Wednesday, July 19
We got away from Anchorage RV Park about 8:00. I was anxious to get up the Parks Highway a little ways and see if we could see Denali. We saw it about 150 miles away. It is awesome. Words can't describe how it looks. There were a few clouds around it when we first saw it but the it stood out in it snow covering like a gem on the landscape. It is just massive. For those of you who aren't familiar with the parks up here in Alaska. Denali National Park is one of the largest national parks in the country. It includes thousands of acres. The main attraction in the park is Denali Peak, also known as Mt. McKinley. There have been numerous attempts to officially change the name of the mountain from Mt. McKinley, named for the president who was assassinated in 1901, to Denali, that is the common name used for the peak up here anyway since that is what the natives called it. It means the great one. The representatives from former President McKinley's district in Ohio, continually maintain some sort of pending legislation to block an official name change.
We arrived at Denali NP about 1:00. We had to go and register for our campsite, which was reserved, and pick up our tickets for the shuttle bus that we would ride into the park tomorrow. There are very few private vehicles allowed into the park. There is a very small town (Katishina) located in the park. It was there before the park was established so it was grandfathered in. It was originally established as a mining town. The few people that live there have access through the park. It is at the end of the 70 mile road that goes into the park.
Regarding the buses, one can start out on one bus and get off at any time and hike or walk the road and catch another bus later. I had reserved a seat on a bus that went all the way to the end of the road. We had to catch it at about 8:00 at our campground.
The campground we were in is about 30 miles into the park and those who camp there are allowed to enter and leave. Reservations must be for 3 nights minimum. You must stay in the campground once you go in. It is required that only hard sided campers be allowed in there. The reason for that I found out is that there was a pretty aggressive wolf pack that frequented the campground a couple of years ago and thus the hard sides provide protection. The wolves have not been seen in the campground this year though and they may change that rule.
We stopped at the visitor center before going on into our campground. It was interesting. We saw a movie called 'The Heartbeats of Denali' that was excellent.
We finally left for the campground about 4:00 and it took us about an hour and a half to get in there. The speed limit is 35 and only the first 15 miles are paved. We found a site and set up and then Carol cooked up a great chicken and dressing dinner with fresh green salad. We read and went to bed about 10:00 so we could get up to catch our bus in the morning.
Thursday, July 20
We pulled back the curtain at the head of the bed this morning and saw nothing but blue sky. Wow, were we ever psyched. We had cereal for breakfast and packed up a lunch and some other items in our day pack and headed for the bus stop. While we were standing there waiting another couple came up and introduced themselves. They are about our age and are from Michigan. Their names are Jerry and Trisha. We got on the bus and had seats together so we kept talking as we headed into the park. It turns out that when Jerry retired a couple of years ago at the age of 60 they wanted to retire to something so they walked the Appalachian Trail. It took them two years (summers) but they did it. They told us about their experiences and how they did it. I don't think we have the desire to do that but we admire them for doing it.
We hit it off well as I talked about some of the backpack trips I had taken also. We got pretty well acquianted in a short amount of time.
Back to the bus trip. It was great. It was a perfectly clear day without a cloud in the sky and we got to see Denali in all her glory and splendor. What a site. The bus driver said it is only this clear about 3% of the time or 3 days out of a hundred. Did we ever luck out. It was beautiful. There is just no way you can explain the dominance of Denali on the skyline. It is the tallest peak in North America at about 20,000 feet. It is really something to behold. We ended up seeing 14 grizzlies today, several caribou, and a moose. What a great day. Jerry and Trisha wanted to do some walking so we all agreed to get off the bus at the turn off to Wonder Lake and we headed further down the road toward Katishna. We found a large patch of ripe blueberries and had a few of those. It is funny how they grow on a very low shrub, not more than 2" tall as opposed to the large bushes they grow on at home. We probably walked about 3 miles and stopped for lunch. The bus that we hoped to catch was running late so we walked on further toward town. Finally it came by and barely had room for us, but we managed to get on. We rode this back to the Tolkat rest stop and then caught another bus on out. I think we came within couple of miles of Katishna.
The buses are just school buses that have been painted green. They aren't real comfortable but they are adequate. Whenever someone on the bus sees an animal they yell 'stop' and the driver stops and then everyone has a chance to see the animals also
We finally got back to our campground around 6:00. We went back to our camper and had some leftovers and then Jerry and Trisha came over and we talked about some of the places we had been and shared travel stories.
Friday, July 21
Well, since we had the bus passes and could use them again today we packed up and headed out. It was just Carol and I today since Jerry and Trisha had a guided tour they were taking. We ended up going all the way to Wonder Lake again. It was cloudy today and we couldn't see a thing of Denali. It was well hidden by the clouds. We also didn't see but one grizzly all morning. We felt sorry for the folks on this bus today because they were really missing out. There are many people who make the trip up here and never get to see Denali or very many animals due to the weather. We felt fortunate we had had such a good day the day before.
