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...

Driving with Caribou

Left Tok at 10am this morning. It was a brisk -5 degrees.

The entire way to the Canadian border, we followed caribou! I think we saw 9 if not more... just after crossing the border and going through customs, we were greeted by a wolf!

Yes, we made it through the border if any of you were concerned, hah! They basically looked at our orders, looked at our passports and sent us on our way. I would like to think that they saw our trailer and said, uh screw that! That would have been a total nightmare if they decided to go through the trailer.

Note to people traveling through Canada in the winter: TELL YOUR BANK YOU ARE GOING TO CANADA. Our cards were declined at our first stop in Destruction Bay, and I spent 45 minutes telling them they needed to unblock our cards because we were traveling through to the lower 48. Yah, that was a nightmare.

The roads from the border to after Destruction Bay were crazy roller coaster bumps, the roads weren't  icy or snowed in, it was just bumpy. Luke said, "well thank god the trailer is on tightly!"... As if it wouldn't have been?!

I learned today that the view from the back seat... well.. it SUCKS. The window frosts over, so you can't see anything!

As for a Zoey update. I swear in the last 3 days she has grown up so much. She is crawling with her hands and knees, pulling up and pushing herself to sitting. She is also saying things like Bahbahbahbah and mouthing noises too! We had our first boo-boo last night, she pulled down a plant and hit her head she has a nice bruise on her forehead!

I think that is it for now, time to relax... onward to Muncho Lake tomorrow morning!

On Our Way

Well, as it sounded too good to be true to be leaving Thursday after Luke got off work, I was right. The Army had other plans for us! We ended up having to get a room on the air force base for the night. Planning to leave first thing in the morning today. SO....

I wasn't feeling too hot, so we drove in to 3rd medical, just in case, to see if there was any medication they could give me in case I got more sick. From there we drove to 1/40 for Luke to sign out and be ready to hit the road. On our way back to temporary lodging, our windshield CRACKED. And I don't mean a little crack, this thing was from one side of the window to the other. It HAD to be replaced before we started our trek across the continent. *Sigh* Called Safelite right away and they got us in first thing in the morning, pushing our departure later into the day. Finally after having delay after delay, we were on the road by noon. PHEW.

We weighed our trailer (full) in Eagle River, and continued on. People cringed when we said we were driving in the dead of winter. Honestly, people, we didn't drive slower than 45mph. The drive was long, but beautiful. Until we hit darkness at 4pm. Things we saw on our voyage to Tok, Alaska:

• Switchback mountain pass, one side was a mountain, other side was a cliff that stared straight down into freezing cold water.
• Beautiful mountains, teal blue water.
• Stopped at a gas station in Eureka (a total Men In Trees experience) where they had dinosaur bones and a huge femer bone of a mammal that once roamed these parts of Alaska.
• I plopped a squat at a pull off on the main drag, there was no rest stop for miles! Frozen tundra, roughly 5 degrees, bare butt. Kind of cold. Mom had to re-teach me how to pee outside. Go-Girl would be totally handy!
• Two caribou crossing the road... FIRST wildlife sighting!
• A never ending road to a T, one way to Fairbanks, one way to the Canadian border.

So far, our trip has been good, our first day of driving was sucessful, and everyone ended up in the B&B safe and happy.

We are staying in this quaint little Bed and Breakfast, called A Mooseberry Inn just north of the city limits. In the morning, after breakfast, onward to the border and then our next stop... Whitehorse!

Cleared housing!

Well, we've cleared housing. We were up bright and early this morning loading up the trailer and getting the house in order. Pulled out of our "old" house and we are now floating around base to final out of everything else. Bear with me while I post sometimes as I am using my phone! In a few hours from this post, we will be on our way northeast to Tok.

A message to all our friends still in Alaska, we love you all and will miss you greatly. You have no idea how much an impact you have made in our lives as we entered into this new lifestyle two years ago. Hopefully our lives will cross again. Until then, we love you and thank you for being so great to us!

To those of you waiting for us in Minnesota, we are on our way!!!

The First Post

Well, here we sit, an empty house. Boxes scattered here and there, little things left to be picked up and put into the random boxes left. The trailer is almost full and the house smells of lysol, bleach and paint. My hands are cracked and wrinkly, and you could eat off any surface in the house it is just that clean. Our to-do list for tomorrow is just insane. We clear housing first thing, and from there we are "homeless". Technically we are "homeless" until we get to Fort Bliss, Texas. Our house echoes, it looks sterile. Amazing how two weeks ago, we were celebrating Thanksgiving with friends, full house of furniture and painted walls....

We start our trip tomorrow, headed to Tok, Alaska to stay in this cute little bed and breakfast. Nice way to start off a trip.

Keep on this blog, I will update every stop we get with Wi-Fi. Follow us on our journey through Alaska, Canada and the lower 48 all the way to El Paso, Texas!

<3 Alyssa, Luke and Zoey