perfect situation to harness our inner child. We plotted a route through this multi-path play center…
… and raced it like an obstacle course! After all, it didn’t have any size restrictions listed. 🤷
Whew! I haven’t done something like that in awhile, pretty much since I was a kid! Last time I even tried to climb through a play center is when our kids where little.
The next big attraction we did was called Dark Ride. It is a row of seats that you belt into. You wear 3D glasses and they close a big curtain around the whole thing to make it absolutely dark.
Then in front of you there is a large curved wall that is a screen. You have a little laser pistol and you go through the ride like a roller coaster / rail shooter. There are a row of big fans in front of you, and the seats shake around, lift, and tilt to give you the full feeling of the ride.
Because we are suckers for science fiction, they had a ride that was in space on a giant space craft during an alien invasion.
It was a trip!
Next we broke down and hit the go-karts; we couldn’t wait any more. They had a really big track for being inside. 😲
Once we were helmeted up and strapped in they released us onto the course. I couldn’t believe how fast these go-karts could go! I was flying along, passing these groups of girls that kept crashing into each other and causing the course to be slowed down while the attendants had to fix their situation.
It really was like a group of goofy non-player characters from Mario Kart. 😆 I think Laura had a lot less fun dealing with them though, because with the way they drove she was stuck behind them all of the time…
Meanwhile, I battled this really good driver on the course the whole time. He had managed to slip by me during the first “NPC pile-up” because I had let off the gas not knowing how it worked, and I was never able to pass him after that. He cut me off the rest of the time like a champ.
Tons of high-speed curbs, tactic, and adrenaline made for this race course being an amazing experience!
Alright- slow it down! We needed to spend the whole day here and we were using up our big attraction tickets quickly.
So it was time to play some arcades!
On our rounds around the arcades we played a ton of different games!
We finally looped back around to the animatronic shooting range and but our credits in to play again, but the whole thing started glitching out and stopped working while we stood there.
So we decided to play the one pinball machine in the arcade, and that didn’t work either… 😔 (Seriously only one pinball machine in the whole place! The times are a changin… 😢)
Feeling enough of a consecutive credit loss, we decided to tell the nearest attendant about the machines having problems. He hooked us up with a real treat to compensate us: A second go on the Dark Ride!
This time we tried out their newest ride: Carnival. It went through a dark circus full of creepy clowns! It definitely had the best graphics so far and was a twisted blast of a ride!
Afterwards we were back to the arcades, where Laura thought I should take a shot at the Thunder Hammer.
Nailed it with the high-score! (For Now…)
There was this large Plinko machine that kept calling out to me. Maybe because when were at the Kenai Fun Center it was there too, but it was broken. So here I really wanted to try it. With dumb luck I chose a slot, and scored a multi-ball on my first try! After that I scored two 500 point drops and one 10! So unexpectedly, the machine gave us 1,010 prize tickets. 😲
Well, almost… it maxed out at 1,000. Still, before this we had been excited if won 25 prize tickets off of a game! I had found our money maker!
We continued on to play bumper cars. We waited until there was the perfect group- a batch of 10 year olds! I remember this little boy seeing me and saying “Uh Oh!” with big wide eyes. 😳 I just laughed, smiling behind my mask, and said “Don’t worry, our bumper cars will bump just the same!”
It was awesome- with these ruthless, shouting, and laughing 10 year olds having a blast ramming each other and spinning around!
The last big attraction we had was Laser Tag! I had always wanted to play “real” laser tag ever since I was a kid! So we saved the best for last.
We walked up and signed in. The family also waiting gave us a look like they weren’t too happy we were crashing the laser tag session. But none the less we were all ushered into the waiting room to watch the rules video. Afterwards we were issued our harnesses / guns. They had put Laura and I on a team of two, against the family of 4. 🥺 Well, we would see how this would go.
When the match started, I sped off to try and succeed in our against odds situation. Laura still to this day likes to give me a hard time here. She describes it as when the time went off she turned around to ask what we should do: and I was gone! 🤣
Hey, I didn’t know what to do either! I just knew we didn’t have time to stand around and talk about it after the match had started! We were being hunted!
It was amazing! It was a two story, glow in the dark, pumping music, dodging around obstacles, constantly moving, laser blasting experience!!! Seriously, everything I had hoped and dreamed for since childhood!
When we left the arena, the family was smiling, laughing, and panting! They thanked us a ton for a really fun game and we parted ways grinning ear to ear. What a cool sport- and I loved how it brought a stand-off group of people together by the end of it, creating instant comaradarie! Laser Tag Rocks!
Afterwards, Laura had to firmly put me in my place and deeply buried my high score in Pac-Man! She was pretty excited about it…
… And I was too! She earned it fair and square! 😜 With the place being close to closing, we headed out to The Ohana for a pleasant night in an empty parking lot away from any high traffic.
With a day starting a little stressed and filled with play, we had done a great job getting through our second night stranded in Wasilla!
