Well, we survived our journey. We hit 15 states in 7 days all together. First was Alaska of course, hung out with the ABA crew Saturday. Saw Lilhunter, SEAK, Nimer, and a bunch of other guys I' d talked to before, but had never met. We flew out Saturday night to D.C. and got in Sunday morning around 6am and met with 6 members of the board from Maryland and their families for breakfast. I brought them all ulus, some moose and caribou meat, and some crude oil from Prudhoe. We spent half the day up in Maryland, then drove down to Hampton, next to Va Beach, and spent the day there with my wifes disfunctional family. We were more than ready to leave Monday morning, but didn' t get out the door till after 10:00am. We headed straight through Virginia to West Virginia, and just outside of Charleston we met up with Christine B. and her son Ian at the Cracker Barrel and spent about 2 hours with them. After that we plugged through Kentuky, then Indiana, then Illinois, and got west of the Mississippi about 30 miles outside of St. Louis, and finally knocked off at a Days Inn around 2am. 980 miles in the one day of driving with a late start and a long lunch.
We were up around 9am and got packed up and on the way out of Missouri and into Kansas, we saw all these Cabelas signs. [8D][8D][8D] Too cool! I finally get to look at the actual store instead of a catalog. All I can say is WOW! I was very impressed with the displays they had, both wildlife and merchandise. They had a large cafe called the Yukon Cafe, and we had buffalo, venison and caribou for lunch. It was all done up in an Alaskan theme too, go figure... I should of got a discount.
I ended up buying a new fleece camo vest with a wind liner in outfitters camo, and our daughter fell in love with some turkey decoys, the blow up kind, so I bought her a set of two hens and a jake. [&:] I got my shot glasses, which I' ve been collecting for years now, and Tammy drug me out of there before I could do any more damage.
They had all the camo furniture and our daughter found a little Advanatage Timer kids seat that she didn' t want to get out of. That' s my girl! [:-]
We headed south to Wichita to stay at my cousins for the rest of the day, and on Wednesday, we were planning on heading through Colorado, but the Interstates got shut down due to the snow. We waited it out all day Wednesday, and changed our plans Thursday and took I40 through Kansas, Oklahoma, Texas, New Mexico and into Arizona on Thursday. Put 1300 miles on that day. We stayed with my grandpa just north of Phoenix all day on Friday, then headed up to Vegas on Saturday. We got an apartment lined out, found day care for the kid, took care of all Tammy' s skewl stuff at UNLV and got the truck put in storage all by mid monday. We got back on the plane Monday night and got back to Fairbanks Tuesday morning at 3am. Tammy had a bio lab at 8am to 11am, then two - hour and a half long classes after that. She was wrecked when she came home! We went 3,050 logged miles, and then added some around town in Virginia and in Vegas, so a total of about 3,300 miles driving is what we guess. Don' t know how many air miles, but I just added 500 this morning coming back up north. [X(]
I just flew back up north to some new nightmares at work, so I' ll be spending the weekend dealing with those.
juno grl, I didn' t bet any for myself, but SEAK told me to place a bet for him so I did. One dollar in the slots and he gets a triple bar, double bar, double bar and wins 10 bucks. Lucky dog. I got his cash up here, just need to catch up with him. My wife managed to have 25 dollars disappear into the slots however. I' m just not into betting my money, guess I work too hard for it. I' d rather save up my money for hunting.
I heard SEAK had a close one on the highway to Girdwood. He weaseled his way out of that like a smooth ferret. I' m sure his barometer readings were through the roof!
Enough rambling for now...