And this is me, Safarigrl, also known as Linda. I looked for a more up to date picture but this is truly me, wide eyed, wild hair, gotta go, Safarigrl.

So there you have it, Gracie, Rainier, Cindy and Linda.

Hidden within the tigers

On the back of most Safari Motorhome's is a wildlife painting. This painting is painted by a family of of 3, who have painted all of the paintings on the Safari Coaches. Two sons and their father have painted all the scenes that you may have seen following a Safari down the road. What you might not know, is that there are many paintings painted inside the painting. On our coach we have found 12 painted animals within the tigers you see on the back of our coach. Look closely and you will see a bear on the broad expanse of the right tiger's nose, an eagle in the mane of the left tiger, a Panda bear in the ear of the left tiger, and it goes on and on.

And this is Rainier, used to be known as Rainier Beer, now known as Prince Rainier. Gracie's former name was Princess, so we changed it to Princess Gracie. And you know we are traveling in a "Monaco" Safari motorcoach. It all makes sense now....doesn't it? And yes, he does like wearing his sunglasses at the beach, don't know if he will wear them in Alaska, but we will take them with us, Gracie doesn't have any sunglasses, she would eat them.

This is Cindy..... I sent this to this blog from my phone. I am setting up the mobile side of the blog so that I can take pictures from my phone and send messages to the blog enen if we are without internet connection. Now you will get to see that bear's face as he chases me up a tree!

This is our motorhome, it is a 40', Safari, Cheetah. Has three slideouts, two in the living room area, which gives it a big living room, and one in the bedroom, which lets you walk around the Queen size bed. The most unusual thing about it is that it has two bathrooms, one right in back of the saleswoman, and one in the very back, they don't make too many with two bathrooms and now Safari doesn't make them at all. When we bought it, that was a selling point with us because we had my Mother with us and she needed a bath room of her own with her Alzheimers.

We have a 350 Cat engine in the back, and an 8,000 Watt diesel generator in the front. The transmission is an automatic Allison, it has a Pac Brake and antilock brakes, with everything being electronic the engine, transmission and brake, "talk" to each other. Coming down off a mountain all you have to do it tap your brakes and the transmission tells the engine to slow down or speed up, the Pac brakes comes on to slow it down and the transmisson decides what gear it should be in and puts itself in gear. You still can't put the motorhome in cruise and go sit in the back, but it is much easier.

This motorhome has all the bells in whistles you can get on this model and we bought it at the annual Great American RV Ralley in Kansas in June of 2004, on the last day of the Ralley, it is a 2005.

My Mom will be with us in spirit every mile that we travel.She was one of those people that if you asked her if she wanted to go, she was packed in two minutes or less, she loved to go, and being her daughter, I am not inclined to stay home either.. I am famous with my friends for pleading to go an extra mile to see something, while on trips by saying, "But it's only this far on the map!"

This is our motorhome, and my Mom is waiting to pick you up, so get ready!

Gracie checks everyone out

Getting Ready to go....

It's almost a month away and I am getting nervous that we might forget something. This will be the biggest and longest trip we have ever taken, but, to put it in perspective we could hop on the plane and come home in a couple hours from Alaska. We just have to get to the airport and that could take days and days.
Anyone who knows me, knows that I have lots of extra "stuff" in my car, all the time, for "in case" my vehicle rolls over and I end up in a ditch. This must have happened to me in some past life. Anyway..... it's hard to think of all that extra stuff that we might need in the wilds of Alaska, when a charging bear has ran us up to the top of the motorhome, and we are thinking about climbing up that tree behind the motorhome, I hope I remembered to put the ladder on top of the motorhome, and bungee corded it, so that I can use it to get to that tree.
We are trying out various liquid chemicals for the toilet and deciding which one will get the offical nod to go with us, Cindy says she doesn't care, just as long as she doesn't smell "it", I think it should be a highly scientific study.
Ordered 4 books from Amazon on Rving in Alaska, and my sincerest apologies to Simone for not going to her Travel Bookstore to get those books, I will come to your book store to buy more books, and when I get back you can books us into your store as expert Rving Alaska motorhome people. Well, I'll have to think of a catchier title than that.