The next day we decided to cruise “the strip” and check out second hand stores. The ones we chose were not far apart and easy enough to limp our way along to. We checked some great second had wares, but found many of the stores listed online had perished due to the shut-down.
On our search for the last closed vendor of second hand treasures, we found ourselves right by Lowes again. So with a project still needing done we went and purchased a few needed little items to properly finish mounting in our propane tank.
We began by marking where the hanger bolt was going to need to go.
We pulled the tank and tapped a hole with the screw tip of the hanger bolt and the flat side of a hatchet.
Then threading two nuts against each other, like the propane specialist at Cache Camper had recommended, this allowed the nuts to act as a stop so we could thread the hanger bolt down.
After we removed the nuts…
…and mounted the tank down into place.
I had forgotten to tell you before, but when we were at Cache Camper I had to un-mount the clamp strap for the tank and re-postion it to the other side of the storage box. This was because with the way the valve on the new tank faced it didn’t leave enough room to fit a regulator in, so we had to reverse the original positioning. But we got it!
Once the tank was mounted solidly in place, we needed to deal with making sure the regulator was mounted correctly. We were going to utilize the drain hole already built into the box…
… and figure out how to strap the regulator with its vent facing down over the drain hole.
A screw and small bungee cord later, we had our regulator securely in place!
Our propane setup was finally good to go. We learned quite the lessons of what not to do to finally get to this point.
Now we were back to trying to figure out what to do with our time. We had utilized any “play” money we might have had at the fun center, so we were now going for cheap and free activities.
Well, we decided maybe we could go play at the disc golf course again, and if we were lucky we could camp there for the night.
We went out and played the course, and found along the way a nice big trail back to the ball fields at the halfway point. We decided next time we came to play we would start there, and headed over big space of the two ball fields we had to cross to get back to The Ohana.
Laura really wanted to work on the power and control of her disc throw, so we took advantage of the two ball fields to play throw and pick-up all the way across.
After we reached our little home, we decided to take a nap and then decide if we could camp for the night.
Upon awakening we drove to the other side of the fields, where we found that this whole area was only day use. Bummed we couldn’t stay in this perfect spot, we decided to head back into town to try elsewhere.
That night we settled on Home Depot. The parking lot was a really nice and calm place to stay for the night, and we went for a nice long evening stroll.
The next morning, however, was a different story. Work began bright and early in the construction world, so it began somewhat bright and early for us. With forklifts beeping, doors slamming, carts jangling all around us we decided it was time to get along with our day.
Because of our previous lack of ability to get more than a gallon at a time of H2O, we were pretty much out of water. We went in to use the restrooms at Home Depot and purchased a small case of water bottles for drinking. Then we were off to see if we could get the city water shack pumps to work correctly. This time I had a theory for success…
I would not put the hose in the fill cup this time, I would hold it above the fill.
After about a gallon, it stopped. 😠
Oh no! There ended up being a brief kink in the hose. So we decided to try again.
After about a gallon, it stopped. 😡
We needed water. We decided to try again. Now we were $15 in on water cost this day…
After about a gallon, it stopped. 🤬
That’s when I opened up the hose box cover and called the City Of Wasilla. I explained to them that I was $20 in between today and the other day when I tried to fill, and no matter what I did it would not fill.
They were really kind about the situation, found our card transactions, and told us to just do it as many times as we needed to get it filled. Then if we could go to the public works office they would refund all but one fill cost.
So that’s exactly what we did. And finally, we were able to fill our water tank in Wasilla. 😓🥳
So after we had gotten our water money back, we needed to dump our tank. We were determined not to go back to the Chevron. I saw a dump station listed at a Holiday nearby on 225 N Boundary St.
As we pulled in I immediately recognized this as the Holiday we had gotten rid of The Ohana’s original propane tank! 🤦 With high hope we pulled up to the dump station. And were greeted by this… (If you have a weak stomach, don’t look; It’s a bit gross)
Lame! Laura immediately talked me out of this being a salvageable situation and that we should move on elsewhere. While we were standing there the gas station attendant walked right by us, made eye contact, and then completely ignored us and walked off.
So… add the Holiday at 225 N Boundary St. in Wasilla on your list of places not to go and try to dump. 😒
Eventually we did find “the spot”. It is a laundry mat called Wasilla Wash Day at 745 Westpoint Dr. It had what we needed and will be our go to spot in the future. There dump spot is in the back of the business on the next road. If you have a large RV you might want to walk the location and make sure it will work for you.
But Laura and I were ecstatic! We took each took a quick road shower, dumped our tanks, and now had water! Sweet success!
When we had scheduled our appointment for Tuesday at Midas, we had gotten permission to spend the Monday night before in their parking lot. So that night we picked our landing zone right by the lake.
The parking lot adjoined the parking lot for Pizza Hut, so we decided to give it a try. After some research we found out their garlic butter was vegan, so we custom ordered a veggie pizza, no cheese, add pineapple, and garlic butter crust. The app said to pick it up in 15 minutes or so, so we went for a walk by the lake.
