When we decided to take this trip, brother Bart and sister Katie were invited to join us. Katie was a natural, since she has long wanted to come to Alaska, and she owns a fifth-wheel trailer. Bart, however, has a very small RV (he calls it his FedEx van) and has never driven a bigger one. But he chose to reserve a class "C" motorhome, and he and Jerri joined us last week.
His first reaction to driving it (right after seeing the movie the dealer showed about everything that could go wrong) and then dealing with Anchorage traffic was, "I think I will just find a campground in Anchorage and stay here for ten days." He got over that when Kenneth and Melinda arrived, and soon they arrived in Seward.
Things went well in Seward, and the drive to Russian River was uneventful. When we were setting up, however, he could not get the slide to open. Jerri read the instructions to him. "Set the parking brake, leave the engine running, push the button." So he started the engine. No go. "Go get Norto," he told me. Don went down, and they tried several things. Finally, Don asked him if the parking brake was set. "Well, no, I guess not," Bart replied. And the slide very happily opened once that was done.
Russian River was the first time we were without electricity, which mean Bart's C-PAP machine was going to have to operate on battery. The next morning, he told Don that he was going to have to go to Anchorage, because the machine wouldn't work well enough. Don went over to the RV, took our inverter, and within a few minutes, the machine was working well enough that Bart decided he could stick around. Another crisis averted.
The next adventure involved dumping. Bart knew how to dump his FedEx van, but he had never dumped a bigger model. He used some of our disposable gloves, and amazingly enough, it went all right.
With the exception of setting off the smoke alarm a few times, the remainder of the trip went well. Until Friday morning, right before he was preparing to leave. "Do you have any matches?" he asked me. I did, but I couldn't figure out why he would need matches. Well, he twisted the automatic ignition lighter on the stove the wrong way, causing it to snap off. Oops. That is going to be an expensive mistake. But he will want to cook breakfast in the morning, so he would need matches to light the stove. Luckily, when he got to Anchorage, he found out he did not have to pay anything for the lighter. That guardian angel has started watching over him, too!
Despite a few difficulties, Bart figured out how to drive close to the speed limit (we frequently don't because the roads are pretty hard on RVs), how to keep his battery charged, and how to keep his machine working. Jerri was very good at conserving water, at using the campground bathrooms (I don't do that very often, but will if I have to), and at keeping warm.
All in all, I think the RV experiment went very well. I hope they are willing to do other RV trips with us now that the maiden voyage has sailed.
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