Finally on the way back we started seeing a few more bear and other animals. That made it somewhat worthwhile. We actually got to see a mother wolf and a couple of her cubs, so that made the day worthwhile.
We got back around 7:00 and grilled some chicken and then went over and visited with Jerry and Trisha. They had seen a sow grizzly with two cubs and watched it for quite a while. The tour they took was interesting they said and they learned a lot. It was a guided hike by a ranger. We wished we had known about it as we would have signed up, but you had to do that before you came into the campground.
We shared emails and the then we headed back to the camper to get some sleep.
Saturday, July 22
We got up this morning and I made pancakes and then we went for a hike out of the campground. We got back and packed up and left the campground heading out about 10:00. About three miles down the road there were a couple of wolves that kept wondering out into the road. We watched them for a half hour and took a few photos. We got within a few feet of them. That was awesome. There is that word again. It is just hard to verbalize the natural beauty of this place.
We left Denali and headed south. We wanted to go to Telkeetna and see what that was like. We made a side excursion down Petersville Road about 18 miles to the Forks Roadhouse. About half this road was gravel also. We stopped at the roadhouse and Carol had ice cream and I had a beer. The bartender looked a lot like Willy Nelson. He talked about spending some time in Asia. Said he had only been in Alaska a couple of years. This roadhouse is an old log cabin that was originally used as a warehouse for supplies for the mines near Petersville.
We finally made it to Telkeetna around 7:00 and browsed around town a little. We went to Mountain High Pizza Pie. for supper. A fellow we had met on the nature hike at Eagle River had mentioned this place. It was very good we shared a large sandwich. I may have to try their pizza the next time I'm here. They had a young lady playing the guitar and singing. She was very good.
We hit the road again and started taking side roads looking for a place to camp. We finally found a place beside a clear stream below a bridge. We're all settled in and that is where I am typing this at now. It has taken me awhile to catch up. I'm afraid I haven't done well maintaining the blog files, but now I'm caught up again.
Sunday, July 23
We left the creek where we camped the night and headed back up the gravel road for the Telkeetna Spur road. This was one rough road. We finally got back to the spur road and within a few miles were back on the Parks Highway. We found a couple of garage sales to go to. One was at a combination house and retail store. The retail store was a log cabin. He had it listed for sale. He said he was asking $275,000 and there were 2.5 acres total land that fronted the highway. The buildings were nothing to brag about though. It just amazes me that the prices are so high up here. I bought an old license plate at the other garage sale.
We filled up with gas at Wasilla and headed on into Anchorage. When we got to cell phone range we had a message from Bob McCoy. They were in Seattle waiting for their flight to Alaska and were on time. We checked into Anchorage RV Park, our home away from home, and got showered and the camper unloaded before we headed to the airport to meet Bob and Jan.
They arrived a little after 4:00. It was great to see them. It has been awhile since we've seen some familiar faces. We goth them to their B&B and then headed downtown. We ate supper at the Glacier Brewhaus, which is always packed. We had an appetizer each couple and a bowl of chowder for each person. Bob and I had a couple of different kinds of beer. They were out of my favorite, Amber. We called Dave and Linda Bryan in St. Louis while we were there just to check in and see how they fared during the storm we had heard about hit St. Louis. They said they were without electricity for a couple of days and had to go out to is brothers place cause it was soooooooo hot.
We messed around downtown for a little while and then drove out by the campground to show Bob and Jan. We saw a moose and Bob got a couple of photos. When we got them back to thir B&B we walked around the backyard which was filled with plants and garden art. It was a really fun evening.
We wished them good traveling and headed back to the camper and bed.
Monday, July 24, 2006
Tuesday, July 18, 2006
July 18
Well, I called the dealer this morning at 7:30 and Matt said the guy that worked on our truck didn't come in until 8:00. I called back at 9;30 and then he said that the guy hadn't come to work because he had a court date. We found out our neighbors here at the RV park were going into town so they gave us a ride to the dealer. As soon as we walked in the door Matt went back and got another mechanic working on our truck. We planned on staying until it was fixed. It finally got finished at 3:00. If we hadn't gone down there it would not have gotten done. As promised though when we paid the bill it was only $300. Since when is $300 only $300. Guess I'm thinking in the perspective of $3,000 plus, then it doesn't seem so bad. We stopped and did some grocery shopping on the way back to the park.
When we got back to the park we had DiGiorno Pizza and reloaded the camper on the truck. We're ready to head to Denali in the morning. Obviously we didn't do much today since we were sitting at the Dodge dealer all day.
It will be a few days before I can fill you in on our trip to Denali since we won't have any wifi access until we get back to Anchorage on the 23rd.
When we got back to the park we had DiGiorno Pizza and reloaded the camper on the truck. We're ready to head to Denali in the morning. Obviously we didn't do much today since we were sitting at the Dodge dealer all day.
