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WEDNESDAY, JULY 30, 2008 THE BANKS COUNTY NEWS PAGE 7B North to Alaska We left Caleb behind and continued on our journey. He’d be missed because he was lots of fun! We were in a rest area in Idaho when a man approached us talking about our giant banner “North to Alaska” in our RV window. He and his wife were going there also so we chatted a while. They were Lowell and Joyce Walker from Utah, and are key players in our Alaska adventure. We exchanged phone numbers and traveled miles up the road together. We all stopped to make sand wiches. Joyce is originally from Holland and she has a proper accent. She yelled out the door of the RV, “Y’all, the food is ready.” Then turned to us and said “I’m trying to talk like y’all and they won’t pay me any attention.” We all broke into an uncontrollable laugh. Her proper accent trying to sound southern like us. We knew right away we liked these people! Our next stop was Great Falls, Montana! We stopped to visit some friends of mine, Elam and Lydia Fisher from Pennsylvania. They were up there helping their son and asked us to stop by. Our new friends stopped with us and we all stayed in the same RV park. The Fishers’ took us on some adventures the next day. We visited some dams and stopped at a museum to hear a lecture about Lewis and Clark. This was embar rassing because the man was so boring. I looked around and everybody in our party was sound asleep. I have to admit I really had to try hard to keep my eyes open and I did not learn one thing about Lewis and Clark. We had paid five dol lars to watch a film but we all decided we couldn’t stand anymore so we called it our five-dollar laugh, but we held it until we got into the car. We then went to Ryan’s Island where we had to cross a long swinging bridge. As we stepped from it onto the Island, we were met with a sign that said, “When you hear eight short blasts, evacuate the Island.” What a welcome! Elam asked if we’d ever heard of the Hutterites. These are people that are com pletely self-sufficient and they all live in houses exactly alike. The women dress in long dark skirts and long sleeves and they wear polka-dotted scarves on their head. They farm 8,000 acres of land. We drove miles and miles on Montana back roads to find them. I felt we were approaching a compound. I was nervous but Elam was driving and we forged ahead. They have the best and most updated farm equipment. They have their own laundry mat, tool shop, cement mixer green house, egg processing place and they make their own shoes and bind their own books. Some man came out and asked what our business was. Elam told him we were looking to buy some homemade bread and he directed us to a building in the middle of the place. We went into this huge commercial type kitchen. I had something to talk to them about since I work in the school kitchen. I recognized a lot of their huge mixers and ovens. This place was absolutely spotless! A young girl kinda took up with me since I was interested in their equipment. She began to show us around and before long we had 10 girls following us around and giggling at my questions. I asked if I could join their colony and they said “Yes” but I would have to ask for permission to ever leave. She told us 200 Hutterites lived there. Most colonies are crop producers and raise large amounts of livestock. Every person is assigned a job. They have no TV and visit other colonies to meet other young people. When a young couple gets married, they are provided a completely furnished house. We got to look at a house they were getting ready for a soon-to-be mar ried couple. It had no kitchen, a finished basement and several bedrooms. Their shelving and cabinets were made in the woodwork shop. All the houses looked like a row of apartments, exactly alike, everyone eats in the main kitchen. The men sit on one side of the room accord ing to age, the women on the other side and young people in the middle. The very young eat at home attended by the teens. They do not talk and they have 15 minutes to eat. They invited us to eat with them but we declined. We didn’t want to wear out our welcome. You can learn more about them from the Internet. What an awesome adventure! We really hated to leave the Fishers behind but we headed for the border the next morning. We spent three hours held up there because we had a gun. Margaret had gotten all the necessary papers from the Internet but had forgotten some small detail that had to be straightened out. This was spooky to us. Some girl was crying her heart out. They asked us all kinds of questions. We were in another country and felt like aliens. The Canada road signs were all different. We had to figure out what speed we were going and the gas was advertised as titers not gallons and of course their money was different. We soon forgot the border ordeal when we drove up the beautiful Icefield Parkway with the crystal clear Lake Louise, stunning views and snow capped mountains. We saw huge elk, a black wolf and two black bears. We ran into a small hail storm, some snow We Buy All Gold & Silver Xiainesoiffe 770-532-2592 1020 Jesse Jewell Pkwy. • Gainesville, GA Mon. - Thurs. 