Sandy Dreams

 My Mom and cousin Dave came to Juneau so I took a day off. We cooked breakfast in the ambulance then hiked around Auk village. Sis decided to go swimming as she normally does. She did really well not to get her ears wet. Sis swimming or wading. After hiking we went to downtown Juneau. I have driven through but not walked around. I did my normal, bar hoping. You know me, I have to try the same beer at every bar!

 We had summer Solstice yesterday our longest day of the year! Our sunrise was 3:57am and sunset was 10:07pm. Our civil twilight began at 2:34am and ended at 11:23 pm. This was the longest day of my life so far! Katos Katos is the boat I will be driving to Ketchikan starting early next week. I have been driving Katos all week to get used to her and learn all the systems for my voyage South.  More details of my trip to follow.

Everything in Alaska is bigger. The dandelions are about 3 to 4 times bigger than the ones in Oklahoma. I tried to get Sis to hold still for 2 seconds for a photo op.  You can see they are taller than Sis Two seconds was about all she would hold still for a photo. As I entered the Northern Rockies on my drive up here I started to notice some pretty extravagant trash cans. At first I didn't get it.  Why have a trash can built like Fort Knox?  Why protect all that trash? Then I realized why. The bears! Have to out-smart the bears.  I looked them up they are $2000.00 each and they are all over the place. Crazy... huh. There are at least 10 in the marina.  Maybe I should buy one for a safe.

 I had my first Four Trip Day yesterday. It went really well I was surprised at how fast the day went by. It was hard to keep track of which jokes I told what group. I don't want to be repeating myself. I finally got some pretty good video of the baby playing. This is Flame's baby.  Since I had a four trip day yesterday I took Sis hiking this morning - we went to Auke lake.  The weather has been really nice. 65 and almost no wind. Sometimes we get a rainy day. Guess that is to be expected living in a rain forest.

 I know what everyone is thinking. What is the big deal about the sink?  Well having lived in a camper before and working on lots of different boats with all sizes of sinks I have realized I hate small sinks.  So I searched the world over for the largest sink that would fit in the space I allocated. It took me several months but eventually I found one that fit perfect. But with any custom build I ran into problems. One problem was because of the slope of the walls if I installed the faucet through the counter top like normal the sink would hang out past the cabinet by 4 inches or so. My solution was to cut a hole in the sink. My next problem was how high to make the sink. Originally I was going to build all new higher countertops because the original were too low. But in the end I decided to keep them.  The sink project turned out really well. I was able to keep them flush with the edge of the counter top. They are about a foot lower than a standard countertop sink b...

 We have two calves hanging out in Juneau. One of the Moms is named Barnacle, the other is Flame. Neither baby has been named yet (the local whale watchers want to name flames baby "Arson"). We don't see them everyday. It's crazy how different the calves are. Barnacles calf is pretty boring while Flames calf breaches and plays. We know it is Flames 4th calf. I'm not sure about Barnacle. This is Barnacles calf. Mainly just splashing. This is Flame's baby. He/she or whatever it identifies as; plays and breaches over and over!  Needless to say I am in search for Flame everyday. Pretty much a guaranteed show!

 Chilkat is another boat that I drive. It is a little bigger than  the Alaskan - it seats 18. She is pretty new - 2018 I think. Most catamaran boats in St Thomas have a cat somewhere in the name. Chilkat is not a catamaran but named after the Chilkat mountain range or maybe they named the mountain range after the boat! We had an epic day today - we saw a pod of orca's and a calf. It's really nice to see the calf because they play a lot. We also got to see an adult lunge feed. That is when their food is close to the surface and they do a mini breach with their mouth open. A pod of killer whales swimming straight towards the boat! Like a good boater the pod of killer whales followed the rules of the road and took my stern and continued on their way. I'm pretty sure these were resident orcas. We can't really tell the difference between the different orcas. The reason I think they were resident is because we still saw sea lions. There are three types of Orcas: Residents eat...

 I bought nine 100 watt 12 volt flexible solar panels for the ambulance. They are about an 1/8 inch thick. I wired them up in parallel to keep the 12 volts. For the install I glued them to the roof with 3M 5200. That is a marine adhesive semi permanent mainly for under the water line installations on boats (for all you none boaters out there).  This was an experiment with the glue. Mainly I didn't want to drill a whole bunch of holes in my roof. (pretty counter productive). The glue works on boats so I thought it would work on ambulance's too.  After all the panels were glued into place and all the wires soldered together I used flex tape (yes the tape on TV) and I tapped all the edges of the panels and taped over all the wires, mainly for UV protection of the wires.  I drove 3200 miles and they are still there. I haven't been able to inspect them properly, I need a ladder. The best I can do is park under the second story of the local bar and look at them through the...

 During the year long ambulance build I have researched all the different types of toilets. I knew from previous RVing experiences I didn't want a black water tank where I had to go to a RV park to dump. So I have a few options to choose from. Some bag and seal the waste, there are composting toilets, even 5 gallon bucket with a seat on top. I haven't had experience with any of them so whatever I purchased would be new to me.  I choose a cassette toilet. It has two parts the top holds the flush water (about 2 gallons) the bottom holds the waste (about 5 gallons). You separate the two to dump the holding tank. I wasn't sure if I would like it or not but it was cheap $89.00. It was cheap enough that if I didn't like it, it wasn't the end of the world.  So far it is working fine I was worried it would be gross to dump but it isn't bad. I have to dump it about once a week. I haven't had any trouble finding places to dump it.  The toilet fits in the shower room a...

 As I started my tour today one of the first questions asked was "are we going to see orcas" Of course I say no they are extremely rare. Ten minutes into the tour I find a pod of orcas, they were in a cove and went through a shallow cut that I couldn't follow with the boat so I raced around to meet them on the other side. We saw several orcas breach. As you already know I don't have pictures or videos because I'm driving but it was my first orca breach. Then I head north because I got a tip of a mom and calf from a friend. I go to the last known sighting and wait, just about when I'm done waiting they surface and the baby breaches over and over and shows his tail for twenty minutes or so. He came right up to my boat to check us out. I did get a video.  I got a better video but it's too long to upload. I'm working on a solution so you can see it. 

I finally ran out of water. I filled up May 2nd and ran out June 3rd! That exceeded my expectations - I was hoping for 20 days. The fresh water tank doesn't go to the toilet or shower only the sink. That is the limiting factor on how long you can stay out. I cook, make coffee, drink, do dishes, brush teeth, and water Sis with this tank. So we swapped out the shower water and filled up the fresh water tank. We have cooked and eaten every meal since May 2nd except for two.  I did a little maintenance this morning too. My rear view mirror fell off so I had to reinstalled it and I installed two new windshield wipers. The Northern Rockies were really hard on my windshield wipers all the snow and grime from the semi trucks. I also filled the ambulance up with fuel. I found a store yesterday that had diesel for $4.69 a gallon. I should have filled up yesterday. By the time I got there today it went up to 4.99 a gallon. I think it's going to go much higher. I shouldn't use much fue...