It will be a few days before I can fill you in on our trip to Denali since we won't have any wifi access until we get back to Anchorage on the 23rd.
Monday, July 17, 2006
July 13 through July 17
Thursday, July 13
Got up early to take the truck into the Dodge dealer. Since they wouldn't be able to get to it right away decided to take their courtesy van back out to the RV park. Most of the day was spent reading and working on the computer waiting for a call from Matt at the dealership to get the word on the truck. Well, he called about 2:30. The cost of the trip just went up significantly. He said we needed a new fuel pump, lift pump, and fuel injection system. I'm not sure what happened but when I screw things up I do it right. I was kind of in shock when he told me the final cost. I guess they are reputable so I guess that is what we will have to do. The bad thing is that the warranty just expired on April 6, 2006. Go figure.
We had a problem because we had to move the camper to another site to keep a site through Friday night. Someone was coming into our site on Friday. Don't know why the park couldn't tell them what had happened and put them into another site until Saturday but they couldn't. They did accommodate us by finding us another site for Thursday and Friday night so I had to run back to the dealer and pick up the truck and bring it back, load the camper, move it to another site, unload it, and then get the truck back over to the dealer so they could start on the repair work first thing Friday morning. While I was waiting for a shuttle ride back to the RV park I asked Matt if Chrysler ever helped out with repairs this close to the warranty expiration. He said that they had on a few occasions and gave me the Chrysler customer service number and a contact (Renea) he had worked with there in the past. I guess I will give them a call and see what I can find out.
You have to put things in perspective though, our problems are minor compared to some folks. There was a couple in the Cummins parking lot with a motor home and a ruined engine. They had sold their house and put all they had into the motor home. They had been there two weeks and now on one can find an engine to replace the one that is ruined. They were fighting with the motor home company regarding warranty also. They really have problems.
At least we should be back on the road by Saturday.
Finally got everything with the camper squared away and got back to the park. We had fried chicken, macaroni and cheese, and salad for supper. This is a very comfortable campground with electric, water, and sewer so we have it pretty good all in all. Beats sitting in the lot at Cummins.
Spent most of the evening visiting with John and Eileen. Since John was a Lutheran minister down in Florida they have a lot of stories about things that have happened to them. His church had brought a lot of refugees in and helped them resettle in the US. The stories John and Eileen had to tell about the lives of the refugees really does make you appreciate what we have here in the states.
Friday, June 14
Got up late this morning, around 8:00 and we made up a batch of Buddy biscuits for breakfast. We call them Buddy biscuits because Buddy Frye taught Carol how to make them and they are the best biscuits. They're great with butter and grape jelly on them. Now we need to go for a walk to walk it off.
The truck is promised to be completed by late this afternoon so not much we can do until then. I wanted to get this written so I could get it loaded on the blog today while we are still here. We plan to head north tomorrow to Telleetna and possibly ride a train from there to Hurricane. It is a one day round trip and it is a flag stop type train where it will stop for locals who need to get on at any point along the way. It mainly serves people who live in the back country and have no roads to access their homes. We thought this might be interesting.
From there we hope to get up for a trip along the Denali Highway prior to going into Denali Park on the 19th.
We thought we had plenty of time to see everything prior to our reservation at Denali, but with the truck repairs that time has slipped away and we are going to be a little cramped.
Oh well, we are very flexible. Not like we have any kind of schedule, except for the reservations at Denali. I only made those because this campground is about 30 miles into the park and it requires hard sided campers. It is the furthest you can go into the park with private vehicles, with the exception of the people who live in a small town at the end of the Denali Park road. This campground fills up pretty quickly so I thought reservations would be the best bet. You have to take a shuttle bus further into the park and those run on pretty frequent schedules.
Here's just hoping the truck runs fine after these repairs :-).
I called Renea at Chrysler customer service and after a couple of phone tags we got together. I told her our dilemma and asked if there was anything they could do to help. She said she had to call Matt and find out what the repairs entailed and talk to her boss and get back with me. She called back about a half hour later and said they could help. She said Chrysler would cover all of the bill with a $300 deductible. You could have knocked me over with a feather. The repairs come to about $3200. She said they considered that I had bought two new trucks from them in the last few years and they wanted to keep me as a customer. I think they probably will after this.
Well, the truck didn't get finished Friday after all. We're flexible and we couldn't be upset after the deal from Chrysler so we went up to the RV office and told them we hated to put them in a predicament but we couldn't get our truck back until Monday and we couldn't move our camper without it so we needed to stay until Tuesday morning. They did some rearranging and said okay.
We really can't complain about anything since everyone has been so accommodating.
I guess our plans for Talkeetna and the Denali Highway have been changed. This is the nice thing about not being on a fixed schedule. I do hope they finish the truck by Monday since we have reservations for Denali on Wednesday the 19th. We should have ample time.
We had some delicious chicken noodle soup for supper and watched 'Something's Gotta Give' with Jack Nicholson and Dianne Keaton and got to bed around 11:00.