10-6:30 • Fri. - Sat. 10-7 Including: Class Rings • Wedding Bands • Coins • Broken Jewelry • Dental Gold FOR ONLY $5 PER MONTH, YOU CAN LIST YOUR GROUP'S MEETINGS! Let your members know when your group is meeting! Call (706) 367-5233 to advertise your meeting time, place and date in... • The Jackson Herald • The Commerce News • The Braselton News • The Banks County News • The Madison County Journal 0k COMMERCE WAMERICAN LEGION Commerce Rec. Dept. Post 93 Carson Street - 1st Mon. night Each Month, 7:30 p.m. 335-6400 Citizens Organized for Pipeline Safety investigating the health risks to citizens from underground pipelines and booster stations in Madison Co. Meetings 6:30 p.m. at the Colbert Grove Baptist Church the 2nd Thurs. of each month. 706-783-4702. Pd.04/09 JEFFERSON IIP AMERICAN LEGION Albert Gordon Post 56 Each 3rd Tuesday, 7:30 p.m. Harvie Lance, Commander Phone (706) 654-1274 310 White Plains Baptist Church Pd02/09 Faith Bible Class meets every Sunday morning at 10:00 a.m. It is a place where strangers become friends and friends become family. 706-367-5650 White Plains Baptist Church 3650 Hwy. 124 West, Jefferson, GA 30549 The Jackson Co. Republican Party Would like you to meet us for breakfast the second Sat. of each month, 8:00 at The Jefferson House. For more information, call 706-652-2967 or email fishyglass@yahoo.com Pd.ii/os BANKS COUNTY AMERICAN LEGION Post 215 Meets each 3rd Thursday, 7 p.m. In Homer, GA at the American Legion Building on Historic Highway 441 pd.06/09 rpfe VETERANS OF FOREIGN WARS Post 4872, Hurricane Shoals Convention Ctr. Each 4th Monday, 7:00 p.m. Mike Buffington, Commander Phone 706-335-6532 263 JEFFERSON LIONS CLUB Meets 2nd & 4th Monday Jefferson City Clubhouse 6:30 p.m. *(706) 387-1156 Mack Cates, President 542 UNITY LODGE F& A.M. No. 36, Jefferson, GA 1st Tuesday of each month, 7:30 p.m. Dwight Wier • 706-367-5882 Borders St. behind Tabo’s 260 JEFFERSON ROTARY CLUB Meets Tuesdays Jefferson City Clubhouse 12:30 p.m. • (706) 367-7696 Gina Mitsdarffer, President 547 ... continued from page 6B TRAVELING BUDDIES David and Margaret Ledford and Phyllis and Ralph McConnell are shown with their Utah friends, Lowell and Joyce Walker, and Texas friends, Judy and J.C. Chansley. and it reached 29 degrees. We went into Brittish Columbia and the temperature climbed 60 degrees. We saw three more black bears. We lost the Walkers at the border. They’d taken a wrong turn and called to tell us they would meet us in Prince George. They are 77 and 74 years old and will celebrate their 50th wedding anniversary in October. They’d been in every state except Alaska and he wanted to bring her to the last state. Fifty years, fifty states. He told us this would most likely be their last long trip. Hooray, the next day we all headed to Dawson Creek, the beginning of the Alaska Highway. We had our pictures made at the 0 mile marker. My heart was beating so hard, I was so excited. Over 1,400 miles before we reach Alaska. Canada was very expensive. Bread was over three dollars a loaf, four Nutty Buddies were seven dollars (we left them) and even the cheap cookies were over four dollars. The Walkers told us to go ahead because they could not travel as far as we could. We reluctantly left them behind plan ning on keeping in touch and meeting up later. We reached Watson Lake Sign Forest where we placed our signs we’d had made with our names on them. Over 70,000 signs hang there from people all over the world. I had a sign made with the names of the people I work with. I felt tike I was taking them along on my great adventure. Their names now hang along side the Alaskan Highway. Watson Lake Sign Forest can be found on the Internet. While there, we saw some names from Camesville. I came home, looked them up in the phone book and gave them a call. We talked over an hour and plan to have them visit soon. Pictures can not capture the beauty we saw along the way. More snow capped mountains that were closer now, lakes for miles and miles that ran right along the roadside. There were also a lot of construction and animals that would run right out in front of you. We stayed in White Horse a couple of days and restocked our food supply. One store charged a dollar to use their grocery cart and you had to bag your own groceries. We went to a play in town. It was very funny and gave us a break from the road. We got acquainted with another couple from Texas, Judy and J.C. Chansley. We all left the park together and traveled toward Alaska keeping in touch with walkie talkies. Diesel was expensive even more than at home. We had to pay $6.90 a gallon at one place. We just could not risk hunting a cheaper place and running out. They were far and few between. The milepost is a must for this trip tell ing us what to expect around every bend. From Haines Junction to Alaska, the roads got rougher. There were lots more road construction and dip after dip. It was tike riding a roller coaster. If you hit a dip fast and hard, you would be out of your seat. These were due to all the freezes in the winter. We saw lots of buffalo and sheep on this part of the trip. We finally reached the border to enter Alaska. It went smoother this time for us but they were tearing somebody’s truck apart. It