On our way back we scooped our pizza and it was awesome! I had thought Pizza Hut was not that good in the past, but this changed my mind!
Also on our way around town that day, we decided to pick up that board game from Target I had so strongly resisted: Godzilla: Tokyo Clash.
So after dinner that night we set it up and tried some Kaiju (Giant Monster) battling!
The game turned out to actually be a really fun game, with monsters battling to accumulate points by stealing each other’s cards and blowing up buildings, trains, tanks, etc.
It was not only a fun game, but really well done thematically. We definitely felt like a couple of giant monsters wrestling around in an urban city!
As we played the rain began, so we officially settled in and hung out in our wonderful little home for the night.
The next morning we were up bright and early. Backpack loaded for a possible full day of on foot, coffee in hand, and a morning goal in mind we gave the Ohana’s keys over to Midas.
The mechanic that was going to be working on our rig was named Kenneth, and the sales team at Midas had told us repeatedly that he was the man! They had pretty much built the whole shop around him, and he knew his stuff like no one else there. He was literally the only employee that could do this job.
So Kenneth drove around our rig, and we agreed that he was going to just deal with the rear end issue for now. Then we watched our baby go into the shop.
Our whole stranded in Wasilla situation had put Laura in a pickle… she was missing work. So after coordinating with her management, she was going to attend as much zoom conferencing as possible. For that we needed a good solid wifi connection and place she could attend the extensive meetings. We decided to walk over to the other side of the lake and use the wifi at Fred Meyer.
The weather today was a nice heavy down pour of rain, so we arrived at Fred Meyers a little wet, but thankful for a warm and dry inside place to be.
Not being able to sit down in the furniture section due to Covid, we opted for a nice end table display on top of a short shelf we could set up her equipment to zoom meeting.
During the first few hour meeting, I received a call from Midas asking if I could look at the work they were going to do, but I explained we couldn’t go that way for awhile. Then they gave me the official estimate. It was steep, but for the work that needed done I completely understood. It turned out both rear bearing were going to need replaced, and the brakes would need re-finished due to the fluid slinging everywhere and getting all over them.
After Laura was finished we decided to head that way.
When we arrived there Kenneth was hard at work, and had things all opened up. Over the years, Kenneth had custom built all of the proper tools to do just this kind of job. He was definitely the right guy for this.
While there I asked him, “How long has this been going on?”
“Years!” he replied.
From the research I had done, it made sense.
This job was due on a standard 4runner of this generation around the mileage our Ohana was at.
With the extra weight I could only imagine our was really ready!
So after a solid tour of the operation we were headed back out of foot while Kenneth did the job.
It’s Old Oil Your Seeing. 😉
We spent the rest of the day walking downtown Wasilla.
Reading books at the library, checking out the historic museum area, finding another second hand store, and discovering a hobby shop. After awhile we were feeling all walked out, and it was almost 5 o’clock. We chose to wander back to Midas.
When we arrived they were just finishing the job! I talked details with the salesman up front about some future work we had wanted to do. If everything went right, Laura and I would try to schedule with Midas the next time we came up here in October for my birthday. We were hoping to get the exhaust replaced, the parking brake fixed, and the speedometer operating properly again.
Outside we talked with Kenneth for a bit, and he pointed out that when I got home I should fix the sway bar frame mount bushing. I thanked him over an over again and promised I would.
Then we parted ways and Laura and I finally got to escape Wasilla!
Running days late on our original itinerary we sadly had to drive by Thunderbird Falls. ☹️ It would have to wait for another time.
I left a message with Nick in case they wanted to meet up, but we voted to not wait on it. The plan was to land at Cabelas in Anchorage for the night and then hit the road to Homer in the morning.
During that whole Tuesday of walking around in the rain I had worn my toe shoes. So needless to say, with the amount of down pour all day my feet had spent the day soaked. So a good 10 hours later I finally got to take them off. My feet where crazily pruned up from being soaked for so long.
Don’t worry and don’t let the Frankenstein feet fool you, it didn’t take long before they were back to normal.
So that night we happily snuggled down and got ready to hit the road in the morning.
We were south bound out of Anchorage first thing the next day!
We needed to get Laura back to work!
It went from clouds to sunshine as we made our way down the Kenai Peninsula.
As we came out of the mountains Laura wanted to attempt to get more pictures of the Fireweed in the wildfire burn area from last year.
South of Soldotna the Fireweed continued to bloom brilliantly.
Finally we had reached Homer!
We took a moment and pulled over at the top of Baycrest Hill to catch a few photos on this most beautiful day.
Now that the school season had returned, it was time for us to start getting used to the more “settled life” in town. There would be projects, but we wouldn’t have any more big journeys planned until October.
Overall, it was a beautiful Summer of traveling for us. We worked out a lot of the kinks with The Ohana, had Many Amazingly Magical Moments, and were Strongly Re-Affirmed that we were Working Towards the Life We Wanted!
Life Was Good!
Geoff Murphy 10/16/2020