Saturday, July 15
We got up pretty late this morning and were trying to decide what to do. I think we've finally decided to walk over the the Native Heritage Museum and tour it today. We also have to try and find someone who is going to Fred Meyer or Walmart today and see if we can hitch a ride. We're getting low on some necessities like toilet paper. Fred Meyer is a large retail outlet here in Alaska, mostly groceries but other things as well Theyare like Super Walmarts back home. We have not seen a supercenter (Walmart) up here. It may be because of political pressure from the Fred Meyer folks keeping supercenters out.
The weather the past week has been sunny and warm. Last night a front moved through and it rained all night. It is still raining this morning and they are predicting cooler temps and clouds for the rest of the weekend and into the new week.
We finally got ready and walked over to the Alaska Native Heritage Center. It turned out to be a little further than we thought from the RV park. We spent about four hours there. It is pretty interesting. It covers all of the native tribes of Alaska both Eskimo an Indian. We saw several videos on the way the different tribes built their boats, canoes, or kayaks. We also saw a show on current day whaling by the Inupiaq. They have samples of the housing of all the different tribes and provided a guided tour of these examples and there was a representative from each tribe at each location that talked a little about their way of life and culture. By the way the natives around the ocean perimeter of most of Alaska are grouped together as Eskimos which is a takeoff of words meaning raw fish eater. The central part of the state and the coastal panhandle or inside passage as it is called has what are considered Indians. Their language and some of their culture is more closely related to Indians in the rest of North America.
Around 3:30 we decided we wanted to head back but we also needed to get to a store and get some supplies so we caught the city bus and took it to a Fred Meyer store a few miles south of the park. We did our shopping and came back out and caught the bus back. Everybody should ride public transit every once in awhile just so they appreciate their own vehicles. The waiting is the worse, especially if it is rainy and cool. We got back and had some chicken soup to warm up and then watched a movie on television called 'Unbreakable' starring Bruce Willis and Samuel T. Jackson.
Sunday, July 16
We got up late again this morning and had cereal and English muffins for breakfast. Finally around 10:00 we decided we were ready to venture out. We knew there was a shuttle downtown from the Native Heritage Center at 10:45 so we went to the park office and they called to have the shuttle pick us up. We got downtown around 11:00 and got the the National Park Public Lands Office just in time for a guided historic walk around the downtown area. The presenter talked a lot about the native tribes also and then covered the explorations of Captain Cook up into the Cook Inlet and the Knik and Turnagain Arms of the Inlet. By this time it was noon so we went to the weekend market which is held every weekend in downtown Anchorage. It has a lot of craft type booths and vendors selling everything from souvenirs to crafts to food. We spent a couple of hours going through that and had a spicy salmon fajita for lunch.
We just walked around town a little more and got back to the visitor center at 3:00 to catch the shuttle back to the RV park. We found out this morning that this is the last year for this RV park. It has been sold and they are going to build condos here. It is a shame since it is the only decent RV park in the city.
We had hamburgers and macaroni and cheese for supper and after we finished I was sitting outside reading and the fellow in the next site over noticed a moose and fox out in the field behind us. I went out and watched them for awhile. They seem pretty use to people. It is the same two we saw the other day. It seems that they run together which seems really strange, but we see both of them at the same time every time we see them.
It is about 9:30 now. The moose is still browsing behind the camper. We'll probably watch a little television and then hit the sack. Sure hope we get the truck back tomorrow and it works good. We're ready to 'get out of Anchorage'.
Monday, July 17
Well, it is now 5:00 and the truck still isn't ready. We're still stranded in Anchorage. We'll see what tomorrow brings. We spent the day walking around the park, playing Yahtzee, and reading. It is starting to get a little boring.
Got up early to take the truck into the Dodge dealer. Since they wouldn't be able to get to it right away decided to take their courtesy van back out to the RV park. Most of the day was spent reading and working on the computer waiting for a call from Matt at the dealership to get the word on the truck. Well, he called about 2:30. The cost of the trip just went up significantly. He said we needed a new fuel pump, lift pump, and fuel injection system. I'm not sure what happened but when I screw things up I do it right. I was kind of in shock when he told me the final cost. I guess they are reputable so I guess that is what we will have to do. The bad thing is that the warranty just expired on April 6, 2006. Go figure.
We had a problem because we had to move the camper to another site to keep a site through Friday night. Someone was coming into our site on Friday. Don't know why the park couldn't tell them what had happened and put them into another site until Saturday but they couldn't. They did accommodate us by finding us another site for Thursday and Friday night so I had to run back to the dealer and pick up the truck and bring it back, load the camper, move it to another site, unload it, and then get the truck back over to the dealer so they could start on the repair work first thing Friday morning. While I was waiting for a shuttle ride back to the RV park I asked Matt if Chrysler ever helped out with repairs this close to the warranty expiration. He said that they had on a few occasions and gave me the Chrysler customer service number and a contact (Renea) he had worked with there in the past. I guess I will give them a call and see what I can find out.
