2015 Family Move Introduction

The goal for this year's family move journal is simple, finish. The summer 2013 journal detailing our family's adventure moving from Fort Leavenworth to Fairbanks, AK was progressing nicely before it abruptly stopped in Dawson City. I attribute two root causes for the failure.

First, I simply ran out of steam and time. It wasn't possible to continue updating while still traveling and enjoying some of the activities along the way. Additionally, my priority was getting to our destination quickly to start work right away, which I did. By the time I got settled into work and thought about finishing, it was eight months later. I could still complete the log now with a majority of details, but the moment has passed.

The second and more important reason for the halt is that I felt my writing abilities weren't sufficient to capture the experience. I couldn't accurately capture the mesmerizingly deep blue waters of Teslin Lake in the Yukon Territory. I'm certainly not good enough to lead a reader through the incredible experience our team had interacting with each other and those we met along the way.

I've now gone back and reread my entire blog from start to the abruptly failed finish. It was immediately apparent that the problem was neither of the above. It was my failure to establish the correct purpose. Rereading the journal became a several hour exercise of map exploration and photo mining. The purpose of the original trip report shouldn't have centered on others, but on us. It's merely a sketched out map of our exploration so we can relive the adventure anytime we wish.

So, that becomes the purpose of our family's trip report from Fairbanks, AK to MacDill Air Force Base in Tampa, FL. We'll still be operating our family's 1979 Cessna 206. This year our family will travel together as opposed to splitting up to fly the airplane and drive one car. It was the chance of a lifetime to experience the trip up with my dad, Uncle Norris, and Brayden, but this time it's about our family adventuring whimsically together on a much less constrained timeline.

The weeks leading up to the move have been interesting with us attending the Hudson Memorial Fly-In at Talkeetna, closing out my duties at work, taking a 2100 mile family vacation around the state, and completing an extremely stressful week of closing out our affairs. We had hoped to attend the Skwentna Fly-In on 6 June, but it was adding too much stress to get everything done by early Saturday morning. Thus, our expected departure date is Sunday, the seventh of June.

We've shipped both vehicles and all of our belongings. The plan and packing list differ from 2013 as we plan on camping along the way for a bit of a different experience. Mind you, we're not talking backcountry camping fighting off bears and scavenging for food. We're thinking more along the lines of stopping at some established strips along such as Watson lake with some facilities. We'll also be stopping in some of the more well travelled spots for gas and essentials such as lunch, shower, wifi, and a geocache or two. I understand these are first world needs, but we're in it for the enjoyment of the trip as opposed to cost savings or an off the grid experience.

I completed an instrument proficiency check on Friday night, 5 June, along with an oil change. We're rechecking our packing list today, 6 June, and loading the airplane, a friend very generously loaned us their minivan the past week to complete preparation for the move. We'll also mail a couple packages to our destination and do some flight planning to figure out where to go along the way. In general, we'll playing the route by ear and weather.

The plan as it sits now is to depart Sunday morning with the goal of making Watson Lake for the evening. We'll do lunch in Tok and customs in Whitehorse. That has great possibility of changing as the day matures and I continue to research possibilities. The kids start to get antsy by 2.5 hours into a leg and hit a daily limit at about five hours. Thus, we'll keep legs shorter and won't push too hard at the start. That said, the first day plans out to five hours.