Inch by inch, mile by mile

"I'll be just a second," Laura Clark-Maketa said as she did a quick repair to the wheels of her inline skate sitting in a parking lot on the north end of Wasilla Friday morning. "Just a second."

Forgive the Wasilla woman if she needed that second not only for a repair, but also to catch her breath. She had inline skated all the way from Fairbanks, after all, and the five minutes she spent sitting down were well earned.

"There. I'm ready to go," she said as she laced up the boot. Back on the road to raise awareness.

Clark-Maketa, who in 1997 inline skated from California to the East Coast to raise money and awareness for child abuse, is on the last leg of her Alaska tour. She started in Fairbanks and will end in Seward, raising awareness of domestic violence and money for the Alaska Family Resource Center. After this trip, however, she is calling it an inline skating for charity career.

"I think this is definitely the last one of these I'll be doing," she said with a chuckle. "But it's been great."

Riding right behind her in a support vehicle, as motorists have found out, is her father, Jim Clark, who came to Alaska from Tennessee just for the trip. He has now seen the Parks Highway from Fairbanks to the Valley at 10 mph.

"I got to see a lot of my vacation, and to smell it and feel it. You don't get that flying at 75 miles an hour," he said.

Clark-Maketa entered the Valley Thursday. She made it through Wasilla on Friday, and on Saturday, there was a big barbecue and community picnic in Palmer.

Monday, she was on her way to Anchorage, where she was scheduled to stop for the night. Today, she'll start the Anchorage to Seward leg. Throughout, she has been met by people honking their horn in support, and by those who take some time to stop and talk.

"We've been going about 40 to 45 miles each day, but there have been 20 mile days up around Denali National Park," Clark-Maketa said. "The wind was so bad that we had to cut it short."

As she got closer to the Valley, Clark-Maketa was able to commute from her ending point to her Wasilla home. In the morning, she'd go to where she left off, strap on the inline skates and get started.

Being able to be home at night was well received by her two biggest fans, River and Bridger, her 5-year-old and 3-year-old sons. They only tagged along on Friday's stretch of the trip.

"They liked having me come home at night and read them bedtime stories," Clark-Maketa said. "It's been a little more normal."

Friday, they were working the loudspeaker and flashing beacon on the support vehicle while finding flowers -- dandelions -- for their mom while she made her necessary repairs.

First and foremost, the trip is about raising awareness, Clark-Maketa said.

"I've volunteered for things around the world, and I always look for ways to make a positive difference in the community I'm in," Clark-Maketa said. "The effect of domestic violence on families in Alaska is immense."