Trip to Anchorage

I have been super excited to be able to travel to Chicago for training. Why? You may ask. Well because I set it up so I could lay over a little over a day at home in Grandville before having to get to training at the Chicago Botanical gardens. My flight was scheduled for 11pm in Anchorage on Friday. In order to get to anchorage and have enough time to get my car all parked I planned on having my car packed and ready to leave right after work at 5.

So Friday work went well and we actually got out at 3:30. I just decided to leave right then so I could go explore a little bit in Anchorage and maybe take some pictures along the way. There are some really pretty sights along the way so that was definitely worth doing. Then about half way to Anchorage my car started acting funny. It was shifting sort of hard and making an odd sound. Then I used my blinker to let someone pass me and I got a "click click blaaaaaaaa" sound...then my car was dead. To make matters worse, at that point there was no shoulder. (When I say no shoulder I mean there is a wall of rock to my right and the same on the other other side.) Luckily I had been going about 50 and headed down a mountain. I was able to coast down the road and at the bottom there just so happened to be a side road and parking area. I was able to roll far enough to make it to the road and get off the road to a gravel parking spot. This was my "Oh God please no!" moment. My first action was check my phone, as most of you have probably found out cell service in the mountains is crappy at best. But I had one bar! I have never been so happy to see one bar on my phone in my life. So what do I do? Call mom and dad :) What is that going to do? Not sure. Did I think about that, or care? Nope.

The call went like this...
Ring ring ring.
Dad: hello?
Me: My car is dead on the side of the road and I am no where near anything.
Dad: hello...hello megan. I can't hear you
Me: (yelling a little bit) MY CAR IS DEAD
Dad: hello...Michelle take the phone I can't hear her. She sounds like she is in distress.
Mom:hello megan? What's wrong?
Me: Caaaarrrr deeeead, CAR DEAD! (I decided to keep it sort and slow maybe that would get through. And also apparently not use proper English.)
Then the call cut off.

I would like to start off by thanking the inventor of texting and that the text will continue to try to go through with little to no service because I don't really know what I would have done. Now it was serious. I messaged my mentor at the Wrangell, my co-worker Peter, and of course my parent's. (That would have been a crappy move to call like that and not say what was happening.) Luckily all parties got the message. Peter texted me back quickly letting me know he was on his way. In actuality, of places for my car to die in Alaska, this was probably one the best places. First of all I was located on an actual marked side road. Second I was near a river that actually had a name posted along the road. I was able to tell Peter where I was actually and not just say by a mountain... although true is not very descriptive in Alaska, just sayin.

Peter made it to where I was by about 8pm. At this point, we are still around 1hr 45min away (flight is still at 11 and I wont be let in unless I am there at least 45min ahead of time). I'm still good at this point, close but everything will be ok.

This is the point where I found out why calling mom was a good idea. My mom being the wonderful woman she is contacted the people I stayed with in Anchorage to see if they had any ideas. Joel replied saying that I was only about three miles up the road from Victory Bible Camp and they would probably be able to tow my car to the camp and have their mechanic look at it. My mom called the camp and was able to tell me who to find and talk to. So when Peter arrived I packed my things in his car and we drove to the camp. After finding the camp, everyone was more than willing to help out. I can't even begin say how grateful I was and still am for their help. They made this bad experience far better than it otherwise would have been. I was able to give them my keys so they could tow it to the camp while Peter drove me to the airport.

When we finally left the camp it was about 8:15pm. Which was fine there was enough time for me to still get to the airport. So we are going along our merry way and then we get stuck behind this janky camper. Now when I say janky I don't mean this was old and worn out. It was janky as in it was a flat bed truck that had an old camper with the bottom cut off and held onto the truck with what looked like some sort of strap system. So naturally this vehicle is going at 25mph down the road (it is a 55mph road) and the road is winding through the mountains (aka there are no passing zones) plus the truck driver didn't really seem to be able to keep it within the lane. Several miles down the road there still has not been a passing zone and now there are 8 cars stacked up behind us. Just for everyone who is not aware of this, it is illegal to back up traffic on these types of roads and you are required by law to pull over and let the traffic flow past once you have 5 cars behind you (that sure wasn't happening here, even with several paved pull off areas for sight seeing that could have been used for this. ) Eventually we made it down the mountain and there was enough of a straight away to merit a passing zone.

At this point I am doing the calculations on time and looking at my GPS to figure out when I am going to get there, which are all saying 10:17pm. I had to be there with my ticket at 10:15pm. So while driving through Anchorage I am willing the lights to change or stat green. Somehow I was able to run in the doors at 10:13 and there was an open clerk that got me my ticket and I was at the TSA check-in by 10:15.

The flight to Grand Rapids and the flight later to Chicago all went off without a hitch. I was able to spend a little time home and see Marc and the family. This wasn't really how I planned on starting the trip, but it worked out in the end.