Of car shopping and avalanches

It seems every time we take a trip to Anchorage it turns into an adventure. Not an adventure that is ALL fun and play, but one that produces character through stressful circumstances. Our drive up was quick and easy. While in town, our plan was to do some fast shopping and purchase a 4x4--all in three days. Needless to say, we're back home and our wallets are a little emptier, but not without some entertainment.

First off, I want to give a short "thank you speech" to Kris, Nancy, and Kelby Kinney for letting us take over their guest room and feeding us for three days. "Safe" hotels are expensive in Alaska and it's neat to live in a district with such hospitable families, especially ones who enjoy little hyper poodles.

Anchorage is the home of two large thrift stores called Value Village. If you're into shopping for second-hand treasures, this is the place to go! Unfortunately, I learned that when I spend too much time combing the racks and shelves, others assume I'm employed and need me to answer their questions. Time to leave!

Strangely enough, later that day a lady at Wal-Mart thought the same thing. She couldn't find the barbecue sauce.

I'm usually not a shop-'til-you-drop kind of person, so my enthusiasm for shopping is quickly draining out of me. In between all the stores and making sure Jon is at his meetings, I'm on craigslist hoping to find a wheel-of-a-deal in the 4x4 category. I'm usually not a fan of McDonalds, but this time I'm thankful for their free WiFi. After sifting through several ads, Jon found a 1998 Kia Sportage listed in Anchorage. By this time we were back at the Kinneys and we took off after a delicious dinner at a local Mexican restaurant to go see this vehicle.

The nature of this deal is the seller was given the title as a debt someone owed him. He sold it to us for cash, but didn't know much about the mechanical condition. In our initial test drive it worked great, but we weren't able to take it off his property because it wasn't registered, thus not getting it up to a decent speed.

We drove the Kia off his lot the next day and immediately Jon learned it was acting out of character. Since the funny noise didn't prove to be an immediate danger (later we learned it has something to do with the A/C), we decided to head for home.

As we approach the Girdwood gas station (a popular spot to use the toilet and get a Slurpee), we see a line of cars on the road. Hitting our breaks, we came to a complete stop and learned the road was closed due to an avalanche a couple miles up the highway. As we sit there, we learned it was going to be a couple hours before the roadway was plowed for cars to drive through. Dinner time approached and we decided it would be ideal to eat something while we waited instead of driving to Soldotna, two hours down the road, for dinner. We didn't want to move our cars out of line on the roadway to fetch the food, so Jon ordered a pizza and walked over to the gas station and picked it up. I'm sure the whole line of cars sat and watched as he walked back down the highway shoulder with a large pizza box in hand. We were glad for the meal because we sat for 4.5 hours before the road opened for us to pass through.

Darkness had just settled in as headlights came on and lit up the entire Turnigan Arm roadway like a string of Christmas lights. A couple miles up the road from our "parking lot"we passed through the avalanche site. Walls of snow 40 ft. high towered us on either side. Whole trees stuck out of the packed snow like toothpicks while plows and tractors with blinking lights sat near by on the side of the highway, waiting for all to pass by.

We drove most of the way to Soldotna with tail lights in front of us and headlights shining behind us in our mirrors. In that stretch of roadway, we learned the Kia had something wrong with its front tires. From the combination of stress and the slight hint of past cigarette smoke in our new vehicle, Jon had a growing headache. In the past, the Soldotna pastor had offered us to stay at his house if we didn't want to drive home at such a late hour. This time we took him up on his offer.

Here I will interject the second of three "thank you speeches" I'd like to make in this blog entry. We are thankful for the Hardesty's hospitality. A comfortable place to sleep was a welcome sight and Bruce even helped us further by hooking us up with someone who could diagnose our Kia problem for no charge and acquire parts to fix it at a discounted rate. Wow! We are blessed. Our Kia will get its front bearings changed next week on Jon's day off.

Finally on Friday, we continued to our final destination: HOMEr where two additional dogs were waiting for us. We agreed to dog-sit for our friend Dana, but didn't realize until after we agreed to do it that we'd both be out of town at the same time.

My third "thank you speech" goes to Chad and Amanda Waggoner for watching our house and the dogs while we were out of town. Although we have the dogs for another week, it would have been tricky to travel with two big labs while in Anchorage.

And so our latest adventure comes to a close. I'm still not sure what day it is, but I am thankful for the character-building experiences and friends who go with us along the way of life.