Here it is, my very first blog post! Hooray! I have finally made it this far in my technical evolutionary development. I have been contemplating this step for a long time. As time has gone on, I have begun to see the advantage of having a digital record of thoughts, feeling, and photos that I can share with my friends and family. I decided that there were two reasons to begin this blog.
Reason # 1 To finally get me to keep a journal with events and activities that might otherwise be forgotten. I have struggled for years in the attempt of keeping a journal; with the thought that my children, grandchildren, etc would have a record of my life and of our family experiences. Hopefully one day, if this survives that long, my grandchildren can look back and marvel at the crazy things that grandma and grandpa did.
Reason # 2 To be able to keep current friends and family up to date on events in our lives. As we live many thousands of miles from family, the need to keep them updated has become forgotten in the rush of our daily lives. I am not very good about even emailing pictures, it is always one the those things that gets set aside until there is more time later. In my experience later never comes, it is always replaced with something else to be done, until I collapse into bed at the end of each day with the full list of things that did not get done running through my mind.
I have come to realize that even amidst the chaos of everyday life, there are the gems that get forgotten if not recorded into memory. Like this week when Connor asked to have his training wheels taken off of his bike. Connor is 4 1/2 and tries to keep up with his big sisters. On Tuesday we had ridden our bikes down to the field for Sam's softball game. During the game Connor asked many times to ride Sam's bike. Her bike is really too big for him, so Mom or Dad had to hold onto the seat and let him just pedal around. Against his wishes he had ridden down to the field in the trailer with Kaylin and was wishing that he had his bike to ride around. When we got home after the game he asked to have his training wheels take off, which Chad did. It only took 5 seconds before Connor had taken off down the street. Chad started him off one more time, just showing him how to start on his own, and that was it.(watch for a video later) Connor has been out everyday (rain or shine) riding his bike. Words are not enough to express how I felt as I watched him pedal away from his dad and venture out on his own. My heart was full of pride in this little boy who was so ready to be independent.
So what does this have to do with a Pioneer Heritage? This is just one of many stories that I hope to share in this blog. In sacrament meeting today the topic was on pioneers. I began to think of our own pioneer story. Not one from the our ancestors traveling to reach the Salt Lake Valley. This is our story as we began our adventure in Alaska.
We had two small children, Alyssa was 3 and Sam was almost 2. Chad had been offered a job in Ketchikan, Alaska (a place we had never heard of) and we would have to move ourselves there in the middle of the winter. We had been living in Orem, Utah for 1 1/2 years after Chad had finished up school at BYU. Our adventure began in January 2003 as we packed up what little household goods we had, our beds, kitchen table, clothing, and kitchen supplies, into a U haul truck. I would drive the truck, pulling Chad's little Toyota behind. Chad would drive the Honda.
We worried about mountain roads covered with snow. We planned out our route, first to get our household goods to Seattle to load onto a barge to be taken to Ketchikan. The idea that we could not just simply drive to our new home was a little daunting. Ketchinan is along the inside passage of Southeast Alaska, along the Canadian boarder. It is on an island which meant there were no roads across land to reach the town. Our only means of transportation must include a ferry or a plane. So a ferry it would be. We could board a ferry in Bellingham, Washington, but the passage for 2 vehicles, 2 children and 2 adults for 3 days was too expensive for us at the time. We opted for the cheaper version, to drive through Canada to Prince Rupert, and board the ferry there. From Prince Rupert the journey would only take 6 hours to Ketchinkan.
Once all the preparations were made, we were ready to begin our journey. The first day was the easiest, just a four hour drive to my parents farm in Hunt, Idaho. We began this leg on a Sunday after church, and would reach the farm in the early evening. It was in talking with my family that we learned the next day would be much harder. We had anticipated an 8 to 10 hour drive to Seattle instead of the 14 hour drive we learned we would be making. With the the long day looming it was still a late night sitting up talking and seeing everyone we could. We did not know when we would be back among family again. The next morning began early, driving out at about 1:00 am. We needed to reach Seattle early enough to get the barge loaded before the end of the work day. A couple of times we needed to pull over to sleep. The girls were very good about the long days of travel. We had one in each vehicle, and could talk with them, sing and play as we drove. This was probably one of the longest days of my life. We began our long drive at 1:00 am, and arrived in Seattle around 3 pm. Thankfully we had some wonderful friends from school who were living near Seattle. They came with their young children, and met us at the loading dock. Chad's mother had also called her cousin who showed up with two young men to help. We then had to transfer everything from the U haul to the cargo container before 5:00We finished the loading on time, and headed out to drop off the U haul. I learned that I hate big city streets, especially while still pulling the trailer behind the u haul truck. Our friends kept our girls for us while we went off to find the U haul office. Someone in the cargo office had looked up the address we had, but due to the craziness of Seattle streets, the street we were looking for existed in two places and we ended up on the wrong one. We ended up driving through narrow residential streets trying not to clip the cars parked on both sides of the road. We were totally lost driving around Seattle, while our two girls were hungry and waiting for us to come back to the barge line to get them. It took over an hour to find the place, after stopping in a parking lot to ask for directions. I was getting desperate, and starting to panic. We ended up asking a group of people parked in a deserted packing lot. I was terrified I was approaching gang members, and that I would never see the girls again. This is just how my mind works when going all day with no sleep, in a strange city, and desperate. They looked up the address on their gps and got us going in the right direction again. Thankfully we found the right place, which was closed for the night. We followed the after hours directions, and returned to our friends to collect our children and drive another hour and a half up to our hotel in Bellingham. It was after 10 that night when we finally had everyone fed, found our hotel, and fell into bed.
