The Adventure Starts!

Well, I got a little behind on the whole blog thing!!  A lot of the trip we were without internet and the rest of the trip I was just too busy enjoying the scenery and new experiences to post!  So even though we are home, I will attempt to catch up and post about each day of our journey! 
                                                        
                                                            Friday 8/22/14
 Left for Syracuse after work. We're staying at the Ramada Inn and using their Park and Fly Package.  They'll keep our car and shuttle us to the airport in the am.  6:30 AM flight ...arriving in Anchorage at 1:20 PM. ( will feel like 5:20 to us) Tomorrow will be a long day but soooo worth it! A while ago I found a website :http://www.gi.alaska.edu/AuroraForecast  which lets you see the Northern Lights prediction a week out....looks like we may get lucky and  be able to see some this coming week! We'll see!  And the weather forecast looks good too!  Time for bed! 

                                                        Saturday 8/23/14

Long airplane ride!  Boarding pass for second leg of trip showed us not sitting together. That was the 7 hour trip! (And I had paid extra to sit together.) Alaskan airlines  said  they don’t charge extra for seating other than first class and I should get a hold of American Airlines for a  refund .Then just as we were boarding, they said they were able to rearrange seating once everyone had checked in and we not only sat together but had the row to ourselves. Yeah Alaskan Airlines!  Excluding our layover in Chicago, and the 4 hour time difference, the plane flights were 9 hours total.  Shuttle bus driver picked us up at airport to take us to Wasilla to get the camper van. He was very talkative and personable and gave us lots of hints and tips. He's from Texas, here for the summer helping his nephew. He  worked for the Post office so we had a lot to talk about!  Wasilla ( about 45 minutes from Anchorage) was deceiving to us. I had looked it up and they have a population of app 8400 people but seemed very commercial to us for that population...Walmart, big grocery chains, hospitals and clinics etc...We found that  most people in Alaska live out side a  city and the  "borough"  can cover quite a large area. The Mat Su Borough (Matanuska Susitna Borough) which Wasilla is a part of  has a population of  96,000 so the commercial area is servicing all of those people. We don't have boroughs in NYS except for in NYC so it was very confusing.  I guess they are kind of like counties here...a form of government between local and state.   

We had decided to spend the first night in a  motel and get a fresh start in the morning! We'll  need to go shopping for food and supplies and after the long flight figured we'd be tired.  The camper van came equipped with a queen size bed, Coleman stove, lantern, kitchen utensils, sleeping bags etc...
                                    To be continued!