Great Alaskan Road Trip: Week 11 Roundup

The beergarden at Denali Brewing Company in Talkeetna, Alaska

Each Friday, I post some relevant (and not-so-relevant) stats about the trip, as well as a little write-up of what it’s like to live out of a van for weeks on end. Here’s where we are overall:

• Total miles driven: 7192
• Total miles by ferry: 489
• Total days on the road: 74
• Total nights in a hotel: 4
• Total miles hiked: 90.79

Right: Denali the day after our flight – not a single cloud around the summit!  It figures!

Here are some interesting stats for this week:

• Fuel stops: 2 (diesel: $4.06 in Hilltop, AK, $3.97 in Fairbanks)
• Technical issues: 0
• National Park Service sites visited: 1 – Denali National Park (via aircraft)
• Bears sighted: no bears this week!
• Moose sighted: 1 (with antlers!)
• Wolves sighted: 1 (crossing the Dalton Highway, near the Arctic Circle)

While we were in Talkeetna we did a mini pub crawl, visiting just 3 of the 13 bars in town.  At the West Rib Pub we had just ordered our drinks when in walked a young guy with a sunburned face wearing only socks on his feet.  We overheard him talking to the waitress and he said he was one of the last three climbers off of Mt. McKinley this season.  He was part of a Danish expedition, and he and his two fellow climbers had been swept several hundred feet down the mountain by an avalanche.  They were rescued from above 17,000 feet by helicopter.  His companions were injured and were air-evac’d to Anchorage.  He was unhurt, but he claimed he’d lost his ID and everything else in his pack in the avalanche.  The waitress was skeptical – she didn’t believe he was over 21 and was giving him a hard time about ordering a beer.  But she eventually believed his story and he got his much-deserved beer.  (We later verified the story on the internet – all true.)  Meanwhile, a guy at a different table ordered the Seward’s Folly – a gut busting 4-lb burger with ham, bacon, caribou and a pound of cheese (it has been featured on the TV show Man Vs. Food).

We spent a few days in Anchorage, seeing some of the sights – including the Saturday Market which was one of the best Farmer’s Markets we’ve been to on the trip.  At Ship Creek, there were about thirty anglers hoping to catch some salmon.  They would have had more luck at the market – check out the huge salmon this little girl caught.

While we were in Anchorage, Kevin decided to do an oil change.  We’ve driven something like 10,000 miles since it had last been changed so it needed to be done.  Rather than pay $300 to have it done by the only authorized Sprinter service center in town, Kevin opted to do it himself.  It was kind of a pain in the butt though, because we still had to go to the service center to buy a special oil filter (trip 1).  Then we stopped in at O’Reilly Auto Parts (trip 2) and discovered that the oil was $10 a liter.  We need 10 quarts, so we thought we’d have better luck on the price at Walmart (trip 3).  Walmart did not carry the right kind, so it was back to O’Reilly (trip 4).  Okay, all set – back to the RV park to get to work.  Except…when he went to undo the bolt on the oil pan, Kevin’s flimsy socket set broke.  Back to O’Reilly (trip 5).  After that, things went without a hitch and the oil was finally changed.  Great job, Kevin!

So last week I did get one question (thanks, Jamie) via the comments, which I will answer in next Friday’s Roundup.  If anyone else wants to know more about the van or life on the road (we are about halfway through the trip now), please feel free to leave a question in the comments.