You have to put things in perspective though, our problems are minor compared to some folks. There was a couple in the Cummins parking lot with a motor home and a ruined engine. They had sold their house and put all they had into the motor home. They had been there two weeks and now on one can find an engine to replace the one that is ruined. They were fighting with the motor home company regarding warranty also. They really have problems.
At least we should be back on the road by Saturday.
Finally got everything with the camper squared away and got back to the park. We had fried chicken, macaroni and cheese, and salad for supper. This is a very comfortable campground with electric, water, and sewer so we have it pretty good all in all. Beats sitting in the lot at Cummins.
Spent most of the evening visiting with John and Eileen. Since John was a Lutheran minister down in Florida they have a lot of stories about things that have happened to them. His church had brought a lot of refugees in and helped them resettle in the US. The stories John and Eileen had to tell about the lives of the refugees really does make you appreciate what we have here in the states.
Friday, June 14
Got up late this morning, around 8:00 and we made up a batch of Buddy biscuits for breakfast. We call them Buddy biscuits because Buddy Frye taught Carol how to make them and they are the best biscuits. They're great with butter and grape jelly on them. Now we need to go for a walk to walk it off.
The truck is promised to be completed by late this afternoon so not much we can do until then. I wanted to get this written so I could get it loaded on the blog today while we are still here. We plan to head north tomorrow to Telleetna and possibly ride a train from there to Hurricane. It is a one day round trip and it is a flag stop type train where it will stop for locals who need to get on at any point along the way. It mainly serves people who live in the back country and have no roads to access their homes. We thought this might be interesting.
From there we hope to get up for a trip along the Denali Highway prior to going into Denali Park on the 19th.
We thought we had plenty of time to see everything prior to our reservation at Denali, but with the truck repairs that time has slipped away and we are going to be a little cramped.
Oh well, we are very flexible. Not like we have any kind of schedule, except for the reservations at Denali. I only made those because this campground is about 30 miles into the park and it requires hard sided campers. It is the furthest you can go into the park with private vehicles, with the exception of the people who live in a small town at the end of the Denali Park road. This campground fills up pretty quickly so I thought reservations would be the best bet. You have to take a shuttle bus further into the park and those run on pretty frequent schedules.
Here's just hoping the truck runs fine after these repairs :-).
I called Renea at Chrysler customer service and after a couple of phone tags we got together. I told her our dilemma and asked if there was anything they could do to help. She said she had to call Matt and find out what the repairs entailed and talk to her boss and get back with me. She called back about a half hour later and said they could help. She said Chrysler would cover all of the bill with a $300 deductible. You could have knocked me over with a feather. The repairs come to about $3200. She said they considered that I had bought two new trucks from them in the last few years and they wanted to keep me as a customer. I think they probably will after this.
Well, the truck didn't get finished Friday after all. We're flexible and we couldn't be upset after the deal from Chrysler so we went up to the RV office and told them we hated to put them in a predicament but we couldn't get our truck back until Monday and we couldn't move our camper without it so we needed to stay until Tuesday morning. They did some rearranging and said okay.
We really can't complain about anything since everyone has been so accommodating.
I guess our plans for Talkeetna and the Denali Highway have been changed. This is the nice thing about not being on a fixed schedule. I do hope they finish the truck by Monday since we have reservations for Denali on Wednesday the 19th. We should have ample time.
We had some delicious chicken noodle soup for supper and watched 'Something's Gotta Give' with Jack Nicholson and Dianne Keaton and got to bed around 11:00.
Saturday, July 15
We got up pretty late this morning and were trying to decide what to do. I think we've finally decided to walk over the the Native Heritage Museum and tour it today. We also have to try and find someone who is going to Fred Meyer or Walmart today and see if we can hitch a ride. We're getting low on some necessities like toilet paper. Fred Meyer is a large retail outlet here in Alaska, mostly groceries but other things as well Theyare like Super Walmarts back home. We have not seen a supercenter (Walmart) up here. It may be because of political pressure from the Fred Meyer folks keeping supercenters out.
The weather the past week has been sunny and warm. Last night a front moved through and it rained all night. It is still raining this morning and they are predicting cooler temps and clouds for the rest of the weekend and into the new week.
We finally got ready and walked over to the Alaska Native Heritage Center. It turned out to be a little further than we thought from the RV park. We spent about four hours there. It is pretty interesting. It covers all of the native tribes of Alaska both Eskimo an Indian. We saw several videos on the way the different tribes built their boats, canoes, or kayaks. We also saw a show on current day whaling by the Inupiaq. They have samples of the housing of all the different tribes and provided a guided tour of these examples and there was a representative from each tribe at each location that talked a little about their way of life and culture. By the way the natives around the ocean perimeter of most of Alaska are grouped together as Eskimos which is a takeoff of words meaning raw fish eater. The central part of the state and the coastal panhandle or inside passage as it is called has what are considered Indians. Their language and some of their culture is more closely related to Indians in the rest of North America.
