Part 2 of the 'ORDEAL' -- Home Sweet Kansas
Initially
we had intended to send Zac back to Alaska to get our stuff at the end of the
summer. Once we’d found where we’d be living and had rented a place, etc… I
would be busy preparing for work and would have the boys, and Zac could go up
and take the time needed. That was the
idea at least. This would be one of the benefits at the time of Zac not working
at that point.
Life
happened. As it so often does, life intervenes and changes plans. Zac was hired
as a Sysop with one of the elementary schools even before we returned to Kansas
from Michigan, where we had to stay until we could rent a place in Garden City.
His job, as with most of the IT jobs in schools was scheduled to begin a couple
of weeks before school started back up again, just about the time that we were
planning for Zac to travel back. Which is all well and good with consideration
to the fact that we had to have deposits to rent and secure all of the accounts
we needed for electricity, water, etc… Plus, it’s always better if we have the
opportunity for Zac to gain employment.
So,
life continued – same old, same old – for the school year and we began planning
for a trip up at the beginning of the summer to get the rest of our stuff.
This, of course, was enough to drive the boys insane (as well as Zac and I to
an extent), as we had planned to have Zac go back up at the latest by October.
So, nearly 9 months later, I would be beginning the long trek back up and all
of the logistics and planning to get all of our stuff back to Kansas and
FINALLY stop paying the cost of storage for the Suburban in Anchorage and all
of our household goods over 300 miles from there in Homer.
I
think the planning stages for the trip went fairly well. Due to expense, amount
of travel time on the road, vehicle space, etc… we figured that it would
behoove us to have only one of us to go to Alaska and bring all of our stuff
back with us. Because of the sheer number of miles and amount of driving, plus
for safety’s sake, we knew that it would be best to find someone who could do
the road trip with one of us. There were a couple of possible options for this.
Which is nice to have multiple possibilities when it comes to trying to find
someone to travel that kind of distance with one of us. All of the
possibilities we could think of however, are primarily friends of mine. So,
this meant that it would need to be me to fly up to Anchorage, drive the
Suburban down to Homer, then drive back with a trailer (of some type) loaded.
The drive back meant driving up through Anchorage and Palmer, across to Tok,
then into Canada through the Yukon on the Alcan, through British Columbia and Alberta,
and into the United States through Montana, Wyoming, Colorado, and finally
Kansas.
Whomever
I found to accompany me along the journey would either need to fly from Kansas
to Alaska with me and then we’d drive back, or they would need to drive to Kansas
with me and stop off in Denver (likely) to fly back to Alaska. What it meant
for the person going with me was hopefully a vacation for them that would be a
fun, relaxing road trip with a friend through a large portion of western North
America with gas and hotels already being paid. I needed to pay gas and hotel
expenses for myself anyhow. Yes, this is an expensive journey, one that didn’t
get taken when we moved last year.
Two
problems occurred with all of this. First of all, I had three different possibilities
of friends to travel with me. There were two possibilities in Alaska and one in
Kansas. My friend in Kansas is way too busy with work this time of year, one of
the two friends in Alaska would not have been able to afford even the flight
back and really couldn’t afford to take that kind of time off from work, and
the other friend (Miranda) who I had planned to travel with all along, had to
work until the end of June and my window of time was prior to that. Things were
already not going my way! Miranda did however suggest her husband, Jacob, as a
possible travel partner. So, plan B formed with Jacob as the friend who would
be doing the drive from AK to KS with me. Problem solved. The second problem
was that unfortunately we weren’t able to save quite as much as initially
planned, due to a change in employment status for Zac, which was necessitated
to care for Zeke during the year. But, with my 2nd job and summer
pay we should have it covered, it was just going to be tight, with a little
wiggle room for problems, but not tons. Nonetheless, it should be fun however,
and again an ‘adventure.’
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