The further you get away from the Fairbanks the better and better the beautiful views of mountains and waters get. Wasilla is surrounded by huge mountains, rivers and coastline, to put it simply is beautiful and serene. On this stop we found Big Bear RV Park right off the highway. It is a decent sized park with several options in terms of hookups. After boondocking in Denali we chose to go with full hookups so we could get everything ready for our next stop. For those who don’t know what “boondocking” means camping with no hookups. As soon as we pulled into the campground the kids noticed the best part of this site, a playground! This occupied them while Adam and I got everything set up. The favorite part of this campground for me was the WiFi🙌🏼 While I throughly enjoy the price we are paying with T-mobile the service in Alaska is terrible. If we lived in Alaska any longer we would have switched to another carrier, but I digress. The weather was absolutely beautiful! It was cold and cloudy in Denali so it was nice to have the sun. Wasilla has a plethora of food options so we decided to eat out. We had not taken the kids in a restaurant to eat for close to year so we decided to roll the dice and go to Hacienda Mexican Restaurant for dinner! It was the first legitimate Mexican food I’ve had in over 2 years🙌🏼 Let’s just say that nowhere in Fairbanks served a proper queso dip which is a true tragedy. Dinner was amazing, the kids actually ate their food and behaved for 85% of the time there!
The next morning it was time to get to work. Our stop in Wasilla was deliberate for many reasons including to get Adam’s truck into service before our cross country trip and getting my van shipped to Georgia. Adam left first thing in the morning headed to Ford. I took the kids to Walmart to grab a few more things for the camper and some more snacks because that is all my kids eat. I soon got a call from Adam and we decided to get a few more things done to the truck then originally planned which caused it to be in the shop all day so I had to come pick him up so we could get everything else we needed to get done for the day. Once I picked Adam up we hit up Bass Pro and REI, got lunch and then headed back to the camper to grab laundry and then off to my buddy Breanna’s house! I lied earlier, Target isn’t the best part about Wasilla, the MacDonald family is!! My kids were so excited to see their Aunty Moe and Rauri when we arrived. I got to start some laundry and Adam took my van to get an oil change because the light decided to turn on just as we got to Wasilla and we can’t ship it with any warning lights on🙄. Thankfully being stuck without a car at a friends house is way better than an empty camper. I got laundry done and the kids played. As soon as Adam got back it was time to get serious about cleaning every nook and cranny of the van. All together it took Adam and I close to 4 hours to get it sparkling. I was literally unscrewing clips to get all the caked on food particles off. You may ask why we didn’t pay to have it detailed? Well the answer is we tried and everything was booked out for a month plus😩. Huge shout out to Breanna who took Davis and Josey to Finn’s baseball game so we could clean without interruption!! Anna found a friends in the neighborhood and played. Anna can find a friend anywhere! It’s truly inspiring, she is social butterfly and just loves to play. We got done around 8pm with the van and I didn’t want anyone to even breathe in the van after that🤣 Thankfully Breanna was able to meet us back at our campsite with Davis and Josey who immediately got thrown in the bath tub!
The next morning we woke up bright and early! We had to pick up the truck, get my van a car wash and drop it off to be shipped to GA. All before getting coffee😭, but we did it! After that we went back to the camper for some much needed rest and trailer organization time. Anna and Davis were really good while we had to run all our errands so we decided to treat them to jump time and Fly Trampoline. I dropped them and Adam off and Josey and I got to do some shopping at Target! Let’s just say I didn’t leave the store empty handed and Josey got a special cake pop from Starbucks. After all that we swung one last time to the Macdonald’s to give hugs and pick up a package we had sent there. Breanna wouldn’t let me say “goodbye” and I didn’t want to because when you make friends with someone like her you definitely want to see them again❤️
On Thursday morning we got new tires installed on the trailer and then finally started our real vacation set off for Seward, Alaska!
I realized while writing this that I only took a few pictures on this stop🤦🏼♀️ We were soooooo busy and almost every minute was taken up preparing to PCS. Don’t worry I more than make up for it in Seward, I will have a picture overload coming your way!
Real Life Adventures with Kids 