The Sargent Family in Alaska: Let me catch you up on things...

I'm sorry that it has taken me four months to update this blog. There have been so many things happening at once. If you remember in April, I took a few extra PRAXIS II exams to help me be further highly qualified in areas that I want to teach. It was during that time that I was being interviewed by two different school districts in southern Alaska. One of them didn't work out because I really didn't want to teach algebra II or higher math. Things worked out with the other school district. I loved their hatchery program and the chance to work with a greenhouse program. I was standing in the middle of Dimond Walmart checking out some asparagus when I was offered a contract. It was so hard to not jump up and down and scream out loud!

I accepted the science position at Sand Point School. I returned to Barrow and didn't check out. I finished my classes strong. I kept things positive and didn't immediately share the news with everyone. I've noticed that people will treat you differently when you decide to leave a position. My contract was fulfilled in May and we had a week after that to have our house ready for inspection.

Mean Girls/Going Away Party

Barrow Airport

We sent our household goods to Sand Point and took the bare minimum with us on the plane. I think we packed maybe 2-3 outfits a piece. It snowed the day we left and it was going to be super hot in West Virginia. We decided to have my mother pick up some cheap summer clothes that the kids could wear for a month. Toby and I would have to buy some items when we got there.

This next section, I would like to title, "The Plane Trip That Took Forever."
We are all about saving money when it comes to flying. We have five people and flying is not cheap. We found reasonable tickets, but the travel time took forever. We left on the afternoon flight from Barrow to Fairbanks. We had a four hour layover which wasn't too bad. We had time to look in the gift shop and pick up some tourists type gifts for some family members. The flight from Fairbanks to Seattle wasn't too bad. The seats were comfy and there was wifi available. We arrived in Seattle at 10pm and didn't leave until midnight. YUCK!

Don't take a flight like this.... ever! It was not fun. We left Seattle at midnight and arrived at Dallas/Forth Worth at 6am. DFW is a cool airport! I did some research before we left Barrow and learned that there was a play area for kids near our terminal. There were lots of options for breakfast around us. Toby, Abi and Georgia chose Popeye's for their meal. Emily and I chose bagels and coffee from Dunkin. The play area was a great place to squeeze in a quick nap. We called our good friend Rodger to come and visit us. He brought us chocolate milk and donuts. It was awesome! We had a nice tailgating session outside in the parking lot for a couple of hours.

Our flight to Charleston didn't leave until noon, but we arrived in West Virginia at 3pm. It gave us the opportunity to check out Cabela's. Sadly, the prices of Columbia and North Face are cheaper in Alaska than at this Cabela's. The drive to Parkersburg seemed to take forever. Mostly because we were not used to being stuck in a car longer than ten minutes.

Granda Connie was very happy to host us and allow us to use her house as our base camp for the summer. My mother had collected lots of clothing options for the girls. I bought my month long summer wardrobe at Walmart. There was no point in spending hundreds of dollars on clothing that I would only wear for a month. I would have gone to yard sales, but I was dying due to the heat.

We ran children every where and picked them up in different states. Emily and Abi got to go to the beach with their father and stepmother. Grace got to spend time with us on two different occasions. We finally got to go to The Great Wolf Lodge for a night. Did you know they do veteran's discounts? It saved us over $50 on our room which we used in the restaurant. We watched the Cincinnati Reds play on the tv while we dined on food. I did notice that we had a hard time finishing our plates. It was like our eyes were too big for our bellies. I got to go to the beach in North Carolina and learned that all barbecues are not created equal. I ate at Smithfield's and ordered a barbecue sandwich. I was confused because there was no sauce on it. North Carolina bbq is different and uses vinegar. No thanks! We did get the opportunity to save money on a hotel by staying in one that was still being built. It wasn't noisy or anything. We had amazing views on our balcony and they upgraded us to a bigger suite when they noticed Georgia. If you ever get the chance, stay at the Bask hotel. We nearly died on the 4th of July in Williamsburg. I am so glad that we bought the refillable cups. I think we got our money's worth that day. We were there all day! We were the fifth car to park and get our tickets. It was so much fun to walk around and see history taking place. We got drenched in the rain and finally felt comfortable with the temperature. We stayed in a terrible hotel in Virginia, definitely stay away from the Clarion hotel that's by the Bass Pro Shops.

