And now, the end is here . . .

Hello, Everyone!

Well, we have officially made it.  After approx. 5500 miles of driving, we arrived in Anchorage late this afternoon.  Unbelievably, we managed to make it the entire trip without a single car problem . . . until we were about a mile outside of Anchorage and had a rock jump up from the highway and chip our windshield.  Nonetheless, the problem is being taken care of tomorrow, and we are safely in the city we'll call home for the next year.

To give y'all a quick update on the past 24 hours: we spent the night in Tok, AK, and then drove along part of the Alaska Highway to get to Palmer, AK.  Tammy took some awesome pictures as we drove through the Yukon Territory to get to Tok from Haines yesterday afternoon:

As Tammy's fun fact,we have now found out that there is one area code for the entire state of Alaska.  It is 907.  The only exception is the small town of Hyder, which uses the British Columbia code of 250.  907 is the largest area code (in physical size) in the US.  It is also the farthest east and the farthest west code (for an explanation, see the first post in this blog on how Alaska is both the farthest west and farthest east US state).

This afternoon, we arrived in Palmer.  Palmer is where the Alaska State Fair is located, and we, of course, needed to go.  Being only an hour outside of Anchorage, we thought it would be a good way to celebrate making it to our destination.

The fair was a ton of fun.  We started the afternoon by watching a lumberjack demonstration.

It was awesome.  This guy carved a chair (originally pretending he was going to carve a rabbit) using just this saw.   Other competitions included log rolling and climbing up a 50 foot post as fast as possible (pole climbing).

We then went and viewed the farm exhibits, including a live goat milking demonstration.

Of course, Steve felt the need to step into the farmers' shoes for the afternoon.  He was a bit scared by the idea of "driving" a tractor.

Then we got to see all of the vegetables.  These things are amazing.  People grow them as long or heavy as they possibly can, and they look so weird.  The long, snakelike vegetable you see below is a gourd, and it set the Alaska world record this year for length.

This was the first place pumpkin this year.  You read that correctly.  It weighs 902 lbs.

Finally, after leaving the State Fair, we headed into Anchorage, the city that is now our home.  We'll update a bit more sporadically over the next few months as we head out on weekend adventures to exciting towns around Alaska.  Until then, keep us posted on how all of you are doing, and we look forward to having you as visitors in Anchorage!  Until then . . .

HAPPY TRAILS!