Well, good morning, Story Chasers.
I am off to Alaska.
I'm so excited.
I'm not in Alaska right now.
This is Banfield, if you can see it.
I had to get a ton of supplies for Lily.
She takes up half of the back of the rig with all of her food.
One of the things that I had to do when preparing for Alaska is to stock up on supplies that
I may or may not find there, or it could be a lot more expensive.
Her food was one of them.
She actually eats this prescription diet food because of her sensitive stomach.
So I had to get like five cases of food that would last me for at least the three months
that I would be in Alaska and Canada, and then a little bit on the way back down into
the States, until I could find a Banfield.
Banfield is her vet, because it's nationwide.
So I can only get her food where there is actually a veterinarian place.
PetSmart typically is where Banfield is at, and they have her food there.
I'm so excited to be going to Alaska.
I've only flown in once before.
I've never actually driven in, so this is going to be an experience.
That's the Rocky Mountains in the distance over there, part of Yellowstone.
It's so beautiful out here.
I'm in Idaho now.
I left Salt Lake City this morning, and I struck out at a BLM.
It was more like a parking lot with a lot of ATVs.
So, I'm headed to ... Well, it's a surprise.
You'll see.
All right, so I have something to share with you.
This was my surprise earlier.
This was my first ever boondocking spot.
I was actually out here in Idaho in 2017.
The mosquitoes are a little bit bad.
I have this wristband on that I got at REI.
It's DEET-free.
It's supposedly to keep the mosquitoes away.
We'll see.
I already got bit on the ankle, but I didn't have this on, so we'll see how that actually
works.
I'm on my way to Alaska.
Canada first, but, yeah.
Oh my God, this is surreal.
I can't believe it.
This was the first spot that I came to where I was boondocking and I thought I was going
to leave in the middle of the night because I heard something go bump in the middle of
the night.
It scared the crap out of me.
That was the time when I realized I had to really push through my fears and deal with
it, or else I wasn't going to make it RVing.
But it is beautiful out here.
This is near Island Park.
There's a mosquito.
This is the start of my season three.
I can't believe it's going to be season three.
I love that I'm starting it off by going to Alaska, and ... Oops.
God, these mosquitoes.
I don't know if this works or not.
We're headed off to Helena, Montana now, because I have a package to pick up there and it's
on my way to Calgary, Canada.
I was going to go to Banff and Jasper on the way up, but it's still frozen.
We've had a very long winter in some of these areas and it's just too frozen for me to go
there.
I'd rather experience the real beauty and awesomeness of it without all the frozen lakes.
So I'm going to do that on the way back down from Alaska, which will be August, roughly.
It's just so beautiful up here.
I've never actually been north of here, except to Yellowstone.
But I've never been into that Montana area or up into Calgary, so this will be a first.
I'm excited to head up there.
All right, guys.
I'll see you on the road.
What an amazing sight this is.
This is Henry Fork Lake over in Idaho, just past Yellowstone actually.
Beauty like this is just amazing.
I love it.
I've got sun, water, mountains.
My favorites.
Well, that was certainly interesting when I was in Island Park.
I stopped to get gas and everything said cash only, their systems were down.
The reason why it was interesting was because yesterday there was all kinds of issues with
Google, with YouTube, with Facebook.
Everything was down and I was like, "Oh my god, what is going on with the internet and
with data systems and platforms?"
It's so much cheaper to get gas over here as well.
Prices are $2.85 for regular unleaded, versus almost a dollar more closer into Yellowstone.
Well, good morning from Great Falls, Montana.
I'm actually staying over here in Sam's Club parking lot, because, well, the Walmart in
town, while you could stay at it, was next to a refinery and it smelled really bad.
It's hot, so I had to open the windows, so I decided to move over to Sam's Club.
It's much quieter over here and they allow you stay here as part of the Walmart family,
if you will.
But, all right.
I'm about to head over to the Canadian border.
I had a few last things I needed to check, one of which was the coolant.
The coolant has been leaking somehow.
It has to be, because it keeps falling below this minimum line.
This morning it was down to here.