Around 3:30 we decided we wanted to head back but we also needed to get to a store and get some supplies so we caught the city bus and took it to a Fred Meyer store a few miles south of the park. We did our shopping and came back out and caught the bus back. Everybody should ride public transit every once in awhile just so they appreciate their own vehicles. The waiting is the worse, especially if it is rainy and cool. We got back and had some chicken soup to warm up and then watched a movie on television called 'Unbreakable' starring Bruce Willis and Samuel T. Jackson.
Sunday, July 16
We got up late again this morning and had cereal and English muffins for breakfast. Finally around 10:00 we decided we were ready to venture out. We knew there was a shuttle downtown from the Native Heritage Center at 10:45 so we went to the park office and they called to have the shuttle pick us up. We got downtown around 11:00 and got the the National Park Public Lands Office just in time for a guided historic walk around the downtown area. The presenter talked a lot about the native tribes also and then covered the explorations of Captain Cook up into the Cook Inlet and the Knik and Turnagain Arms of the Inlet. By this time it was noon so we went to the weekend market which is held every weekend in downtown Anchorage. It has a lot of craft type booths and vendors selling everything from souvenirs to crafts to food. We spent a couple of hours going through that and had a spicy salmon fajita for lunch.
We just walked around town a little more and got back to the visitor center at 3:00 to catch the shuttle back to the RV park. We found out this morning that this is the last year for this RV park. It has been sold and they are going to build condos here. It is a shame since it is the only decent RV park in the city.
We had hamburgers and macaroni and cheese for supper and after we finished I was sitting outside reading and the fellow in the next site over noticed a moose and fox out in the field behind us. I went out and watched them for awhile. They seem pretty use to people. It is the same two we saw the other day. It seems that they run together which seems really strange, but we see both of them at the same time every time we see them.
It is about 9:30 now. The moose is still browsing behind the camper. We'll probably watch a little television and then hit the sack. Sure hope we get the truck back tomorrow and it works good. We're ready to 'get out of Anchorage'.
Monday, July 17
Well, it is now 5:00 and the truck still isn't ready. We're still stranded in Anchorage. We'll see what tomorrow brings. We spent the day walking around the park, playing Yahtzee, and reading. It is starting to get a little boring.
Thursday, July 13, 2006
July 11 and 12
Tuesday, July 11
Well, the truck seemed to work fine this morning. The mechanic (Byron) hooked up his computer to the engine and we ran around the block. No maintenance errors were indicated and it ran just fine. We got back to the service center and it was time to pay. Ouch. The labor rate is $124 an hour. It cost me almost $400 for a new fuel filter. That included the time spent trying to determine the problem also though.
We're set now so we head out to the Chugach State Park. We first located a campground and signed up for a campsite. Next we went on to the Eagle River Nature Center as Ray and Dianna McCalment had suggested. We got there just as a volunteer was getting ready to take a group out for a guided walk. Perfect timing. We had a group of about a dozen folks who took the nature walk. It was very informative and Carol especially enjoyed it since the guide spent quite a bit of time on the native plants along the trail. It was a gorgeous day and warm so it was a very pleasant hike. We finished up the hike around noon and got back to the nature center and had a bite of lunch in the camper before we headed out on an afternoon hike. There in a loop trail called the Albert Loop Trail that we wanted to take. We packed up the day pack grabbed the bear spray and headed out. This was really a pleasant hike. Much of it is through marsh and has boards where the trail is really wet. It also parallels the Eagle River part of the way. A short distance off of the trail is yurt one can rent that overlooks the river. We stopped there and had a little trail mix. We had hoped to see some wildlife, i.e. moose, bear, etc., but no such luck.
We had hiked about a total of four miles and were ready to sit when we got back to the truck. After cooling down a little we started up the truck and I pulled out of the parking lot to head back to the campsite. Unfortunately there was the old problem although it was short lived the truck would not accelerate properly. We got back to the campsite and cussed and discussed what to do. Finally I decided to give the Dodge dealer a try. I called and they said to bring it in on Thursday morning.
We had some left over pork made up into fajitas for supper. Very tasty. I pulled out the generator and Carol cut my hair, then I held a mirror for her so she could see the back of her head in the bathroom mirror and she cut her own. It looks good. I don't know how she does it though I couldn't reach behind my head and cut, I'm not that coordinated.
We called Bob and Jan McCoy this evening. They are flying into Anchorage on the 23rd of July so we told them we would hopefully meet them at the airport and we could possibly go get some pizza for supper and go out to the nature center and hike that night, depending on how they felt. We should be back from Denali by then.
We read for awhile and then went to bed.
Wednesday, July 12
Shelby called at 7:00 and woke us up this morning. She and Rob are leaving for Hawaii tomorrow. It was good to hear from her.