Does this seem like an epic journey yet? We still had two more days of driving through Canada. Again, remember this is January driving through the Canadian Rockies. Our first day we crossed over the boarder, and it truly felt like a foreign land. By now we were driving the two cars, and using hand-held radios to communicate. We drove 12 hours that day to arrive worn out in Prince George Canada. We found someplace to eat; possibly the worst Chinese food ever. The waitress was so sweet we didn't have the heart tell her the food was inedible, and we were too tired to care. Then we found a hotel for the night. The next day we drove another 12 hours over snow covered roads toward Prince Rupert. We were passed many times by big timber trucks flying down the road. When we did not dare go over 30 miles an hour on the snow, they were flying past us as if we were sitting still. It was a full day of white knuckle driving, and the stress had me exhausted. On top of everything we found that one of our radios could receive, but would not transmit. So, Chad could talk to me, but I could not talk to him. We had to revert to using headlights as signals. At one point I was stopped at a light leaving a little town, and Chad got through. I could not see where Chad had gone, and all my screaming into the radio in full panic mode resulted in silence. I pulled over to watch for him to come back. He had also pulled over, knowing that I did not make it through, so it still took a little while, and a lot of panic from me before we found each other.
That day ended in Prince Rupert, and preparing the next day to board the ferry to Ketchikan. Once again it was an early start as we had to be at the ferry terminal at 6 am. We were so close to our destination now. We boarded the ferry in high excitement, which soon wore off. We had packed snacks , but were reluctant to purchase a meal on board. Coming from a place where you can find a value menu everywhere you turn, we could not face paying $7-$8 for a sandwich, and opted to wait until we arrived in Ketchikan to get lunch. We also found that it is cold in January traveling on a ferry on the inside passage. We left all of our extra clothing in the car down below, which we were not allowed to get to while underway. So we spend 6 cold, hungry hours keeping kids from running everywhere when for the first time is days they were not locked into carseats. We were so happy to start seeing houses along land. This must mean we are getting close! We should be stopping soon! But no, it seemed to take forever.
Finally the ferry docked in Ketchikan, and we are ready to see our new home. I forgot to mention this was also Sam's birthday. She turned 2 the day we landed in Alaska. It was not snowy, as I has pictured Alaska must be. But it was overcast and dreary. Should I mention that Ketchikan is one of the rainiest city in America? They get over 150 inches a year. It is always overcast and dreary! Our first stop was at the high school where Chad will be working; to meet his friend that referred him for the job. Taylor Crockett had been with Chad at the tech school in Utah and had gone back to his home town in Alaska to be a network admin for the school district. He had also been wonderful in finding an apartment for us, so we had a place to stay right away. By now it was after 2 in the afternoon and Taylor was still working for another hour. We headed down the street to Burger King, (because there was bound to be a value menu there) for lunch and to wait until Taylor could take us to our new apartment. Let me tell you about Burger King. Not a value menu in sight!!! We were really regretting not purchasing lunch on the ferry. This was our first experience with Alaska pricing. Alaska pricing is pretty much like this; take the price of anything that you can find in the lower 48 states and double it. Then you add shipping too. We were not prepared to spend $3 for items we normally found for $1. But we were hungry, so we paid the outrageous prices. Also, this Burger King operated a little differently too. It was owned by the Native Corp and would not accept credit cards or out of state checks. By this point in our trip our cash funds were pretty low, but we managed to have enough to get lunch. It was only months later that we saw this restaurant close down. We had never seen a fast food place close but were not surprised when it happened. Few could afford to eat there. We did still have Subway and McDonald's, but neither of them took credit cards either. For our first meal in town it was probably the worst place we could have picked, but it helped us learn right away that we would not be enjoying low priced food any longer. Thus a love of cooking began. (More to come on that in later entries I'm sure.)
I had thought it odd that we needed to wait for Taylor to show us to our apartment. I later found out that our new landlords were school teachers he knew who would also not be there to let us in until after school was out. After we were shown to our new home, we found our way around town to the grocery store, one necessity was a birthday cake for our little two year old. Both girls were so incredible on the whole trip. We had many struggles and crisis along the way, but the children were never one of them. To this day, I could not tell you what the kids thought of the whole trip, but I don't remember a single complaint. What I do remember was when we first walked into our new apartment. We brought in our stuff from the car, sleeping bags, and suitcases. Remember this is Alaska around 4:00 in January. The sun was down, and both girls insisted that it was time to go to bed. I could have agreed right then and there if there were not other pressing matters, like food and toilet paper.
I think that my blog has now become a mini novel, but I truly think of this as our personal pioneer story. We were setting out on a journey to a place we had never been. We had no idea of the experiences we would have, and how it would alter our lives. We came for a job, hoping to find friends, and a ward, and a home. We have since moved on; but that one journey helped us see that no matter where we go and what we may have to face, the Lord will be with us on the journey, and we will make it in the end.
