Oklahoma Sunset

As you can see by the date on the pictures, I took these quite a while ago.  I had them in my camera and I just downloaded them into my computer tonight.  Is this a sunset or what!!!!

We haven’t been doing much, just seeing the grandkids and such.  We did go to the Oklahoma State Fair in Oklahoma City with my brother Bill, his wife Pat and their two granddaughters.  They took their motor home and we took ours and spent two nights at the Rockwell RV Park.  We took Angel our granddaughter.

I am presently trying to change the electric steps on the motor home.  Just a simple job, right?  Wrong.  It should be, but it isn’t.  The steps are attached with 4 – 3/8” bolts so it should have been - unscrew the bolts, remove the steps, bolt the new steps on.  Job done.  Wrong.  Three of the four bolts wouldn’t come off since the nuts that are on the other side of the solid steel top plate and the support bracket just turned and therefore wouldn’t come loose.  I finally got a hacksaw blade in enough to cut two of the remaining three bolts and then was able to reach in and put a wrench on the last nut.  Now I have to figure out how I am going to put the new steps on without backup nuts.  Just another example of people making RV’s and not really caring how someone is able to repair them.  I’ll let you know how I solve this since I have to solve it.

Catching up

It’s been a while since I visited my blog.  It doesn’t seem like everyday doing is nearly as interesting as traveling and of course it isn’t.  We have been busy since we got back, at least busy for us.  When you’re retired you don’t have to get everything done in one day or even one week.

Probably the most interesting and enjoyable thing we have done is the annual “Friendship Campout” with our chapter and the other chapters in our region of the Good Sam Club.  The campout as usual was held at Shawnee, Oklahoma at the Pottawatomie Campground.  I don’t remember the exact number of RVs in attendance but I think it was about 40 which made it the largest Friendship Campout to date.

Again I don’t remember how many members of our chapter were there but I do remember we had the most.  Of course it could have been because the regional director, Mona Butts, is from our chapter.  Mona had announced she wouldn’t be in charge of the Friendship Campout next year but later said she had decided to stay for another year.  That was really good news since she does such a great job.  As with most things we do as a chapter, we had lots of good food.  Mona had a local Barbeque restaurant cater one meal and we had a pot luck dinner one evening.

Twila’s gone to Tulsa today with my brother Bill’s wife, Pat, and Twila’s daughter, Terri, so I’m home alone.  We have been busy getting the motor home ready for traveling again.  We had taken a lot of stuff out of the motor home when we went to Alaska.  Some to lighten the load and some because we wouldn’t need it.  For instance, we didn’t take our jeep so I removed the tow bar from the back of the motor home to shorten the length we had to pay for on the ferry.  I now have it re-installed in preparation for going to Texas for the Winter.  I had also taken two spare tires for the motor home with us to Alaska and was really happy we didn’t need them.  I had taken the tires without wheels but they were still really heavy.  I have now moved them back into storage.

Well my mind’s starting to wander so I guess I will quit for now.  We are planning on going to the fair at Oklahoma City this weekend with my brother Bill and Pat.  They also have a motor home and we will be staying at a campground Friday and Saturday nights.

Cost wrap up, Alaska trip

I didn’t keep a complete tab on all the costs of the trip to Alaska so I will list the items I did keep track of and generalize on the other items.  First and maybe the largest item was diesel.  I spent a little over $3900 on the round trip.  We went 9175 miles and I got something like 7.5 miles to the gallon which included all the running of the diesel generator during all the dry camping we did.  Camping cost varied but most of the time it was in the neighborhood of $30 a night.  Of course if you averaged the number of nights we used a campground with the number we dry camped it might be as low as $10 a night.  Food in Canada is very high compared to what we pay in the USA and if you eat out it is outlandish.  The price of food in the stores in Alaska is about 25% more than here but the cost of eating out is at least 50 to 75% more.  The cost of the motor home on the ferries was $2408.  My cost was less than Gary’s since I didn’t take my Jeep tow car.  Of course this is an optional way to go or return, driving would be cheaper even with the price of fuel.  Knowing what we know now I feel the trip could be cut from 3 1/2 months to 2 1/2 months.  We had several days that we had to stretch the time in order to get to Haines to get on the ferry the day we had scheduled back in February.  you do need some days for resting up, at least you do if you’re my age.  I did drag a little on the ferry with a 41 foot motor home but it didn’t tear anything up.  I didn’t even mention in the blog that I had a bird hit my windshield on the right side which caused a 4” crack.  Gary fixed it and if you don’t know it’s there you can’t see it.  Then after we got back in the USA I got a star chip on the left side which again Gary fixed.  You can’t beat having a windshield repair guy for a traveling companion.