We had to stop at the outlet mall in Monroe to pick up some discount gear. Abi took the opportunity to grab the bull by the horns.

Williamsburg

I nearly forgot about camping! We went camping with Georgia while Em and Abi were away. I love Lake Moomaw. Nice fishing and boating. We rented a cheap john boat for a few hours and explored some of the islands. We are thinking about going back and camping on the islands like some people that we met. We met a fabulous family from Pocahontas County, WV. They had a little girl that ran around with Georgia. I am totally mad that I was in Virginia for less than a week and saw 2 black bears. I spent a year in Barrow and I didn't see 1 polar bear. They always scared them away before I got there!

We had a list of food and supplies that we needed in Alaska. We bought the majority of items at Big Lots and Dollar Tree because everything there is super cheap. I was embarrassed when I checked out of the Dollar Tree with my buggy load. Everyone got a good chuckle when I told them I was from Alaska and there is no such thing as a Dollar Store. I made special list of craft items to keep us busy in Alaska. I completed that order quickly, but I left out the fabric! I can't believe that I didn't buy any fabric. Good thing you can buy cheap fabric online at fabric.com. I look for sale items and never buy fabric unless I have a plan for it.

Redwings Breakfast

Kaleigh was our server.

Smoothie and pizza at the Market

Goofing off

My nerds are sad that they will miss it. We did watch a couple of movies while we could.

This is on our wish list of items to buy. Unfortunately, it takes up too much space.

my children....

I don't ask. Yes its the middle of the summer in the L48 and she is wearing a knit cap. I think she is crazy.

We love science!

and turtles

jellyfish

Before you knew it, our trip to the Lower 48 was over. :(
Everyone was sad to leave, but excited to start our new adventure. (We were not excited about the plane trip back.)

Once again, in the name of saving money we chose the wrong flight. Granted we saved almost $300 a ticket, but it made for a long day. Charleston to Charlotte to Phoenix to Anchorage. We had an 8 hour layover in Charlotte which made for a long day. It was okay because we found a nice little nook and made camp there. We took turns napping, reading, playing games, surfing the internet and people watching. Georgia talked me into buying her a book that the Disney channel was promoting, "The Descendants: Isle of the Lost." We bought it and started reading it together. Its a cute book for little girls.

Phoenix is a nice airport, but we were only there for two hours. They have some nice options for eating. Toby, Abi and Georgia wanted Chinese food and Emily and I wanted fresh salads. We arrived in Anchorage at midnight and I forgot to call the hotel shuttle when we landed. We picked up our luggage and waited 30 mins for the shuttle to arrive. We weren't able to get to the hotel until 1:30 am. Yikes! It was late, but this town in always busy with people coming from the bush to go shopping and tourists. I chose the Dimond Hotel because it was next to the 24 hr Walmart, not all Walmarts are 24 hr stores. The girls slept while we walked next door to Walmart to do a bush order. Last time we were in Anchorage, we did our bush order through Fred Meyer which is part of the Kroger family. The process was pretty easy. Walmart was a bit of a challenge. I didn't want to buy any freezer foods or fresh foods due to shipping costs. We chose non-perishable items and a tv. I took on an extra duty in Barrow so that I could save the money to buy a tv. There was some confusion on the bush order counter as to how to send the tv. We were not sure if NAC or ACE were the carriers.

We made it back to the hotel with enough time to get a few hours of sleep because we had to be at the airport at 8am. Dimond breakfast was amazing! I love the eggs and waffles there. The shuttle took us to the airport for our final flight to Homer. We did ALOT of research and learned that its cheaper to fly to Homer than rent a car and drive. There is no one way fares for rental cars to Homer. That put a wrench in our plans to buy the girls bikes for the island. We flew Ravn airlines and everyone was so friendly. They made the flight special for Georgia and gave her fancy juice which was a mix of cranberry juice and orange juice.

We arrived in Homer around 10am and our ferry didn't leave until 10pm. We were exhausted and didn't know how we were going to get our cooler filled. The answer came from a sweet woman working behind the car rental desk. She suggested that we rent a minivan for the day. We could drive around, see Homer and still get a nap in. Perfect! We shopped at Food For Less for the ferry. We learned that the ferry had a galley but it wasn't open all the time. We bought shelf stable microwaveable foods, juice and sandwich items. Our final meal was at McDonald's, just because there is free wifi.

water planes land here

Lots of rvs and tents

Someone lives in there.

girls love AK and being outdoors again.

