Almost 50 Years and Counting
The next phase of the evolution of buying
and developing land, and building a house for retail, was to build a house
for themselves. Living with Ed and Martha Keener was such a pleasant experience,
Denvy, Gail and the Keeners decided to design and build another duplex
with some common interrelated features but unique floor plans on each
side. Somewhere in the middle of 1972, the idea became a hole in the ground
followed by a footing and concrete blocks.
Through the course of fall, the floor and
walls went up. Around Christmas some two feet of snow had to be removed
from the floor before work could resume. Denvy and Gail planned a week
in Hawaii in January but chose to build on the house instead. The week
started at about 20-30 degrees above zero which was easy to work in. The
week ended at about 20-30 below zero which was a challenge to work in
as boards would split when a nail punctured them. However the roof frame
was in place.
Two of the original riverboats remained, one owned by Denvy and Gail and one owned by the Keeners. A third one had just been sold in the spring of '73 with the condition that it could be borrowed back for a week during the summer. The two families, along with Ed's father and mother, brother, nephew and aunt and uncle planned a trip on the Yukon from Circle, Alaska across the Canadian to Dawson City in the middle of the gold rush country, the Klondike.
The trip started with a trek in pickups with three riverboats, the Gruman canoe, four outboard motors and some eleven passengers. The journey upstream took two days with an overnight on a river bar to avoid mosquitoes and stops along the way to explore the remnants of miner's and trapper's cabins on the banks of the Yukon.
At Dawson City, the small band set up camp across the Yukon from the town. It aroused quite a curosity in in town as they heard when touring the town. The tour included riverboats, gold fields, a variety show, readings at Jack London's and Robert Service's cabins. After some three days the group headed downstream and home.
With a continued dream to raise a family,
Gail
and Denvy applied to the state to adopt a second child. In September they
received a phone call asking them if they wanted to visit Ketchikan and
see if they wanted to adopt a one month old Tshimpian Indain baby girl.
Denvy replied with something like: "What might we see in a one-month
old that would help us to make a decision whether or not we should adopt
this child?" Gail flew the next day and returned that evening with
a baby in her arms. There was a scheduled church meeting that evening
and Taanya Rhea made her debut in Anchorage as a Saxowsky.