the house

We were so excited to see the "real" Sitka when we got off the ferry, we spent the next hour or so just driving around and checking things out. We weren't without aim or purpose, though. One of our first stops was at the Post Office to make sure we had a working mailing address. (If you want the address, please email or call me.)

USPS Sitka, AK.

We went into the downtown area and saw all the shops and tourist attractions. We went across the bridge to see where Mt. Edgecumbe High School is and get a feel for how the campus is set up. We went up some streets and down others until we felt we had satisfied ourselves for the moment, before finally contacting our new landlords and heading home.

O'Connell Bridge, passage to/from Japonski Island.

Finally able to hang up our coats in our new home.

I guess the most difficult part of being here right now is that our house hasn't arrived with us. If you'll remember back before our road trip began, we had sent all of our belongings via Allied Alaska while we made our way across more than 5,500 miles of the U.S. and Canada. It turns out that it can take a really long time for everything to reach its destination that way, so we won't be seeing our furniture, clothes, or toys for about another 2 weeks. That's ok, though, because Sitka has a number of retailers who were happy to sell us air mattresses!

I imagine you want to know what accommodations we found for ourselves, sight unseen... Well, we weren't disappointed. We rented the lower lever of an up/down duplex. It has 3 bedrooms, 2 full baths, and includes stove, fridge, microwave, washer, and dryer. It's not as much space as we're used to at Orme, but it's more than sufficient for our needs. Seren & Porter even have bigger bedrooms than they had in Arizona! (Sorry for the blurry pictures. I took them with my phone.)

Our new house.

Kitchen.

Living room.

Seren's room.

The kids' bathroom (washer & dryer are behind the towels).

Porter's room.

Master bathroom.

Master bedroom.

After we unloaded the car, we discovered we still needed a place to sit, so we bought a couch.

Couch.

So that's it, that's how we're living right now. We're not uncomfortable, but we're living slim. Since we've sorted out the living spaces, Stephen and I frequently talk about how we wish we'd gotten rid of more stuff before we left Arizona. To that, I say "We still can!"

...............................

As a side note, I want to address a concern we've heard from a few of you who are following along with our adventure. We are not giving up the blog just because we've arrived in Sitka. As far as we're concerned, the adventure has just begun and we are very happy that all of you are interested in what we are doing and staying connected with us in this way. We intend to keep the blog going as long as we feel we have interesting things to share with you, as long as it is entertaining for us as writers and for you as readers, and as long as it continues to have value as a historical account of this time in our lives. Thank you all for your love and support, but also for the little comments and stories you've shared with us along the way. Your active readership helps to make this blog worthwhile.

Cleveland wrapup - we've been busy!

In the time we've been in Cleveland (since Monday), we've been able to see a lot of my family, including all three of my grandparents. My sister, mother, and wife were able to help my grandfather sort through my grandmother's personal items and I don't think there were any badly hurt feelings as a result. I got to see both of my uncles in the same place for the first time in a while and a number of people got to see Porter for the first time. We've worked out our route, then completely reworked it (I'll possibly post that later). We've had the car repaired. We've seen one of my best friends and given him several baby items and made arrangements to see my two other best friends tonight and Monday. We've finally gotten the bill for our move and have started paying that off. We've tried to catch up on sleep and let the kids have some semblance of a normal schedule (although we've really failed at the latter - poor Seren is desperate for regular naps and time to run around like a kid her age needs to do). We've confirmed that we can keep Verizon service through Canada and that it'll cost the same as our current plan. We've even gotten new insurance cards for our car.

Looking ahead, we'll be seeing some old family friends tomorrow and doing a lot of packing. Monday, we hit the road, with a stop planned in Albion, Michigan to get lunch with one of my best friends, see a professor I've been missing a lot, get some dishes, and enjoy a barbecue chicken pizza and some Oberon! After that, we're going to head for the Chicago area for our first night back on the road. Unfortunately, we'll be missing out on the stop we hoped to make in Churubusco, Indiana to see some of JoElle's family. We had to cut time out of our trip, and the Michigan trip only made the cut because of the dishes (much as I love Oberon, 'Relli's pizza, Kyle, and JimBall). Expect more frequent updates during the next week and a half!

doing preliminary planning for our Cleveland to Alaska leg

It looks like we'll be spending 7 full days on the road. We'll swing through lower Michigan and Churubusco, Indiana in order to see a few important people there, then everything else will be straightforward and without detours.

Day One: Cleveland to Chicago, 8.5 hours of driving
Day Two: Chicago to St. Cloud MN, 8.5 hours of driving
Day Three: St. Cloud MN to Brandon, MB, CANADA, 8.75 hours of driving
Day Four: Brandon MB to Saskatoon SK, 7.5 hours of driving
Day Five: Saskatoon SK to Grande Prairie AB, 12.5 hours of driving (OUCH)
Day Six: Grande Prairie AB to Fort Nelson BC, 7.5 hours of driving
Day Seven: Fort Nelson BC to Whitehorse YT, 13 hours of driving (OUCH)
Day Eight: Whitehorse YT to Skagway AK, 2.75 hours of driving/18.5 hours of ferry to Sitka!

