Alaska Trip - 1995

Gerry and I had planned on buying a motorhome and looked for the perfect one for almost 2 years.  We finally figured out the the perfect MH wasn't in our budget, but we did find one that we both liked.  It was a 30ft 1995 Fleetwood Flair with no slideouts and it seemed huge to us.  We picked it  up at a local dealer (who went out of business a year later) and took it home to see if it fit in our driveway.  It did, but was a little tricky parking it.

We took it out for a test run at a local state park and checked everything we could.  It all worked and we were very please with that.  Then we drove home, packed it up and went on a 90 day trip from Maryland to Alaska and back, driving a total of 15,016 miles.  
Why am I writing this you may wonder.  Well, I was reading a blog today and the bloggers were in Fairbanks, AK and looking for the North Pole visitors center.  Here it is in 1995.

 
They found out that the visitors center had moved across the street to the campground that used to be there.  We camped there for a few days while we visited all the sights in the area.  The blogger said the visitors center was in the office of the old campground and the campground was closed for good.  What a shame, since it was a great spot to stay while in the area.

Gerry was on the phone with one of the kids at the campground office in 1995.  I was using Compuserve as my internet provider in those days and we connected to the local Compuserve phone number to check our email  Compuserve is also out of business.  Can I pick winners?

Check out the following blog about their Alaska trip.  Ray & Cindys RV Travels

It was a very muddy trip along the ALCAN Highway and the stuff they put on the road to keep the dust down really cakes up and clings to everything when it got wet.  We had mud about 6-8 thick on the undercarriage and must have added a couple hundred pounds to the unit.  

There are a number of blogs about traveling to Alaska and it's sort of a pilgrimage for RVers to make the trip at least once in their lifetime.  We thoroughly enjoyed the trip, but if you don't like to drive a lot, then I wouldn't advise starting on the adventure.  

We had a quiet, but rainy day around here.  It was time for Grant to spend the night with us.  We drove to Larry Jr. & Jane's to pick him up, but before leaving we had some great homemade pizza prepared by Larry Jr. Then we brought Grant back to the MH with us.  He is zonked out on the couch and we are finally getting ready for bed.

That was our day then and now.  How was yours?

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.