The Highlights and Lowlights of our Cross-Country Trip to Alaska (Part 1)

Hello everyone!

Well, we have been settled in Homer, Alaska for about 3 weeks now. The weather is beginning to turn and it is looking more and more like spring every day. With the events of our trip now in the past, I figured it as good of time as any to share the highlights and lowlights of our 4,000 mile expedition from Missouri to Alaska.

To say the least, it was a bumpy ride, literally! Where do I begin? How about our unexpected, extended stay in Montana?

We set off in our new-to-us, 38 ft, Class A Motorhome on Saturday, March 6, blissfully unaware of the events that lay ahead of us. It was a beautiful day and we were full of excitement and anticipation. While slower going than expected (you can only drive so fast in an RV) we journeyed across Missouri, Iowa, and South Dakota, even squeezing in a quick stop at the iconic Wall Drugs. On March 8th, we pulled into the KOA at Great Falls, MT with plans of continuing the next leg of our journey within a day or two.

“That there is an RV. Now don’t you go falling in love with it now.”-Cousin Eddie

You see, one of Canada’s current requirements for crossing the border is everyone must arrive with a negative Covid result. For ease of not having to schedule appts, we opted for the in-home, Zoom-call, saliva test, which would then be Fedex’d with promised results within 24-48 hours. With our samples in the mail, all we could do was sit and patiently wait. The next evening, one…two…three…four…five results came across my email. NEGATIVE. Now we were just waiting for one more. The next morning we checked our email and discovered result #6…POSITIVE! Talk about throwing a monkey wrench in our travel plans! This definitely took us by surprise, as no one had been sick with even a sniffle for months. If our affectionately nicknamed “Typhoid Mary” really had Covid, it was perplexing how no one else tested positive, despite our close quarters. Nonetheless…

After brainstorming, a cluster of phone calls, and a sprinkling of panic, Dave and I came to the same conclusion…we couldn’t go anywhere for two weeks. We were “dunt dunt duh” QUARANTINED! So we hunkered down in Great Falls, had (expensive) repairs completed on the RV, explored the dams of Electric City, as Great Falls is nicknamed, and even celebrated Mr. Sam turning 9!