We Made It.

Well, we made it. Last Sunday we pulled in to Fort Bliss, TX before dinner time. I haven't updated, frankly because we don't  have much for exciting news. But, I can give you the low down. Our road trip from Alaska to Texas, all 5,092 miles of it, is completed. And I can safely say that we had no mishaps (except for the moose!) Not many people cant say that they completed this road trip without any set backs!

I apologize to any who see this as a rant, or complaining, but I will tell you how it is in our eyes.

This place is huge. We gave the housing market the benefit of the doubt, only to get down here and struggle to find anything that fits what we need. If we lower our "standards" we might as well just live on the border of Mexico. They say El Paso is safe, but to get to the safe side, rent goes up. So, the search continues. If we find a place and call on it, it seems that it has already been taken. We found one place so far that suits what we need, and it is almost to the point where we just get that place.

Luke JUST started inprocessing today. Inprocessing should have begun and finished within a week of getting here. A flaw in the system here. 400 soldiers are inprocessing with him, and an estimated 1000 will be here by the end of the month. The waitlist to housing units is a year wait. But anything off post is hard to come by still because of the overpopulation.

Army lodging decided to give us a check out date of 10 days AFTER our arrival, meaning we are to check out by tomorrow. Down here we are supposed to get 60 days of TLA (temporary lodging assistance). Due to unavailable space, they couldn't book us out any longer than that, leaving us stranded to find another hotel to stay in. Well, our search was difficult, nothing around the El Paso area had any availability to house us. Luckily, when I called the ASYMCA Lodging facility located just off base, they were able to accomodate us after we are "kicked" out of lodging here on base. What a nightmare.

We are still struggling to find a place, as not a lot comes available until beginning of February. So a hotel is what we will live out of. Now the weather, I can't complain. However, it is an adjustment. 70 degrees in January leads me to believe we WILL be melted completely away come this summer. 70 is HOT for us, especially when it is a dry heat, no shade. I forget, we are in the DESERT!

Anyways, it's microwave and crock pot meals for us until we have a home. It would be nice to get our belongings, the jogging stroller would be awesome for days where we can go for a jog.

I guess I need to stay on top of the updating.... maybe I will post a Zoey update here tonight...

Hope everyone is enjoying the new year so far.

<3 Love always.

On the journey south!

Well here we are. "On the road again...." We packed up the Uhaul last night and were headed out of good ol Maple Plain this morning around 10. It's nice to be able to start late... As our drive was only about 9 hours instead of 12 or 14. I have to say... The road from MN to DES Moines, IA does not impress me at all. We had no complications but it was so dull it was annoying. Aside from the high winds that made the drive loud, all was well. We saw more stupid drivers than ever! We didn't stop much we prepared in advance and packed things to make our own lunches and dinner. It makes the trip go faster too! We traveled through Minnesota, Iowa, Missouri, and made it to Junction City, Kansas in 9.5 hours! Tomorrow we will head south in to Oklahoma and then stop in Abilene Texas for our final night before driving to our new "home" in lodging on Fort Bliss. We will soon begin the seriousness of hunting for a place to live.... For now, I will lay my head on this awesome pillow, on this pillow top California king bed and sleep... That is... If Zoey allows us to!

Minnesota!

We made it! After a LONG drive yesterday, we are home. We left Billings around 7am and didn't get to Minnesota until around midnight. Another uneventful ride, we didn't stop unless we needed gas. The roads weren't as bad as we expected the NoDak 94 stretch to be. It was a little wet at times, but honestly, it was nothing.

It was cold, and windy at times, but such is life in the flat lands.

When we got home we went straight to bed, with the intentions of unloading in the AM. We did just that and set out to do our errands. Luke got the opportunity to drop in on his family and let them know he was home, and we even got to stop at Caribou Coffee... the most important place to stop while being here.

Zoey loves being at grandma and grandpas! It works out nicely that we can unload all her stuff and she can have a home for a few weeks. Ranger is adjusting nicely to being around Hunter. It makes her so happy to have another puppy to play with.

We have a busy holiday time ahead, but I will try to update as much as possible...

HELLO- Lower 48!

We made it! Long haul but I feel so accomplished that we made it this far. We are currently in Billings, MT, getting up early with the intentions to get home tomorrow LATE evening. Hopefully all goes as planned.


Today we didn't see much, we just kept going. A lot of highly populated deer areas, and by populated, I don't mean 4.. or 5, I mean 30+ all in one area.


The border was a little more drawn out than we planned, no inspection but he just looked at all our crap for longer than what they did when we got in to Canada. Obviously, the US has a little tighter hold on getting through and they look at everything and question it all.


Our trip was short today, made it in by 7pm and were able to have a decent meal and plan the rest of our "vacation" as we call it now.


Getting through a small village in Montana, we saw a new "crossing" sign. So not only do I have to do animal patrol/duty on bison, deer, moose and any other large game animal (including, yes, cows), but we saw a scooter crossing! A scooter crossing!


Luke also was paranoid about hitting a grouse... he thought it would "take out his headlight"...


Not much else, just thought I would update and let you all know that we are finally in the lower 48 and on our way to MN for a vacation/holiday and then Texas, look out, we're coming!

A New Day

After two days of crazy conditions, we decided to slow it down. We woke up a little later and waited for the sun to start showing its beautiful face before heading out. Our mission was Lethbridge, about an hour and a half from the border of Canada and the US, coming in to Montana.

