Alaska Trip 1995

Gerry and I knew we wanted to buy a RV in 1994 and started looking for the perfect RV.  It soon became apparent that the "perfect RV" was out of our price range.  While we had been tent trailer campers for 20 years, we weren't sure about the motorhome, 5th wheel, trailer style of camping.  We finally decided on a motorhome and it came down to a Winnebago Adventurer or a Fleetwood Flair.  The Flair won out for various reasons, even though they weren't all sound reasons.

We bought the Flair in 1995 and decided that a trip to Alaska would be a good way to start.  We took the Flair to a MD state park campground about 45 miles away to see if we could work everything and get everything to work.  It was a perfect weekend to try it out since it was cold at night ( furnace ) and hot during the day. ( A/C ).  We only had electric so we got to test the water pump, freshwater tanks, black/grey tanks and even the dump station.  Everything worked so we were good to go.  

Up until that time my experience driving a motorhome consisted of test driving a unit about 5 miles on a country road where I almost took the side of the unit out.  It was funny to see the salesman sitting there with bug eyes.  He failed to see the humor of the situation.

We then set forth on a 15,000 miles journey that took 90 days.  We packed the unit with food in case we couldn't buy any ( big mistake ) and left the house around 1pm heading for Illinois.  After a drive of 450 miles we pulled into a campground at 1030pm and got a site.  Grandpa's Farm in Indiana was the stopping point and grandpa himself directed me into back in site 27.  Gerry was on the other side of the MH directing me into site 25.  Of course this is all in pitch black darkness.  That was where I learned to only pay attention to Gerry when backing  in or getting directions.  We stopped in the same campground 3 years ago and the son was running the campground.

I won't go into the travel dialogue but want to tell you about another learning experience.  We stopped in Laird Hotsprings in Canada and I was wondering how hot the springs were so I took my thermometer that was glue to a metal back with me into the springs.  It worked very well and when I picked up the thermometer I noticed the glass part with the mercury in it wasn't attached anymore.  A frantic search of 15 minutes ensued and we found the glass part.  HINT.  Don't take old fashioned thermometers into a hot spring.

There was a very large moose near the boardwalk into the springs and we got a couple pictures of it.  We began to notice that we would only see one animal at a time and we joked that they were the "resident" animals put there by the tourist office.  Well, this resident met up with a grizzly bear about 2 days after we left and they were looking for another resident and what to do with a well fed grizzly.