This route was chosen to put us in big cities for the night whenever possible so that we'd have access to resources and less expensive hotels. It's a lot harder than the route that brought us to Cleveland, so we're going to have to rest up a lot and be very prepared. It'll be a huge adventure for all of us, and I can say that I'll be very glad to be doing this headed west, picking up a few 25-hour days that way!

clarification is apparently necessary

We've had a number of people asking us why we're headed east to go north. This is a reasonable question, as we have not yet talked about this on the blog. My family lives in Cleveland and we had a trip planned to see them this summer before the job offer came through in Sitka. After doing some really deep soul-searching and budget examination, we made the decision to cut our trip to Cleveland down from six weeks to about one in order to take care of some of the more important things we were going to do during our visit. Among those things are spending time with my three remaining grandparents, all of whom are aging and two of whom haven't seen either of our kids in a while. The effort and expense of driving 2000 extra miles will take their toll, but we felt that this was important to do. We're also going to have a chance to see some of JoElle's family that we haven't seen in several years and to visit with some of my best friends (and give some baby stuff to one of them who's expecting his first in October!).

In other news, day two of the trip went well, but Tulsa is miserable at 84% humidity. I think I sweated out five excess pounds just doing the stairs twice at our hotel. Today's agenda: visiting JoElle's godparents near Joplin, MO and heading into southern Illinois, possibly getting as far as Indianapolis.

getting there...

So far, we have managed to find other homes for the following items:

• living room couch set (single seat, recliner, angle couch, loveseat/hide-a-bed)
• self-lifting recliner
• double stroller
• bike trailer
• Wurlitzer Electronic Piano (I'll miss the sound of this one, but it's just enormous)
• child slide
• hammock (that one hurts)
• brass lamps
• patio set
• a child-size school desk (elementary school style, with the lifting top)
• a very good charcoal grill
• a swively rolly computer chair
• a five shelf bookshelf
• pre-lit Christmas tree (only used once)
• a vintage hand-made wooden high chair

We're even getting paid for a few of those items!

I took down the swing in Seren's room and broke down our dining room table, so we'll be eating off of a folding table for the next week.

We view laundry and dishes as things to try to keep up on as much as possible, but there'll be a cleaning blitz on those items in the last day or so.

There are still a few things that we need to get rid of. In particular, if you're interested in

• a corner computer desk (warning: it's moved once before and won't take a lot of jostling)
• an old school office desk (solid wood, with nine drawers)
• a nice wooden coffee table

let us know! We won't pay to ship any of this stuff, but we are very willing to discuss price (free is not out of the question).

We have booked the movers and we have booked the ferry from Skagway to Sitka*.

We've set up our going-away party (see Jo's previous post) and we've notified everyone of our travel plans.

The task ahead of us is still insane and monumental in scope, but it's not as bad as it could be, nor as bad as it was!

*If you're curious about visiting Alaska at all and are considering a cruise, I recommend checking out the Alaska Marine Highway System as a possible option. We're traveling on a boat that has two dining options (cafeteria and Alaska-formal restaurant, and yes, Alaska-formal is tolerant of athletic shoes and jeans), we've booked ourselves a four-berth cabin for the night, and we're taking our car on board. For the 18 hours we'll be traveling this way, we get a window to watch all of what we're passing, we'll have a private bathroom, and it's for under $500. I know that's not amazingly cheap, but a significant chunk of that is the car. We'll be stopping for an hour and a half in Haines and for four hours in Juneau, giving a decent amount of time for other dining options, basic shopping, and possibly a bit of sight-seeing before we head to our new home.

Just want to point this out...

Man, moving is expensive! It's enough of a hassle to move anywhere at any time (it cost us a few hundred dollars in gas and Penske rental* to make it only 200 miles for our last move), but going almost 3000 miles away (with a 2000-mile detour!) is no joke. Aside from the expense, we're left doing all of our apartment-hunting by phone and email, I'm setting up a music program via email, and we're trying to coordinate with a moving company that has two offices in Arizona, a delivery and storage facility in Sitka, and the person responsible for our move is in Anchorage! This experience makes me really glad that I was rejected for the job in Christchurch, NZ.

*I don't endorse many companies, but Penske is one that I've never had reason to fault. If Penske is available where you are or where you are going, don't even look at U-Haul.

raison d'être

This blog will exist for the sole purpose of documenting our adventures Up North. Since JoElle has never lived outside of Arizona for more than 6 weeks at a time and I've never been to Alaska, this entire excursion to the 49th state will be new to us both. In the coming weeks, expect us to begin uploading stories about our move (including cross-country treks of both the US and Canada!) and pictures that we think capture the spirit of what we (and, of course, our kids) are up to.

If you like what you read, please feel free to leave comments. If you want to pass it on, we appreciate link sharing, but don't want anyone copying our text or images without permission.