We talked to Had and Barb also this morning. Found out they had sold their fishing boat and traded their fifth wheel for a 28' combination B/C motor home. I take it is much like a Class C but no bed over the cab. The area above the cab is probably an entertainment center. It really sounds nice.
We drove around a little and found another trail to try. Hiked for a while and then headed back to the truck. It was a pretty steep trail so we didn't go a long distance on this one. We explored some more side roads and then around noon headed back toward Anchorage. We have reservations at the Anchorage RV Park, by far the nicest in the Anchorage area. We need showers and to do some laundry.
We got the showering and laundry done and I loaded up the blog and photos. When we got back we hooked up the camper to water and electric and then I proceeded to take it off the truck. The guy I talked to at the Dodge dealer had said it would need to come off anyway if they needed to put in a fuel lift pump because they would need to drop the fuel tank so I got this site for two nights anticipating leaving the camper here so Carol could sleep late and stay here at the park while I take the truck in.
While we were sitting in the RV park lounge loading the blog and doing email in walked John Frerking, of John and Eileen, who we meet in Dawson City. So after we got our chores done we went down and had a pleasant time telling each other what we had seen and done since Dawson City. They went south from Tok to Valdez, Seward, Homer, etc., where we had gone north to Fairbanks and around the loop on the Richardson and Gleen Highways.
We got back to the camper and I ran over to KFC and got some chicken for supper. Wow, driving the truck without the camper is like driving a sports car. I do love fried chicken, we also had rice and bread. We didn't finish supper until 9:00 so did dishes and read for awhile and went to bed about 10:30 since I had to get up at 6:00 and get the truck to the dealer by 7:00.
More from 'Stranded in Anchorage' later.
Well, the truck seemed to work fine this morning. The mechanic (Byron) hooked up his computer to the engine and we ran around the block. No maintenance errors were indicated and it ran just fine. We got back to the service center and it was time to pay. Ouch. The labor rate is $124 an hour. It cost me almost $400 for a new fuel filter. That included the time spent trying to determine the problem also though.
We're set now so we head out to the Chugach State Park. We first located a campground and signed up for a campsite. Next we went on to the Eagle River Nature Center as Ray and Dianna McCalment had suggested. We got there just as a volunteer was getting ready to take a group out for a guided walk. Perfect timing. We had a group of about a dozen folks who took the nature walk. It was very informative and Carol especially enjoyed it since the guide spent quite a bit of time on the native plants along the trail. It was a gorgeous day and warm so it was a very pleasant hike. We finished up the hike around noon and got back to the nature center and had a bite of lunch in the camper before we headed out on an afternoon hike. There in a loop trail called the Albert Loop Trail that we wanted to take. We packed up the day pack grabbed the bear spray and headed out. This was really a pleasant hike. Much of it is through marsh and has boards where the trail is really wet. It also parallels the Eagle River part of the way. A short distance off of the trail is yurt one can rent that overlooks the river. We stopped there and had a little trail mix. We had hoped to see some wildlife, i.e. moose, bear, etc., but no such luck.
We had hiked about a total of four miles and were ready to sit when we got back to the truck. After cooling down a little we started up the truck and I pulled out of the parking lot to head back to the campsite. Unfortunately there was the old problem although it was short lived the truck would not accelerate properly. We got back to the campsite and cussed and discussed what to do. Finally I decided to give the Dodge dealer a try. I called and they said to bring it in on Thursday morning.
We had some left over pork made up into fajitas for supper. Very tasty. I pulled out the generator and Carol cut my hair, then I held a mirror for her so she could see the back of her head in the bathroom mirror and she cut her own. It looks good. I don't know how she does it though I couldn't reach behind my head and cut, I'm not that coordinated.
We called Bob and Jan McCoy this evening. They are flying into Anchorage on the 23rd of July so we told them we would hopefully meet them at the airport and we could possibly go get some pizza for supper and go out to the nature center and hike that night, depending on how they felt. We should be back from Denali by then.
We read for awhile and then went to bed.
Wednesday, July 12
Shelby called at 7:00 and woke us up this morning. She and Rob are leaving for Hawaii tomorrow. It was good to hear from her.
We talked to Had and Barb also this morning. Found out they had sold their fishing boat and traded their fifth wheel for a 28' combination B/C motor home. I take it is much like a Class C but no bed over the cab. The area above the cab is probably an entertainment center. It really sounds nice.
We drove around a little and found another trail to try. Hiked for a while and then headed back to the truck. It was a pretty steep trail so we didn't go a long distance on this one. We explored some more side roads and then around noon headed back toward Anchorage. We have reservations at the Anchorage RV Park, by far the nicest in the Anchorage area. We need showers and to do some laundry.
We got the showering and laundry done and I loaded up the blog and photos. When we got back we hooked up the camper to water and electric and then I proceeded to take it off the truck. The guy I talked to at the Dodge dealer had said it would need to come off anyway if they needed to put in a fuel lift pump because they would need to drop the fuel tank so I got this site for two nights anticipating leaving the camper here so Carol could sleep late and stay here at the park while I take the truck in.
