Started making reservations part II

I wanted to add that we didn't make reservations last time (driving from Florida to Alaska) and it worked out fine-- but we did waste some time every evening driving around looking for a place, checking prices, etc. With a toddler in tow this time, we're just going to want to get out of the car asap. Now, although having reservations forces us to drive a certain set distance every day, when we arrive at our day's destination we can get settled in right away. Plus, planning ahead allows us to find some cute local off-the-beaten-path places, rather than going with motel or hotel chains every time.

Started making reservations...

We started making hotel reservations tonight. So far, we've got reservations at B&Bs in Tok, AK and Stewart Crossing, Yukon. That's two down, plenty to go.

Actually, we realized that after we get out of Yellowstone, we'll be in much more populous regions. Once we start traveling through the U.S., there should be more varieties of hotels available, and we can just pull over and grab a hotel instead of needing a reservation.

Countdown: less than two months!

It just hit me that our move-- and by move I mean the day we start driving-- is in less than two months. It's hard to believe the PCS is coming up so fast. I'm sure the reality will hit once we get home in a week and a half. Right now, we're focused on tying up loose ends here in D.C. before we go home-- the thought that we'll be moving again seems impossible!

FGMO!

In military lingo, that's "Finally Got My Orders." They came in today, so now I can start outprocessing and making appointments. I also need to get a copy to my landlord; the Servicemember's Civil Relief Act lets me break my lease as long as I give him 30 days notice with my orders.

In other good news, I arranged to have my last day in Virginia to be 4 June. That's a week longer than I'd prefer, but a week less than they originally asked.

New Military PCS Site

I see that DoD has started a new PCS-oriented website called "Plan My Move." It's interesting: you provide it your current duty station, your reassignment station, and your planned date of departure, and it gives you a personalized calendar with the dates of when you should be doing everything.

I gave it a shot, and found that I'm already behind on a number of things. Eeek!

Confirmed date to go back to Alaska...

I just booked tickets for Kiersten and I to return to Alaska at the beginning of June. Whether Adam will be accompanying us or coming later, we aren't sure yet. When we arrive, we'll have just under seven weeks to get everything ready for the move-- and hopefully will have time to throw in a little bit of Alaska traveling (we thought we'd have another year to see the state!). It's going to be one jam-packed summer!

It's May

...meaning we're down to three months before the move.

Actually, since we plan to leave Alaska around 22 July, that puts us at two-and-three-quarters months before the move.

That checklist hasn't moved. Scary!

Twelve Weeks Out from Departing

Military.com has some great checklists for planning your outprocessing. They're somewhat generic, so you need to modify them specific to your household.

We're at roughly the "12 weeks before leaving" checklist, so here's what we have to do (modified with some of our specific needs). The tough thing is how many items we can't do because we're still in Virginia.

( ) Make an appointment for a counseling session at your base transportation office. (Can't do this yet--they won't give me an appointment without my orders.)
( ) Start saving for non-reimbursable moving expenses.
( ) Discuss the moving process with your children to overcome their fear of relocation. (We've tried talking to our daughter, but she's two and doesn't seem to get the concept of moving yet.)
(X) Notify your landlord you will be moving, but do not give him or her an exact date right now.
( ) Contact our mortgage company regarding moving options, specifically buying a new house in Louisiana.
( ) Get in touch with a Louisiana realtor, begin looking at home options near Barksdale.
( ) Begin making shipping arrangements for your vehicle(s) if necessary. If you are using your base transportation office, schedule a counseling session. (Again, can't do this without orders.)
( ) Start to keep track of tax deductible moving expenses.
( ) Make an inventory of possessions and valuable items (take pictures or video tape). Get appraisals for antiques or collections. (These are back in Alaska...)
( ) Start organizing personal records like birth certificates, insurance papers or warranties. (Same.)
( ) Make a list of whom to notify concerning your move and forwarding address.
( ) Let clubs/organizations that you belong to know you are leaving. Transfer your membership if possible.
( ) Take care of necessary medical, optical or dental appointments. Obtain your records or find out how to forward them later. (We're trying to schedule our daughter's 2-year well baby appointment. Emphasis on trying.)
( ) Have Power of Attorney or Letter of Authorization drawn up for unforeseen circumstances.
( ) Go through closets and drawers to sort through clothes and other items to give away or sell. (Again, everything's in Alaska.)
( ) Sort and clean file cabinets and desk drawers. (Same.)
( ) Make sure all stickers from previous moves have been removed from furniture. (I think we took them all off, but it'll be worth another look.)
( ) Do not place any more mail order purchases. (But I LOVE Amazon...)
( ) Renew membership with AAA; order tryptich, maps and area books. (Hmmm...do we still need AAA? They were helpful when we moved to AK, but we've already planned our trip...)

Making my PCS Binder

PCSing requires a LOT of information. To keep ourselves sane, the PCS Wife and I always build a "PCS Binder," essentially a big 3-ring loaded that keeps our information nicely organized.

Here's a few of the things we're including:

- Page Protectors: these are clear mylar sleeves you can find at any office supply store. They should hold any ordinary 8 1/2 x 11" papers, and usually have a tab on one side. We'll use them to hold the following:

• Our personal property shipment invoices
• Important certificates (birth, wedding, etc.)
• Papers for filing our Do-It-Yourself (DITY) move claim, weight tickets, etc.
  
• Our house deed
• Copies of my orders
• A power of attorney for the PCS Wife (one never knows...)
• My Performance Reports and other important records
• Our vehicle shipment papers
• Our wills
  

We'll also include a few baseball card protectors to hold the numerous cards we've accumulated (i.e., our cards for Borders, Blockbuster, my Red Cross card, etc). We'll also include a few folders for miscellaneous papers we might acquire. Finally, we'll have a hole-punched manila envelope to hold any receipts to track our expenses.