The roads were flawless the entire way, we made it in 9 hours with a few long stops in between, we spent probably 7 hours driving total. From Lethbridge to Edmonton, things were sort of hilly, but prairie like. Looked like we were driving on the west side of North Dakota. From Edmonton's crazy city driving to Calgary, things were fast moving, until we hit rush hour traffic in Alberta's biggest city, where the olympics were once held.

As we passed through Calgary, our daylight was nearing the end, but decided to push on, so we could stay on our new schedule....

Today was an uneventful day, which ended in a relaxing early arrival to our hotel in Lethbridge. We were able to kick back, relax in the hot tub and watch Luke play in the pool. Zoey really started crawling today, and she is now sitting from the crawling position. She doesn't like Daddy going up the stairs and then coming down the waterslide. It makes her cry!

On to Billings tomorrow, finally getting in to the lower 48. I am sure Luke will be ecstatic as he hasn't technically been IN the lower 48 since we left them in 2008. (Airports don't count...)

See you in the morning lower 48! We will be home soon!

A Bit of a Change of Plans

Well, yes, a change of plans indeed. Read up to find out if you haven't found out already!

We left Fort Nelson early this morning, headed to our destination-- Edmonton. I got in the drivers seat for the first time on this trip, with the hopes that it could be a simple drive being that I haven't driven a vehicle with a trailer before, let alone in the mountains!

Fort Nelson started out easy, roads were fairly clear. We were making awesome time. The mountain pass that I endured was pretty easy, and when we got to the "summit," it was absolutly flat. We stopped at a rest stop called Sasquatch Crossing (with hopes we might see Sasquatch...), picked up lunch and continued on. This day was going to be a long one. Creeping further down in to British Colombia, the roads got a little more slick as the temperatures got colder.

It my stretch of driving all the way to Dawson Creek, we saw 3 rolled over cars in the ditch. One had recently happened, the fire department was letting us pass through a few cars at a time. A little gut wrenching, a reality check for sure.

Dawson Creek was our stopping point for our dinner break, went to Walmart, let the dog out and switched so Luke could endure the night driving in to Alberta... I suck at driving in the dark! On we went... From this point, the drive was pretty dull, other than the mountains, but definatly not like yesterday.

It got dark fast, and about 4 hours to our destination took another break before hightailing it to Edmonton. And then...

We hit a moose.

Mom took over as the last driver for the night – probably the last four hours, arriving into Edmonton around 1:00 am. Up until this point, the driving was strenuous – the roads were fair, a bit wet since the temps were getting into the 30’s, the roads and signs were getting hard to see and the semi drivers were absolutely crazy!!!. There were quite a few areas they called “Moose Row” where the moose roam freely, even on the highway! Alyssa was on “AP” duty (animal patrol). This is your job if you are riding shotgun… At about 10:00 pm, three hours out of Edmonton, we hit another Moose Row. Alyssa was on high alert again. We came over a hill only to find two moose right in the middle of the highway! I locked up the breaks as I noticed the first moose dead in the middle of the fast lane, and the other was moseying her way across the road. We, unfortunately, didn’t come to a stop quick enough and clipped the front right side of the truck at her rear, hitting her like we just slapped her in the butt a bit and kept walking away. Severely shaken, we pulled over to the side of the highway and looked up only to see the semi that hit and killed the first moose driving away in the distance, just leaving the moose in the middle of the road!!!! As we were pulled over, another pick up came speeding down in the fast lane nearly loosing control themselves! They were able to pull over to check on us, and as we were talking, a semi came cruising in the fast lane, hit the dead moose in the highway and came to a screeching halt – right in the highway! The moose was wedged under the semi and couldn’t move any further! What a scary event to end the day!

We decided we had had enough for the day - the speeding, crazy semi drivers, the hard driving conditions and all the animals were just too much. Off to find the first hotel we could find and call it a night – we would see Edmonton tomorrow.

From now on, we will not be night driving, thus pushing out ETA further back in the week. Better safe than sorry.

The Zoo Came Too!

Today was a long day, we figured since everything was so fast going, we would go a little longer and make some progress, hoping to get home a little sooner. We drove from Whitehorse, YT all the way to Fort ?Nelson.

From Whitehorse to Watson Lake we didn't have much for events, just endless amounts of hills, mountains and snowy roads. There were a lot of elk and caribou, conveniently located just beyond their signs, so thankfully we got a chance to see them! When we got to Watson Lake, we stopped at the sign forest where people have left signs from where they are from, tonz of MN signs! We then stopped at the little grocery store in town and got lunch and dinner for the long drive ahead.

On our trip from Watson Lake to Fort Nelson, we saw so many animals!

• Black Wolf
• Bison, bison on the road, bison sleeping on the road. There was an oncoming semi at one point and left a cloud of snow dust, as we were coming out of that dust, there were bison LAYING on the road.
• Elk, Caribou, Moose, Snow shoe rabbits, weird white pigeons.

After the zoo of animals, the long and white knuckled 7 hour pass through the mountains began, just as it was getting dark. The pass was winding and narrow, snow covered roads, steep up hills, steep downhills, way too many fast semi trucks - all in a hurry to get somewhere and made the driving a bit hairy, creating white snow dust clouds yet again...

At the end of the night as we were coming around the last passes, I spotted the northern lights in the clear, cold sky. It made a perfect ending to the trialing day we had. It was almost a reward for what we had just accomplished.

After all that, we pulled in to our hotel in Fort Nelson around 11pm, ready to sleep the night away. And to wake up and drive to Edmonton in the morning...