Most people my age understand that Alf travelled from Melmac to Los Angeles back in 1986, but did you know after the Melmacians “beamed” Alf back aboard their spaceship, he escaped and crash landed again in Southern Minnesota?
It was at that point, he made it his mission to travel around the world, meet new people and new places, and see what life beyond Los Angeles is really like.
OK, OK, I made that up. The reality is that I had this little Alf pencil topper since the late 80s, and in April of 2005, I decided to place it in a plastic container down in Two Rivers Park in Faribault, hidden from normal view, between a couple of trees. I put only a single post on Geocaching.com with its latitude and longitude, and figured the adventure for Alf was just beginning.
And it was a grand adventure for Alf! Just a week later, he was found and was taken 805 miles into Maryland. After several other stops in Maryland, he visited Virginia in early May. For some reason, it just wasn’t the area for him, and he backtracked to Maryland where he lived until July. For some unknown reason, maybe over some homesickness over his longtime Tanner family companions, he made the 2,373 mile trek back to California, where he stayed until at least September.
After he was found in a photo posing near a cat, where I can only assume his new owner’s had had enough, he showed up without note in Arlington, Texas.
East to Tennessee, through Kentucky, down to Alabama, back to California, through the Deserts of Nevada, back west to California, into the highlands of Colorado. Even after 6 years, Alf’s grand adventure was not over. Utah, Arizona, Nevada, California, and one last 2,000 mile trek back east to Tennessee.
In October of 2011, he finally had the right connection to bring him to the place where he’d spend his retirement years. 4,663 miles later, he was in Baden-Württemberg, Germany. Eventually, he settled down into Nordrhein-Westfalen, Germany, where he lived through February of 2018.
Alf’s second trip to Earth included a total of 18,152 miles across this great planet, and while I’m sure he enjoyed Los Angeles, the desolate solitude of the deserts in our western states, and homemade spaetzle, possibly with a cat appetizer or two, his grand trip was over.
And if you’re really interested, Alf’s grand journal of his travels can be found here: https://www.geocaching.com/track/details.aspx?id=78716