Now, we filled this up when I was in the Bay area with Gordon, and he tightened up some
hoses.
I never, ever see a leak on the ground.
I never see a leak anywhere with this thing, but somehow I'm losing coolant.
I don't know how.
So I keep this jug with me.
It's the kind that RAM actually says you should get.
I bought it directly from them.
This was a concentrate.
I had two bottles, I actually mixed them together, the water and the concentrate, into one bottle
so that I could just pour it directly in there instead of doing half and half all the time.
I've been carrying around this stuff for a good nine months now, and just keep adding
coolant to it.
I think when I get back from Alaska I'm going to have them check it again.
They keep saying there's no leak, but there's definitely a leak somewhere.
I shouldn't be losing coolant like that.
Also, for those of you who were wondering what the Balmer is.
This is a Balmer.
This is for my EcoTrek system.
We moved it from down below, which was somewhere way down there where it could get corroded
and grime and dirt all over it, and moved it up here.
All right.
I think I'm finally ready to go to Alaska.
Coolant is filled, gas is filled.
I got my UltraGauge to work.
It was giving me problems because of the fuel level, but I think I just didn't know how
to do it.
Anyways, I got that done.
Fuel level is 100%.
It was giving me this crazy alarm.
But I thought I'd show you my little setup here.
Let's see.
I have my Garmin RV Drive.
I have my UltraGauge, which tells me my engine temperature and also my capacity of the load
I'm putting on the engine.
I especially use it when I'm going up mountains.
I have my phone, I have my Sony Action Cam for my road footage.
I have the camera I'm filming on, and these are all the crazy wires.
Oh, and then I also have my inReach Garmin for emergencies, especially since I'm going
to Alaska.
But I love this little gadget that I got.
It fits into my cigarette lighter if you will, whatever they call that these days.
But I have two USBs plugged in and my charger for my Garmin.
If you're wondering why I have the Garmin and I also have the Google Maps up, I'm going
to Canada and my Verizon plan caps me at half a gig every day.
I don't want to use all that data just for maps, so I brought the Garmin.
I haven't usually used it.
I used it a lot more when I had the other RV, but it's very useful actually.
I love the stuff on it, I just always forget to put it up and I didn't have a mount for
it.
So I went and bought a mount today at Walmart.
You ready to go, Lily?
Canada and Alaska, girl.
I already got bitten by mosquitoes when I was in Idaho.
It's no fun.
Oh my god, I hate mosquitoes.
Don't we all?
I can't figure out what it is that they don't like, if you eat it they won't bite you.
I haven't figured out that magic formula.
I also bought a bunch of mosquito stuff and some of it's got DEET in it, which, ugh, I
don't like.
But, man, it's better than getting bitten so much and potentially getting West Nile
virus or something.
Anyways, Lily is on her meds too.
Nothing that won't keep them from biting her.
She has flea and tick medication, but I do have her on heartworm medication in case she
does get bit.
But I have some essential oil stuff that I put in this little button.
I don't know if you guys have ever seen this.
There's a little button on her collar.
It's a little diffuser for essential oils.
This is it right here.
I put essential oils in there and it keeps her nice and good.
The mosquitoes stay away, please and thanks to you.
We have arrived at the Sweetgrass Canadian border.
We're at the Canadian border now in Sweetgrass.
Not too many cars ahead of me, maybe four or five.
When I crossed into the Mexico border I had to have all this documentation in order to
get in, but I won't have to do that here in Canada.
I just have my passport.
I also have a passport card, I have Lily's rabies certification, saying that she's had
her rabies shots, and I have my registration and my insurance and stuff for my vehicle
in case they need to see any of that stuff.
I've been through the Canada border several times.
I've never had any issues, except actually coming back into America when I was in, where
was it, Quebec, going into Maine.
They were a little bit aggressive coming back into the States, but it wasn't horrible, horrible.
They just were upset because Lily was barking at them, so they decided to board my vehicle
to give an extra thorough inspection because of my dog barking.
That's all I'm going to say.
Hello.
Morning.
Thank you.
Just yourself in there?