Someone always does something in a picture

They never give me a normal picture

We returned the car to the airport and took a taxi to the ferry dock. The driver turned out to be Greek! We had a good chuckle because the girls' love My Big Fat Greek Wedding. Most of the Greek that they speak comes from that movie. At the ferry dock, we learned that there was going to be strong Gale Force winds. We were prepared to camp on deck with our tents and duct tape. After some discussion we were offered a room for the two day journey. The double rooms with their own private bathroom was completely booked. We were able to get a room with a bunk bed and sink in it. Then I was upset to learn that there was room on the ferry for a car. We could have bought a junker in Homer and filled it full of goodies! ARRGGHHH! N'uff said on that.

So we have two beds and five people with luggage and a cooler. We piled the luggage into the cubby place with the sink and put the cooler by the beds. Backpacks got stacked by the window. Emily and Abi shared a bed, Toby and I shared a bed which left Georgia out. She got a nice fluffy bed made of several sleeping bags on the floor. We crashed at that point. No one was awake to see the ferry leave Homer. We woke up the next morning and we were close to Kodiak island. The seas weren't bad at this point. We were able to see whales breaching! I didn't get a chance to see that in Barrow. I only got to see the whale when it was being pulled to shore. When we arrived in Kodiak, I saw a harbor seal swimming by the ferry dock and a sea otter floating on its back. It was awesome! We had 8 hours in Kodiak to run around and have fun.

We found a park name Sargent park. Its rare that we see that spelling of the last name. We found another McDonald's for drinks and free wifi. There was an outfitter that was close to the McD's that had great prices on rain gear. We didn't need it, but I thought about buying the next size up for the kids. We found some little shops and eventually we got tired. We returned to the boat to shower and eat some lunch. Most people did not return to the ferry. As we were leaving Kodiak, we saw a pod of orcas! I can't believe that we had been on the ferry for 24 hours and saw some orcas!

Outside of Kodiak, the boat started pitching and rolling. This was going to be a test to see who in our family would get sea sick. Poor Georgia didn't do so well. I had some dramamine for her, but it made her go to sleep. The next morning we arrived in Chignik. There isn't much to Chignik, I think Trident has it as a fishing port/cannery. We had four hours to walk around. We found the school, but it was closed due to low enrollment. We found a bakery there and bought a dozen of the best donuts. They were salmonberry and cream cheese donuts. We devoured them!

The boat continued to pitch and roll. Georgia continued to throw up. Abi started to get sick. Emily started to get sleepy. I started to get pissed that the boat continued to pitch and roll. It was difficult to take a shower when the boat was moving like this. We were very lucky that the Captain of the boat played a couple of movies for the kids. We arrived at Sand Point, AK at 10pm at night, but it wasn't dark.

Our German friends that we met on the ferry helped us carry our bags down the gangplank. We had no clue where to go from that point. We were lucky that there was a taxi on the pier. The driver and many others were putting their children on the ferry to visit the next port which was King Cove.

Looking back... I wish that we would have spent an extra day in Anchorage and Homer. Then road the ferry all the way to Dutch Harbor and stopped at Sand Point on the way back. Unfortunately, I don't think Georgia would have made it that far on the ferry.

The taxi took us to teacher housing and we met our new friends/coworkers. Housing in really nice! It was fully furnished and the last teacher left us some items in case we needed them. We gave Em and Abi the master bedroom so that they could turn it into the ultimate teen room. It didn't hurt that Abi turned 13 and the AC put a tv on sale plus we got an extra 25% off. The girls got a tv and blue ray for under $200. Georgia got her own room and we found this amazing velvet painting of a unicorn at the thrift shop for her. She proudly displays it. The pantry is huge and it contains my favorite thing about the whole house, my own washer and dryer. Last year, I had to share 3 washers and 3 dryers with 6 families. Not fun! Now I have my own again!! I am happy.

This place is amazing. Gorgeous. Breathtaking skies and land. Lots of berries. No bears. No wolves. Lots of eagles. Everyone has been friendly to us. Everyone waves when they drive by or walk by. The AC and Trident store workers learn your name. I love it here. I want to stay here for as long as I can. In fact.... there is a four bedroom house with a killer view for sale down the road.