was hallelujah great to see, “Welcome to Alaska,” and to see our United States flag flying high filled our hearts with pride. We found a very nice RV park in Tok, very wooded and pretty. We looked to see what damage we incurred on the road thus far. Let’s see! A cracked windshield on the RV, a small bing on the jeep wind shield, and the hood of David’s new jeep was beat up and lots of achy bones. We were concerned about our friends we’d left at Watson Lake. We had planned to keep in touch but we had no phone ser vice for five days! We knew we had lost them forever! We went to a nice resau- rant to eat with our Texas friends and we were still whining about losing our Utah friends, Lowell and Joyce, when behold guess who walked in? Lowell!! What a reunion! We had been so worried about them and they reached Alaska before us and had been in the RV park one day before us. He told us he’d thought we ditched them and they had driven 10 hours a day to catch up. We finally got TV service and found out Tim Russert had died. Ralph and I loved to watch “Meet the Press” and will miss him. It was Margaret’s birthday and we tried to make it special. Our new Texas friends started the day by bringing over some juice and cinnamon rolls. I cooked bacon and eggs for everyone and we all put our steaks and potatoes together and cooked for her birthday. We gave her an Alaska album from us all. We had so much fun. People walked by and ask “are you the ones having so much fun over here.” We invited everyone to come on in and chat a while. I get up very early so I’d walk and have to wear sunglasses before seven o’clock, the sun was so bright. It never got dark! It felt strange going to bed when it was so tight outside. After two days in Tok, we head ed to North Pole, Alaska. I mailed lots of cards there so they’d have the North Pole stamp on them for those that don’t believe in Santa Claus. The street posts were candy canes. We ate at Wendy’s and they had Christmas trees and all the trimmings up. Sounds tike a place I need to live. We traveled on to Fairbanks with our caravan of new friends. We stayed by the river three days here and met a couple from Germany and one Georgia couple that took the wrong road and ended up in the RV park and on the way out he saw our Georgia tags and stopped to chat and ended up staying two hours. It was here Joyce began to tell us about her child hood in Germany and how their house would be searched for Jewish people. They hid three but were never caught. She told us stories about the concentra tion camps and lots of things she saw and had to endure. We formed such a strong bond with her. We left our Texas and Utah friends behind and headed toward Denali. We’d meet up with them later! My doctor in Gainesville suggested a movie to watch before I left for Alaska. “Into the Wild” was a sad but true story about a young man who starved to death in an old abandoned bus he found in the wild of Alaska. While I was at the RV park near Denali, I happened to pick up a paper and read about this very story and found out it took place only 10 miles from where we were at. I just had to go. It was a little town called Healy. We found and went down Stampede Road where the tragedy had taken place. We met a local photographer down there who was taking pictures of a group of people on horseback. He told us the bus had been there his whole life and the saddest part of the story was the guy didn’t know he was very close to a ranger camp the whole time. He said his uncle was the one that found him. He directed us on down to an eight mile lake where the boy had hiked from to the bus. The road was very rough from there and he said a lot of tourists were trying to find it and would get lost. It was a strenuous 22-mile hike and he advised anyone not to go. Such a sad ending for such a young life to be lost. We took a bus tour into Denali Park. It was awesome! We saw two grizzly bears and a moose. The truth was we saw more animals on the Alaskan Highway. When we left Denali, I asked David if I could drive the RV just enough to say I’d driven in Alaska. I drove a good 40 miles when we ran upon a road construction sign. David asked if I wanted to switch back and I told him it probably wasn’t much of anything. The traffic started moving and as we rounded the bend it was too late to switch back now. Straight ahead was a bridge that was barricaded off in the middle with cement walls. Now this was a 38-foot long motor home pull ing a jeep. It looked to me tike we were going through the eye of a needle. (Just because I was inexperienced). David said, “Phyllis you’re getting pretty close over here.” I said “you ought to see my side over here.” I was next to the water. I had a sense of calmness I couldn’t understand, probably because I didn’t have time to be scared. I can promise you one thing David, Margaret and Ralph were wide awake and putting on their brakes. Ha! How much more continued on page 8B tax-free JULY 31 - AUGUST 3 It’s all happening in August... shop and save more at Tanger during Tax Free Shopping and pay no sales tax on qualified items. Visit Tanger Customer Service for details. Enjoy extended shopping hours! 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