Cross Country Move - Part One

When I first started this post I was prepared to call it "The PCS from Hell". The past two months have been a big bowl of crazy! For starters the hubby reenlisted in June. We knew a move would be coming up and we were expecting to leave Alaska at the end of September. In the beginning of July we went to a briefing to cover the moving process and what to expect. It was after the briefing that we found out that because of some paperwork that had been submitted that the moving date had been moved up by a whole month! Personally, I was in a panic and it felt like the craziness just kept spiraling from there. After talking with a couple more offices we learned that there wouldn't be any movers available to move our stuff before the end of the month, and that because of the paperwork that the hubster would need to be signed out on leave before the end of the month and we would need to be on our way.

The rest of July was a big blur. We did some last minute sightseeing and went to The Great Alaskan Bowl Company. Then we also drove back over to North Pole one last time to see Santa's house and to meet up with a friend of ours before leaving. While there we were able to feed and hang out with the reindeer, which was AWESOME!

Of course the relaxing was short lived because a couple days after that we got a call from Uhaul. The truck and trailer that we reserved hadn't shown up in Fairbanks. They gave us two choices: 1. We could wait a couple days and maybe they would show up (not an option because we had to be out of our house in a few days) or 2. We could make the 6 hour drive down to Anchorage and pick up a truck and dolly. So after Ditto's appointment to get a 30 day travel health certificate we drove home, packed a bag, and jumped in my car to head to Anchorage. We spent the night in Anchorage, picked up the Uhaul in the morning, and made the 6 hour drive back to Fairbanks. After making it back to Fairbanks we had about 36 hours to finish packing the house and to have the Uhaul loaded up.

Once we were loaded up and out of our house we spent 4 days in the hotel there. Our hope was to get out of our house on the 31st and then turn around and start the drive down on the 1st. Yet again though, there was some paperwork holding us back and stopping us from leaving Alaska until the 3rd. It was annoying at the time but looking back having a couple extra days to sit and make sure we were prepared for what we were about to do was nice. The drive from Alaska to Maryland took us 11 days!

Watch for our next blog posts! In those I'll cover the route we drove to get to Maryland, where we stopped, how we booked our hotels, and tips/things we would do differently.