Full Time RV Living in Alaska - NOT What We Imagined!

When were you guys going to tell us about this joke? All this up here in the sky, the clouds and the rain that never goes away. I kind of feel like some of y'all are out there like, yeah Hanks, you should have known about this. Now partly it's my fault because I should have known being in California with it being as wet of a season as it was while we were visiting there that it was going to be even more of a wet season coming up here into Alaska. My bad on that one. Don't worry, I'm not blaming you guys. We're currently in Kenai right now and I'm not sure what to make of it. It seems like a town where you go fishing a lot in but if you're not a fisherman then there's really not much to do. Now I know what y'all are saying, I'm tired of hearing excuses. Hanks, I want to see some adventures and I want to see you guys having a good time. You're in Alaska living your ultimate dream and I get that. I feel that in so many ways. I think I'm just being hard on myself right now because I had an expectation coming up here that we were going to be able to see some amazing mountains and views all the time but that's okay though because none of these rainy day vibes are going to bring down the energy especially with you guys here. You're always kicking it up a notch for us and we appreciate that. Today we start our trek going to Anchor Point. I'm really thankful that today we only have an hour drive. Yes, yes, yes, I said it, only an hour drive. We initially visited Palmer, Alaska which was incredible there. There were some amazing views. We were able to get outdoors and do some golfing. I was able to catch up on a lot of work which was really nice and needless to say we definitely needed some R&R after those long travel days. However, just like anything else in life, it all needs to be balanced out so I know we are going to start wanting to plan some more excursions coming forth when we get to Anchor Point. I'm hoping to maybe even do some fishing there or shortly thereafter. Some other really exciting news is we have a meetup planned here in Alaska. Nothing really big, just enough to get out and meet some of you folks that have been waiting forever for us to get here. We want to take the opportunity to spend some time with you guys because I'm missing that connection with y'all. I mean I'm loving the time that we have here together but I need a little more one-on-one in person if you know what I mean. Something I was able to finish up with all of our free time and little R&R on the side is I was able to get the batteries finally hooked up. Y'all have been super patient with us getting these batteries figured out. It's a new learning curve for us because we never dove into these avenues of wanting to boondock more and have a system that will support that. What I was able to do was I was able to parallel both batteries, take those batteries and connect them to a bus bar and then have everything run off that bus bar including the inverter. Now I'll show you guys some footage of that as we go along because I want some opinions as we go forth on are we meeting appropriate safety protocols out there? Do you guys have any suggestions on how to make it look a little more nice than what I have it laid out? I try to do my best but listen once again this is all new to me so I'm trying to just take it step by step and just get the system running and then make adjustments as we go along. I'm excited to have the batteries and do a little more boondocking. It gets us off grid and a little more immersed in nature. I think you guys can feel me on this one. It's nice to not have to pay so many dues in the RV park realm. Does that make sense? Basically I just don't like paying for RV parks. It gets expensive as you go down the road and constantly hopping from RV park to RV park yeah those prices add up quickly. Oh I got some other amazing news for you guys. Come here. Yep still raining behind the hidden compartment number one. Look at that bad boy right there. Do you not see it? You don't see it do you? I finally got off my lazy butt and got this fixed. I ordered a part off of etrailer.com. It was like three or four hundred dollars but I got a new replacement motor for our left front jack. The one that's always been causing the error codes. We hear you guys and we want to thank you for putting amazing comments in the comment section below on previous videos explaining what might be causing the issue. When we got here to this park here in Kenai it crapped out on us again and I was like that's it we're ordering it and we're replacing it. I'm tired of dragging the feet. Carl is picking up the slack and going forward. We haven't really used it since installing this so we're gonna be test trialing this as we go forward and I'm glad you guys at least have a little knowledge that it's here and it's working so that you can help me pay attention as we go forward and knowing if that's gonna make the difference or not. Was it the motor? I don't know. I'm hoping so. How was the install you might ask? Well luckily you get to see it all for yourselves. Oh really quick. If you guys have the same issue where you're throwing errors and it's saying left front jack right front jack whatever make sure you drop all your jacks once you're hooked up to a vehicle and then hold the retract all so that resets all jacks. Otherwise it's not going to clear the code. You got to make sure they're all down. Reset all up. You following what I'm saying? What's going on in here? Laundry day. Need I say more? I feel like no matter what laundry is just always stressful. Whether you're seated at a perfect place and location and you have nothing else to do you're still like stressed out or it's like today where it's a travel day and you're like