Happy Fourth of July!
Around 8:30 a.m., we drove over to Great Alaska Holidays to drop off our rig and ask them to take care of a small punch list of items besides replacing our Automatic Transfer Switch.
We then went to breakfast at the nearby IHOP. The pancakes and french toast and crepes were tempting, but we stuck with our eggs and bacon (they gave us extra bacon instead of the usually included has browns and toast). And at IHOP we can now both order off the 55+ menu.
Back at the RV rental place/dealership, I set up shop in the waiting room while the activity buzzed all around. No wonder they were open today - it was crazy busy.
Linda went for a pedicure, and many of the things I had on my list to do I couldn't do because of the holiday. But I uploaded photos and chatted with a nice couple on their honeymoon.
It was afternoon when I decided to go check on our rig. The transfer switch was installed, but they were having trouble with getting power. If they would have come and asked us, we could have saved them a lot of time. With our solar/inverter installation, our system is a bit quirky. So, we showed them how it works and "voila" the system was operating as it should.
But the big news of the day, the thing that the entire service department was talking about, was the stowaway we apparently brought from the lower 48. While poking around in our old battery compartment, that I haven't had any reason to get into (due to the placement of our AGM sealed batteries), they found this.
Yep, that's a huge Black Widow spider. It was by far the biggest one I'd ever seen, and it was camped out in the dark recesses of that old battery compartment. As we walked through the service bays, all the technicians were looking at us - "There's the spider people!".
They were all fascinated as Black Widows are rarely found in Alaska, and when they are, they've hitchhiked from somewhere else.
What fascinated us was that they were passing it around and it was still alive. "What? Are you taking it to the zoo? Got a kid that needs something for show-n-tell?"
I guess we should be more terrified than we were, but at least we know to fumigate that compartment and to look closely in all the others.
Anyway, our electrical issue is fixed. And we can now plug the coach into an electrical pedestal and run our generator. It's been three weeks since we've been able to do either, but we've gotten by okay.
We headed back to Cabela's and got set up for one more night.
Eventually, we drove to Renee's house where she welcomed us and made us feel at home. In addition to inviting us for dinner, she graciously allowed us to have some mail and packages sent to her address. So, when we arrived, she gave us our mail which included the custom ring Linda had made by a Pueblo artisan back in Arizona this past winter. He finally finished it and mailed it to Alaska.
Renee grilled some filet mignon and prepared a wonderful salad and cauliflower casserole. We were concerned about our keto restrictions, but she started keto about a month ago, so we were all on the same page.
We had a lovely meal and chatted into the night not realizing how late it was. We probably overstayed our welcome as Renee had to work the next day. With thanks and hugs, we departed and headed back to our spot at Cabela's.
Tomorrow, I have several errands to run and then we're heading to Whittier for a few days. It's only about an hour to an hour and a half away, so we can take our time, finish up some things in Anchorage, and then move on. Hopefully, we'll find a place to camp on this Fourth of July weekend. Stay tuned to see if we did.
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