DAVID COUCH HOME PAGE

Now that we are both retired and I have nothing to do with my profession of land surveying, this page will have nothing to do with surveying. It pretty much needs to have something to do with birds, flowers, rocks, steelhead fishing, fly fishing, hunting, genealogy (looking for dead people),or traveling for us to be interested anymore. Its a new chapter in our life and we want to share some of it with you. Click on the buttons on the left.

In 2009, after we installed an automatic sprinkler system ourselves, we embarked on an adventurous drive to Alaska, through Canada, with the idea to stop and smell the roses all along the way. This had been a dream of mine for a long time and I needed to do it while my health is good, my eyesight is good, and I still enjoy driving all day long like a truck driver. My wife will be the first to tell you my hearing isn't getting better. She read the Milepost to me all the way and repeated things many times.

We took the 2000 Dodge Ram 2500 diesel truck loaded with the 8.5 ft Lance Camper on this grand trip. It held up pretty well and we put 8543 miles on it on this trip.

It got 15.3 miles to the gallon overall. We were gone 51 days living in very close proximity with each other. It was nice to be home so we could change our clothes at the same time. The camper has what we call a "one butt" kitchen. So that part of being home, was nice, also.

We learned how to do some things on the road, like using the local library's internet services to read e-mail and pay bills. We camped in gravel pits, beautiful lakeside spots, and parking lots for about 3 to 4 days. Then we would find a full hookup campground to dump gray and black water, resupply water, and plug in. Quite a few campgrounds had some kind of Wi-Fi which worked out, but was usually very slow. We found it best to operate on the top half of the fuel tank and look for the best price. Propane was expensive to very expensive. I paid $25 Canadian for 4 gallons at Dease Lake.

The two 6 volt batteries that I installed before we left worked extremely well and did not sulfate or lose water the whole trip. Which is amazing considering they were being charged everyday while driving and everytime we plugged in. One thing I had to learn was to sleep when its light out. The further north we went, the more daylight hours there were. We were in the Fairbanks and Denali area during the solstice and I had to cover all the windows/vents to get to sleep.

Now I have to organize the 3,500 pictures that I took on the trip. I'll see if I can find a few to share. I will be showing movies at home on the projector screen for a long time to come.

Introduction