I don't want to do laundry before I get out on the road. We've been talking about getting a washer and dryer because it's been six years of doing this and that's enough. Yeah I agree with you on that one Nay Nay. I'm over it. Can't change it right now so we might as well make the best of what we got. I'll get the quarters and the bouncy sheets and laundry detergent. Ready? Yeah I'll take that. You're doing a lot already. Did you see if anyone else went in there to do laundry? Because that's the thing you get it all ready to go. You're mentally ready to do laundry and then they're all in use and it's like why? Well no honey I have not been over to check. You didn't let me know to do that. Actually I've been doing something much more important hanging out with our peeps right now so I feel like I'm a little bit off the hook right? Because it's them you're off the hook. You look absolutely thrilled. The rain makes me so tired. Just another day in the life of the Hanks household. Are you doing okay over there? You want me to carry something or in an extra hand? Okay. Reality folks this is reality. This is your first time to our channel. Welcome. It just it's something else. I don't want to get you too excited so please don't freak out too much but if you look behind me you might see your first wildlife sighting since we've been in Alaska which is really cool. Well look it's a really big Dexter. So laundry here is $3 for a wash and $1.75 for a dry. Not too bad. Not too bad. I'm just reading to make sure I don't break any rules because you know the Hanks break rules all the time. Okay that's probably too much but that's okay. Yeah overall this RV resort has been pretty pretty cool. It's called Diamond M Ranch. I mean it's nice. It has like a cool layout. It's like they got the western saloon theme when pulling up and going into the office building. I really like that. So far however I'm not very impressed with everyone saying you gotta have reservations coming up here. Once again I feel like we debunked that myth like no tomorrow. Even the RV parks are like this is our last few sites that we have. You gotta book now. We show up. Guess what? Open sites everywhere. Open sites galore. Are we upset at that fact? No. We're enjoying that we have a place to stay but the Hanks always like a little bit of a challenge and we don't ever want to bring you wrong information you know I'm saying like so we don't lose our trust. What we have here this little connection with one another. Yeah let's keep that going. Okay so we're here somewhere along this little highway here like between Soldotna and Kenai and we're going to Anchor Point. Big drive day. 60 miles. I don't know if we can handle this. You have to admit those farm animals are super cute that are here like and you can pay five dollars to get in there and pet them. You're in there because we're on the outskirts trying to give them food and it's like you're immersed but you're not a hundred percent immersed but they do look like once you're in there that they're like she's going down. So they have these RV sites right here that are like in a square so if you're with a group or you're part of a tour group because we've been seeing a lot of fantasy RV tours coming in you can park in a big circle and when you open your door you can see your friend. Kind of like how we parked when we were boondocking with our caravan crew in Arizona at Hot Springs. We like did a little circle. Well they have sites just like that here. You're gonna be expecting to pay some money for RV sites when you come to Alaska and if you're looking for hookups and you're looking for amenities you're gonna be paying more. I'm gonna say it was around 70 or almost 80 dollars a night here. So for us to stay here for over a week I mean it was it's pricey. All mile and about I gotta walk up to the front office and tell them that I have a package coming in. That's kind of been a struggle being up here in Alaska with Alaska being so far away from everything. Planning on packages, arriving at certain locations. It's been a challenge. Unfortunately I ordered this package last week and it still has not arrived and I don't like putting RV parks in this situation where they get a deal with our packages but my hands are tied right now. It should be here by tonight or tomorrow. So what the game plan is is I'm gonna have them hold on to the package until we can come pick it up on our way back through from anchor point because we have to come back this way. But like I said Alaska RV life. What are you gonna do? If you guys are also wondering how else we deal with mail on the road or like domicile or health care. How does our health insurance work? We made an entire video on this and I feel like it got lost in all of our older videos but it is such great content. If you guys want more information on it I'll link it up above. Go check that out. Trust us. Your questions will be answered. Easy peasy lemon squeezy. They're awesome. They were so nice and accepting of that. They totally understand how it is with the RV life that things just get late or delayed and you need to make accommodations as you go. Very flexible people and I really appreciate that. Alright this rainy day vibes. Let's get out of this rain. Let's go hook up. Let's get going. What's anchor point got for us? What's waiting for us? We're gonna find out together. That's the Hank's way of life and we thank you guys for being here and a part of it. It's middle of July and I'm freezing. Did you see that? I thought it was a person behind me and I jumped. This is where the real adventure starts. Well we just got a tsunami warning. 11 o'clock at night. Do we follow everybody else but the problem is if you go towards Kenai you're just following the coast like you're following the water.