Hello World Come Roll With Us

Randy and I were married June 18th, 1976.

We have 3 beautiful, successful children – one living in New York, another in Washington DC, and another in Colorado Springs, so no real ties to Wichita.

We have 3 dogs – 2 Bouvier des Flandres, a male named Gustav, a female named Elsa, and a Yorkshire Terrier named Abednego, or Buzz.

Randy has worked for an airplane company in Wichita, KS managing real estate. I have been working as a RN in an ICU in Wichita.

Randy has decided to retire and I have decided to do travel nursing in Alaska.

Randy and I began to plan for a trip and move to Alaska about 3 years ago. My goal is to share things we have learned in this experience, to help someone else who may want to do something like this.

It is something we have always wanted to do, the experience of driving down the Al-can highway, to take our time and see the sights as we go.

There are many decisions to be made when you decide to do something like this and we have been very blessed that the Lord’s, grace and mercy has gone before us the whole way.  Every time we came up on a problem or a concern the answer was always there.

One of the 1st decisions to be made is whether to sell or rent our house, we were moving toward selling it, and then a couple who my husband has know for some time, had to move to Wichita, and asked if they could rent it.

Randy had mentioned to this gentlemen 1.5 years earlier that he may know of a house for rent if he would know of someone.  As it turned out he asked my husband 1 year later about the house.

We were thrilled, we felt confident leaving it in their hands, as were they, as they enjoyed the location.

Then we had to decide what to do with our stuff ie. to store it all or to sell as much as possible.  Randy found a older solid cargo trailer 44 ft long, we had 3 large garage sales and packed the rest in the trailer and are storing it up at my brothers farm.

We also decided to buy a pickup to pull the trailer and the 5th wheel camper, which we still needed to purchase. After much thought we decided on a 3/4 ton long bed pickup.

The long bed is the best way to go we have determined when pulling a 5th wheel, as you can still get supplies, ie. in our case tools, pet supplies etc. and you can still turn sharply.

We purchased our 5th wheel with a generator, we chose double pane windows, double air conditioners, also having a heat pump is a wonderful bonus.

We ended up having to leave our house earlier than we had planned as the couple, who were renting it needed to move in sooner than planned. So we have been living in our camper outside of Wichita, by a lake for the past 8.5 mo.

We survived through the winter without many problems. It was very helpful to take down and set up the 5th wheel every 2 weeks as it taught us things to watch for ie. one time we took the door off of the cabinet, another time we broke the ceiling fan – all were fixable.

We took it for a maiden voyage up to visit our family, and had a blow out on the front tire of the camper, nothing was damaged, but we decided to put new tires on the camper and to get wheel censors on each of the tires before heading up to to Alaska.

So come along with us as the adventure begins.