The Sale of a Lifestyle

The last time I blogged about our happenings in Alaska, the furnace fan had died and our pipes were frozen. Of course, at the same time I have plans to travel out of state and my husband remains behind with the trailer to deal with the issues – in sub, sub, sub zero temperatures. He hired an RV repairman to fix the furnace fan. Though it should have been a rather simple job, it led to events that have changed our lives.

Because I was not here during the frigid conditions, I cannot relate to how difficult it was to live without a furnace and wearing three layers of clothes. My husband had several electric heaters going inside and under the trailer, and even they didn’t keep the temperature above 60 inside and nothing could unfreeze the pipes –– this is the greatest purpose of the furnace and the furnace fan needed to be fixed.

We have three propane tanks. Two are inside the front of the trailer as most are, and they are connected to each other. If one runs out of propane, the other one kicks in. As we live in our trailer year-round and full-time, we had a propane company install a large tank by the side of the trailer so that we would never run out. It was connected to one propane tank inside which was apparently connected to the other.

Mr. Joe Schmoe arrives to fix the furnace fan. My husband puts a small electric heater in the furnace area to help keep everything and everyone a little warmer. My husband turns off the propane from the huge tank outside while Joe should have turned off the tanks inside. He did not. The heat from the heater and the propane coming out of an inside tank ignited. With a WHOOOSH, Joe jumped from the area followed by flames while my husband sprinted to the community hall for a fire extinguisher. Within minutes, the fire is out, due to the quick-thinking of my husband –– a one-time volunteer firefighter in Colorado.

Deep breath. What is the damage? No damage to the shell of the trailer. Inside, however, the quick burst of flames singed the hot water heater destroying its external insulation and fried some of the wires. Before I continue, who is to blame for the negligence? From discussion boards on RV sites, my husband received message after message that the negligence lies with the person hired to do the job, not my husband. Even other RV repairmen said they don’t ever trust a client with responsibilites like turning off propane. And, they all mentioned the insurance the repairmen have, something it turned out Mr. Joe Schmoe did not.

Joe fixes the furnace fan and voila, there’s not only heat pulsing through the trailer once again, but the fan is now blowing all of the white dust that came out of the extinguisher throughout the inside of the trailer. Everything is covered in white dust from the foodstuffs in the pantry to the clothing in the closets. My husband is frazzled. He has an incompetent repairman, a fire that could have destroyed our home, a now limping hot-water heater, and a cleaning job for Mr. Clean. The temperatures still hover at -20˙F. The only good news is that the trailer is warming up and eventually the pipes will unfreeze.

While I am in Colorado and my husband is fighting fires in Alaska, there’s something else happening. Four years earlier, we placed our name on a list for housing for seniors over 55. The Snug Harbor Senior Living sits outside the town limits of Cooper Landing on the side of a mountain and overlooks the Kenai Lake. There are only 12 apartment units and people generally give up waiting for an opening and move elsewhere. I, however, get the call that there is a two-bedroom apartment opening February 1 and we can have it if we want it. We have 24-hours to decide, after that we go back to the bottom of the list and wait.

Last September, we received our first call that an apartment was opening. We requested to be called at a later date as we had just winterized our trailer, built the awesome arctic entrance, and just were shocked at the call. After discussing it for a few weeks, we decided that the next time we received the call, we would say ‘yes.’ Well, this is that call. It’s sub-zero and my husband is trying to survive – sleeping alone was not warm either. Our trailer is taking a hard winter hit. He’s tired of hauling water and dumping in frigid temps. After two years, we were ready for a change. We discussed the idea with our children and they said we should take the apartment. So, 24-hours later, we accepted the offer and decided to move into senior living in Cooper Landing. We agreed that March 1 would be our lease-date and then began realizing how much we had to do to make this happen.

Meanwhile, back at the trailer, Joe Schmoe decides to charge us an arm and a leg for the work he did and the work that he had to do because he goofed up. We decided to give the whole thing over to the insurance company –– a great idea from several people on the RV Forum. We received money not only for Joe, but also to completely replace the hot water heater. We now have money for Joe, but he’s refusing the payment because he doesn’t feel he should ‘lose’ any of his bill for his own negligence. So, we sit with a check waiting, waiting, waiting to pay him. At some point, we’ll just become those ‘out-of-state’ people he said ‘never pay him.’ Now, we know why.

Leaving the 5th-wheel lifestyle that we have lived in for nearly 8 years and moving not only has emotional challenges, but has other challenges too. We need to sell our trailer; however, since we had made double payments for years, we were caught up beyond two years. Still, selling the trailer was the priority because we have nowhere to store it.

We met up with some friends in mid-February in Homer, Alaska. I just mentioned to them that if they know anyone looking for a trailer, let them know we have one for sale. Within a week, our friends had potential buyers. Yeah, this woman knows everyone in Alaska as she has been here over 40 years. The couple came and spent two hours looking at the trailer, learning about the trailer, and falling in love with the trailer. We are now in the final days before closing on the trailer and transporting it to Homer! The best part of this sale is that the couple wants to live in the trailer year-round so they bought everything to winterize including the arctic entrance!

So, the move begins. The end of an era, the sale of a lifestyle. Yet, the new beginnings are all new. Furniture comes with a trailer; it does not come with an apartment. When we downsized our house in Nebraska, I put the money for everything we sold into an account. We had the money saved for this very day. We went furniture shopping only to find sales everywhere. Serious sales from 50% off furniture sales to Presidents’ Day Sales. We bought living room furniture, bed, shelves, and more. We transported everything in our truck, we put together an entertainment center, shelves, and a bed. We cleaned two places: the new one and the trailer.

As we also have storage in Colorado, not a lot, but some. We are now needing to pack and head there to sell what we no longer want or need and organize and pack the rest to be be shipped up here on March 26. Today is March 12, 2024 and it isn’t even one month since that dinner with our friends in Homer. So much has happened and so much more will continue to happen until we’re finally settled.

Furniture isn’t shipped to Alaska from the Lower 48 so what we need we had shipped to Colorado. When it arrives here, our log bed frame will need to be put together and stained. Our dressers will need to be assembled. Furniture and wall art that I never thought I’d see again will be living in a new home. I am wondering if we’ll ever complete this entire adventure and be able to sit down and sigh. We do believe that one day we’re going to ‘wake up’ and wonder ‘what just happened to us?’

The traveling life of the 5th wheel is coming to an end; however, we can’t just end it all, can we? No, we can’t. Once we have sold the trailer, we’re going to look for an Arctic Fox slide-in, camper trailer. We still have our truck so we can still go camping and travel if we want. We will just downsize from full-time living. The camper we would like to buy is in Casper, Wyoming. This means that at some point we will need to drive to Casper from Alaska, buy the camper, and drive it back up here. Yay! Another road trip on the Alcan. I have missed that road and the scenery. As we pack and head for Colorado and our storage, we wonder if we can fit in an eight-hour round trip to Casper and look at the Arctic Fox. Are we nuts? I asked my daughter that recently and she said, “I don’t even think about it anymore?”

My old ‘digs’ is empty, clean, and ready for a different life with some new people. All that’s left is to wait for warmer weather so we can deflate and fold the AirSkirts, remove insulation underneath the slide outs, take down the skirting, and peel off the 3M plastic on the windows.

I am sitting in my new ‘digs,’ as a friend called this place, and looking out the window at an amazing view of the mountains, the lake and the blue sky–– all with the white covering of snow. I feel like I’m living at a ski resort in Colorado. I am not. I am home in Alaska, a place I never imagined I would ever live. And spring is on its way.

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