Moving Day
So today is our pack and load day. All our possessions that will meet us in Alaska start their journey today. What a trial it has been to come up with what stuff goes and what stuff stays! Our first survey came in at over 6,000 pounds. Here's the punch line though, to move 6,000 pounds to Bethel, Alaska was going to cost more than $21,000!! What!?! Ok, so we had some serious thinning to do. To stay within the budget my company allotted us for relocation we had to get our weight down to 2,460 pounds. It's hard to look at your furniture, your clothes, your beds in terms of weight. Me being the type A that I am, pulled out the scale and began weighing EVERYTHING that was going. I started a spread sheet and cataloging the weights of every single item. My magic total came in at 2,250 pound; we should find out in the next 48 hours what the moving company's total comes to... With 200 pounds of wiggle room, we should be ok. Our belongings will travel by truck from Charleston, SC to Seattle, from Seattle to Anchorage by barge, and from Anchorage to Bethel by plane. If it all makes it damage free I will be amazed.
Since we plan on bringing Mark's Land Cruiser out there with us we have to drive it to Seattle where it will be barged to Bethel. (To have had it shipped with our stuff from Charleston would have cost another $2,000 and pushed us over our allotment.) This is not going to be an easy task as the Cruiser is in a million pieces right now! In order to make the cross country trip and be equipped to survive Alaskan winters some much needed adjustments have to be made. I didn't realize at the time, this essentially meant putting a new truck in an old body. Once all said and done the Cruiser will have a new engine, new clutch, new drive shafts, re-upholstered seats and new exhaust. To try and save us some money, Mark is doing many of the repairs himself. Our garage looks like a mechanic's shop, and every road block that could be hit has been so far. Our plan was to leave this weekend with the remainder of our home, place our belongings into storage in Atlanta, spend the weekend in Atlanta with my family, continue on to Bowling Green, KY to visit Mark's family, and then start our journey out west. We are supposed to have nearly 2 weeks to reach Seattle, seeing all the national land marks we can along the way. Camping in Badlands National Park, Yellowstone National Park, and Glacier National Park are just a few on our list of things to do. Unless repairs begin going a bit more smoothly, we may have to shorten our trip by quite a bit. Either way, to quote Luke's favorite movie UP, "Adventure is out there"!
Since we plan on bringing Mark's Land Cruiser out there with us we have to drive it to Seattle where it will be barged to Bethel. (To have had it shipped with our stuff from Charleston would have cost another $2,000 and pushed us over our allotment.) This is not going to be an easy task as the Cruiser is in a million pieces right now! In order to make the cross country trip and be equipped to survive Alaskan winters some much needed adjustments have to be made. I didn't realize at the time, this essentially meant putting a new truck in an old body. Once all said and done the Cruiser will have a new engine, new clutch, new drive shafts, re-upholstered seats and new exhaust. To try and save us some money, Mark is doing many of the repairs himself. Our garage looks like a mechanic's shop, and every road block that could be hit has been so far. Our plan was to leave this weekend with the remainder of our home, place our belongings into storage in Atlanta, spend the weekend in Atlanta with my family, continue on to Bowling Green, KY to visit Mark's family, and then start our journey out west. We are supposed to have nearly 2 weeks to reach Seattle, seeing all the national land marks we can along the way. Camping in Badlands National Park, Yellowstone National Park, and Glacier National Park are just a few on our list of things to do. Unless repairs begin going a bit more smoothly, we may have to shorten our trip by quite a bit. Either way, to quote Luke's favorite movie UP, "Adventure is out there"!
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