Where IS home, anyway?

Adam's duty station before Alaska was in Florida, and of all the places I've lived so far, Florida is the location I loved the most. Recently, I had the opportunity to visit our old Florida hometown-- and it felt like going home again. I almost didn't want to leave!

When we left to return to D.C., I told our daughter, "We're going home now." But if Florida was home, were we leaving home to go to our temporary home in D.C.? And then leaving that home in a few weeks to go to our actual home, er, house, in Alaska? And then packing up and getting ready to make a new home in Louisiana? Where, for us or for our daughter, was home?

That's when I realized that maybe the trite old saying was true: "Home is where the heart is". For us, home is where our little family is, regardless of geographic location, regardless of temporary situation, regardless of stability or lack of stability. Although as a military family we may not be able to settle in one place we can call home, hopefully we can make our family unit strong enough that as our daughter grows up, where we live doesn't really matter. Home is where our family is, and all the rest is incidental.

Finally got my RIP

When one accepts a new assignment with the Air Force, one normally receives a RIP from his or her military personnel flight. Since I'm not at Elmendorf right now, I had to e-mail my contact back there and remind them that I was deployed. It was a little tricky, but I managed to get it from them, sign it, and send it back within a day.

This is great, because my orders should be issued soon, and I can get started on moving. With my orders, I can schedule my household goods pickup, and I can give a copy to my landlord so he can let me out of my lease early.

Recommended Reading: Hello Kitty: Hello U.S.A.

Our daughter is crazy about Hello Kitty. We found this book and knew it would be perfect for the PCS. It has a page devoted to each of the 50 states, with cute little facts about what's in each one. Given how many states we'll be visiting, it will be a great learning tool for her (and just might keep her occupied during the drive).

Getting Extended

I learned today that I'm being involuntarily extended in Virginia for two extra weeks. Supposedly, it's to allow better turnover with my replacement. I'm annoyed, because that's two weeks less to wrap things up in Alaska.

The PCS Wife will probably go home ahead of me to get a jump on things. She needs to get her plane ticket NOW or risk prices going up. Plus, our daughter turns 2 on July 9, so we'd have to buy her a plane ticket as well.

Still annoyed.

Who Has the Best Driving Directions?

When we learned we were moving, one of the first things we considered was our driving route. We'd driven from Florida to Alaska during our last PCS, and we loved going through Canada so much that we knew we'd want to do it again on the way out. Beyond that, we didn't know the best way to get from AK to LA. Who gets us there faster? Who takes us past the most interesting locations?

The various map websites don't give uniform results. Here's some of the results we got with a starting location of "Anchorage, AK" and an ending destination of "Shreveport, LA":

• Mapquest: 4,117.14 miles, crossing from Canada into the U.S. at the Minnesota border.
• Mapblast.com: 4,174.3 miles, crossing into the U.S. at Montana.
  
• Google Maps: 4,261 miles, same directions.
• Yahoo Maps: 4,278 miles, same directions.
• Rand McNally: 4,413 miles, same directions.
• Maps.com: 4,498.33 miles, same directions.

I haven't compared the various websites to determine why they're showing such a dramatic difference in driving distances. I can believe some slight nuances in distance, but 320 miles difference between Mapblast and Maps.com seems very off.

Anyway, the bottom line is that we have two options: travel halfway across Canada to Minnesota, and go directly south to Louisiana, or go as far as Edmonton, turn south, and head southeast through the midwest United States.

The first option will be 100 miles shorter and take us near the Mall of America, which could make for some fun shopping. However, none of us have been to the midwest before, and the second route takes us very close to Yellowstone National Park. We've decided to go that way for the thrill of camping in one of the most famous parks in the world.

Anyway, consider running your driving route through several search engines to see what you come up with. If you're in a hurry, you'll want to go the shortest way. But if you're adventurous, you may want to go off the map!

Recommended Reading: 1001 Places to See in the U.S.A. and Canada Before You Die

We're currently reading through Patricia Schultz's 1,001 Place to See in the U.S.A. and Canada Before You Die. The author divided the book by both states/provinces and larger geographic regions (i.e., Mid-Atlantic, the Midwest, etc.), so we can consult the various sections of the book as we pass through those areas and see if there's anything interesting to visit on the way.

The book reminds us that unless the Air Force gives me a second assignment to Alaska, we'll probably never be in Alaska or Northwest Canada again in our lifetime. (We're realists: traveling is expensive, so we like to take advantage of interesting places as long as the military sends us there.) Good planning will let us say, "Hey, I've been there" with a lot of the places in that book.

Why are we in Virginia?

You may have noticed that our profile currently says that we're in Virginia, even though we're moving from Alaska to Louisiana. What's up with that?

I'm actually temporarily assigned to a Pentagon satellite office in Arlington. Believe it or not, my assignment is considered a "deployment." Most military folks get sent to Iraq or Afghanistan--I get sent to the D.C. metro area. Go figure.

We've been in Arlington since the end of January, and we'll be here until the end of May. This actually adds a significant challenge to our PCS: there's a lot of things we just can't do until we get back in June. Since we're departing Alaska in late July, that gives us roughly six weeks to outprocess from the base, sell our excess goods, clean the house, and wrap up all of our affairs before leaving. We're confident that we can do all that, but our last few weeks in Alaska will be very busy!

Welcome to PCS Blog!

Welcome to PCS Blog! My wife and I decided to start this blog to chronicle our upcoming cross-country permanent change of station (or in military lingo, PCS). We thought this would be a fun way to let our friends and family keep track of our progress this summer. Even if you don't know us personally, we hope you find this blog an informative source of information on the PCS process.

Please stay tuned as we post more information about our plans for the moving process and our travel plans!