First, he had me back up the truck to the trailer which if the cameras were working would be a piece of cake to put it right where it needed to be. Unfortunately the cameras were so dirty I couldn't get it aligned correctly. I did find that I just kind of needed to get it in the general location of where I needed to be and then it's pretty easy to pull the trailer to the truck and drop the hitch down on the ball of the truck.
Once we had it hooked up, it was time to take it out on the road. We pulled down the driveway and headed down the road. I decided instead of turning on Ballaine and heading through traffic I was going to drive on Goldstream where it turned into Sheep Creek Road and stay away from everyone. Once I got down near the University, JW decided I should pull into one of the UAF parking lots and practice backing the trailer up. We played around with that for about an hour forward and back trying ot get the trailer to go exactly where I wanted. Finally I was actually able to back it into a parking space without hitting anything.
Now it's time to head back home. Little did I realize that I was going to have the opportunity to park the boat back in the garage when we got there. 20 minutes later, the boat was in the garage where it belonged and fortunately without any damage to the boat or anything else.
On Monday morning May 2, I worked for a few hours and then took the boat to the boat shop. Once there, I handed the keys to the young man in the service department so he could park it. Although I had practiced, there was no way they were going to let me park a boat among the other 40 or so in their lot anyway so no worries. They told me that they would prep it but weren't sure when they would actually be able to get it in the water as while the river was starting to break up, there was too much ice floating around.
On Wednesday, May 4, I picked up MP at school and brought her out to the house to work on her wall hanging for a while. We also chatted a while and made a spanish casserole. We decided that she is going to just quilt a little more around the animals and then I or we are going to tie a little on the wall hanging. So I can get it bound and ready to hang.
That afternoon they called from the boat shop saying they had the boat in the water that day and it was really nice. So when did we want to come down and try it out. I scheduled to be down there at 1:30 on Friday afternoon.
Boat Shop of AK has their own private ramp on the Chena River so went down and Mike helped put the boat in the water then jumped in behind the wheel to walk JW through running it. Simple enough. Make sure you have the plug in the boat before putting it into the water. Undo the straps holding the back of the boat down on the trailer. Let the winch out a bit.
Back the trailer down into the water so the tires are almost covered in water. At that point the boat will start to float so unhook it from the winch. Turn the key on and back it out into the river.
We drove up and down the river a bit - going down the Chena to where it flows into the Nenana River - not too very far but it was interesting to see how much silt is in the Nenana causing it to have a very different appearance than the Chena.
JW getting his hands on the controls of his new toy.
Discovery Riverboat
JW drove up and down the river a little. It was fun to see a different view of Fairbanks. Lots of very nice houses along the river. Although the ice had flushed out of the river there was a lot of debris in the water - driftwood, branches and all of a sudden the boat started going very slow.
The motor had picked up some debris. The first thing to do is stop the boat and hope whatever you picked up will float away. If that doesn't work, slam it into reverse and blow it out. Still didn't work so someone (definitely not me) had to get out on the back of the boat and stand on this little bar to force it down and clean out the motor.
None of these things worked so we very slowly drove back to the ramp where we loaded the boat up on the dock to see what was going on. This was a good experience because occasionally you will have to pull the boat up on the bank or wherever to clean it out.
There was a piece of wood in the motor. They cleaned it out and since we were already on the trailer and it was almost time for me to be home, we headed that direction.
I was on call that week and JW had an invite to go out in the boats with Derek from work. I told him there was no sense in both of us being stuck at home so he should go. Saturday morning, he did a little work around the house - cleaning out the gutters and cutting down a dead tree in the front yard. That was a little scary as if it fell the wrong way, it would fall right into the house.
He took out a nice little wedge out one side then sawed it the rest of the way through from the back. The tree fell exactly where he wanted it to.
Hurray - now this dead tree is gone and we can fill in the big hole that was around it so the lawn will be flat and smooth.
On Mother's day, I vegged most of the day. JW went down to the spillway below North Pole where they put the boats into the water and headed up the Chena river. They didn't go too terribly far before they pulled up on a sand bar and grilled some burgers. Then they took turns driving the boat back and forth on up the river.
He had a great time and I had a nice quiet day including calls from both my kids and I made a call to my Mom. Couldn't have asked for a better day considering I had to be on call.
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