Last week my husband asked me if I’d like to go to Kasilof with him. He is in the process of gathering parts and pieces to restore a Studebaker truck that his dad had on the property. He had found the last piece of the body – the tailgate – on Facebook Marketplace and wanted to go Saturday to get it.

I didn’t have any other obligations, and loving a road trip, I readily agreed. We have had such beautiful, albeit cold weather recently, but Saturday ended up being quite snowy, at least on this side of the mountains. Once we were in Turnagain Pass the skies lightened, and we even had a bit of blue sky now and then. Headed back down the other side of the pass and then through to Kasilof was beautiful.

I decided to take some paint and paper and paint while we were driving. I’ll review what I took later as it was a new travel palette and setup. I painted 10 pictures although I’ll only share a few here. The road was bumpy and painting detail was not really happening, so I had a few that didn’t get totally finished, and a few that turned out better than expected.

We enjoyed our ride together, visiting and looking out on the beautiful Alaska winter scenery. The drive initially was very snowy and the roads were quite busy. But after we got past Anchorage, the traffic eased up a bit, and when we got past Girdwood, there wasn’t much traffic at all.

We stopped in Girdwood for a bathroom break where we discovered that diesel was way cheaper there than where we’d filled up on our way south. We then headed straight down to Kasilof with just one restroom break in between. We met up with the man with the tailgate as soon as we got into town, and then turned around and headed back to Soldotna for lunch at McDonald’s.

In Soldotna we met another person who had a floor scrubber that my husband had been looking at. He checked it over and decided to purchase that as well. That took a bit more time to load up as it runs on 4 car batteries that had to be taken out so it could be lifted in the back of his truck.

Once all our stops were made, we started the long drive back. The weather had actually improved quite a bit on the return trip, as there was only pockets of snowy weather once we got back to the Turnagain arm. We stopped again at Girdwood, this time to fuel up as it was cheaper. I also have to stop at the bakery and get me some baklava.

I had to make a quick stop at the grocery store, 3 Bears in Meadow Lakes, and then we continued on home. We left our house at 7:30 am and we got home at 7:30 pm. It was a great day spent with my husband and I enjoyed seeing the beautiful country around us, and painting. I don’t venture down that way very often as it is a drive. Usually we go in the summer. We haven’t traveled that way in the winter since our oldest daughter was playing basketball 6 years ago. I’m glad I got to ride along.

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