Day 105, Cushing, Oklahoma

Well it’s over.  I thought the time to leave for Alaska would never get here and now it’s over.  This is the longest trip we have ever made.  We live in the motor home but we normally spend long periods of time in one place.  We go to Texas in the Winter, Colorado in the Summer, and here in the Cushing area in the Spring and Fall.  Of course we make trips to Treasure Lake at Branson and go to some of the campouts that our Good Sam Chapter has once a month but this was on the move most of the time from May the 22nd to September the 4th.

Ok, what did I think of Alaska and would I do it again?  I had a great time most of the time.  It was one of the wettest coldest summers in recent years.  Not my words but what we were told by Alaskans themselves but it was still great.  Would I do it again?  The trip to Alaska was on my “Bucket List” and guess what, it still is.  We are already planning on going back again in 2 years.  My younger brother Bill and his wife Pat want to go and we have no problem going again.  It would be great if it is warmer so we could sit out at night around a fire but if not it is still the Last Frontier.  We probably won’t go up the “Ice Road” to Prudhoe Bay again and we will probably cut the trip to 2 1/2 months instead of 3 1/2 months since we know how many days we will want to stay at the different spots along the way.  We really enjoyed dry camping on the side of the road when we could.  We saw other people doing this with one rig but I felt better having another RV with us.

I don’t know how often I will post a new blog now that we are back.  I may try to post every 2 or 3 days or if we do something or go somewhere more often.  I have been very awed by the number of people reading the blog and hope you have enjoyed it.  I also hope it might influence more people to make the trip to Alaska.  You wouldn’t regret it.

Day 104, Russell, Kansas

Really not anything to talk about today since it was just a traveling day.  The drive from Idaho Springs to Denver was just as expected.  There was a series of sharp turns just as I came to the first long hill so I had to go all the way down to 2nd and just grind it out to the top.  After that it wasn’t bad till I started downhill into Denver.  They had 5 miles of 6% grade.  I was able to use 4th gear and use my exhaust brake.  I still had to use my brakes every once in a while to keep my speed down.

What can I say about Denver Traffic?  Most people just stayed with the flow of the traffic but of course there had to be those few that were more important than everyone else.  They would weave in and out of all 3 lanes and if necessary pull in front of a 30,000 plus motor home as if I could stop on a dime.  The good news is we made it safely through to the east side on I-70 and from then on it was just set the cruise control at 68 and enjoy the scenery.  Wrong!!!!  There is no scenery on I-70 going across East Colorado and West Kansas but you can make good time.  It was 401 miles from our campground at Idaho Springs to the Triple J RV Park in Russell, Kansas.  We left at 9am and got here at 4:15pm and that was with a stop at Limon, Colorado at the Flying J for fuel and to eat lunch.  I had gone 639.72 miles since filling up at Cokeville, WY and I put in 79.960 gallons at $3.039 per gallon.  I got 8 mpg and it cost me $243.00.

Tomorrow we will be back at my son’s house in rural Cushing, OK.  I will try to do a wrap up of the trip, what we expected and what we found.

Well aren’t you glad I didn’t have anything to talk about?

Day 103, Idaho Springs, Colorado

This morning we drove up Mt Evans.  It is the highest paved road in North America.  It was 13 miles from our campground to the entrance to the road and then another 13 miles up the mountain.  Twila and I had gone up the mountain when we were here last year in June.  I thought you might find the difference in these two picture interesting.  The first picture was taken the 17th of June 2009 and the second picture today.

Both pictures are of Summit Lake which is about 5 miles from the top of the mountain.  The next two pictures are in the same order but you couldn’t tell by what Twila is wearing.  The first time we went up we had no idea what it would be like on the top so she didn’t even have a jacket.  As you can see in the picture taken today we had learned our lesson.

When we were there in 2009 there was snow everywhere so we didn’t see the Mountain Goats we saw today.  We drove all the way to Alaska and came back to Colorado to get the best pictures of Mountain Goats.

I also got a picture of an animal I had never seen in the wild.  I had seen stuffed ones in some of the National Forest Welcome Centers but never alive.  They are Pika.  This one was about 8 inches long and was really fast when it moved.

Day 102, Idaho Springs, Colorado

We drove from Loveland to Idaho Springs today.  We had planned on staying at a campground in Wheat Ridge, Colorado but we don’t normally reserve sites and when we got there they were full so we came on down to Idaho Springs.  We are in the Cottonwood RV Camp.  This is the same RV Park we spent a month in last summer.  Two Nights were $70 and some change.

The drive down was a long pull from the Denver area until we broke over the top and headed down again.  It will be reversed on the way out and I’m not looking forward to it.

After we got parked we loaded up and went to Central City, Colorado.  Central City is an old mining town that had seen better days until the town became mostly Casinos.  Gary and I played $2 minimum Black Jack and the girls played the slots.  That’s about all I want to say about that or had better say about it.  The good news is they had a casino that had a Prime Rib dinner for $2.99 each and it was good.