While we were sitting in the RV park lounge loading the blog and doing email in walked John Frerking, of John and Eileen, who we meet in Dawson City. So after we got our chores done we went down and had a pleasant time telling each other what we had seen and done since Dawson City. They went south from Tok to Valdez, Seward, Homer, etc., where we had gone north to Fairbanks and around the loop on the Richardson and Gleen Highways.
We got back to the camper and I ran over to KFC and got some chicken for supper. Wow, driving the truck without the camper is like driving a sports car. I do love fried chicken, we also had rice and bread. We didn't finish supper until 9:00 so did dishes and read for awhile and went to bed about 10:30 since I had to get up at 6:00 and get the truck to the dealer by 7:00.
More from 'Stranded in Anchorage' later.
Wednesday, July 12, 2006
July 4 through July 10
Tuesday, July 4
After breakfast I grabbed my computer and camera and went over the park office where they have a plug-in and wifi. I downloaded photos and loaded the blog and checked email. Carol straightened up the camper. Since there isn't much to straightened she got done a lot sooner than I did. Around 11:00 or so we finished up, dumped the holding tanks and filled with fresh water. We headed up to the Chena Hot Springs Road. The Chena Recreation area is about 30 miles from Fairbanks on this road and runs for about 30 miles. Then there is a hot spring resort at the end of the road. We drove very slowly because of the rough roads and kept having to pull over and let people go by. We explored all the side roads and finally ended up at the hot springs.
We decided not to soak in the hot springs. It is pleasant but more commercial than Liard and the day was pretty warms so we didn't feel the need to soak in hot water. We headed back down the road to the recreation area. We found a couple of no name lakes that had a sizable area for camping and pulled in there. There were a couple of other camper there but they pulled up stakes and left in the early evening. We built a campfire and roasted some hhot dogsfor supper and watched a couple of beavers in the lake swim back and forth with branches to take into their house. We decided they probably had some little ones in there they were feeding. Carol said she knew where they came up with the phrase 'busy as a beaver'.
It was a fairly busy place up until midnight. People just don't seem to sleep up here, of course it is still light as a cloudy day at midnight. Finally everyone pulled out about 1:00 and we had the place to ourselves then.
We meet one fellow who was there with his son fishing. He lived on the road down toward Fairbanks. He came to Alaska in the late 70 right after the pipeline was built looking for work. Guess he has done okay. He is a carpenter.
Wednesday, July 5
We couldn't figure out where we wanted to go today, so we took a hike around the lake to try and decide. The mosquitoes just about carried us off so we crossed hiking off of the list. We finally decided to head up north a little further to see what we could see. Well, about fifty miles of the road up toward Livengood was all we could take. It was just too rough and the scenery was constantly the same so we decided to turn around and head back to Fairbanks and fill the propane tank and then drive on down south of Delta Junction to some lakes the man at the Public Lands place had told us about. One the way down I kept having some acceleration problems with the engine. We had been talking about taking the Denali Highway from Paxson on the Richardson Hwy over to the Parks Hwy. Now, with the engine problems not so sure about that since the Denali is pretty remote, slow and rough. Anyway, when we got to Coal Mine Road, our turnoff to the lakes we were looking for we took that. Talk about a rough road. We did get right up next to the pipeline and got a good photo of the camper right next to it with some peaks in the background. We went on up toward the lakes and low and behold, here was a huge mud hole blocking the road. If it had been more gravelly I would have tried making it through but at some time some one had put a large pipe in that the water was supposed to run through. The pipe no longer carried the water, the road did. It was muddy on one side and then you had to drive up over the pipe which I was afraid might hit my transmission and it was really muddy on the other side so we never did make it to the lakes. I found a campsite but it was so enclosed and buggy we decided to head back out to the highway and look further down the road. We did find a beautiful spot not too much later. A gravel pit with another no name lake that had a lot of wildflowers in it. We finally stopped for the night and it was 7:00. It had been a longer day than we like. We had leftovers for supper, read for a while and then off to bed.
Thursday, July 6
We decided after breakfast the wise thing to do with the truck acting up would be to head on into Anchorage and get it worked on. As we pulled out of the gravel pit I could not get any acceleration out of it. It chugged down the road at about 15 to 20 mph for about the first mile. Luckily, these are very unbusy highways.and no one came up behind me. The accelerator finally kicked in after about a mile or so and the truck was fine from then on. When we got to Paxson we called a Cummins diesel service center in Anchorage and talked to them. He couldn't work me in Friday without keeping the truck all weekend so we made an appointment for 8:00 Monday morning. Since we didn't have to be in Anchorage right away we started looking for campsites down the road a ways. About noon we found one and that is where we are sitting right now as I type this. We have the generator going to charge batteries and use the computer, hair dryer and curling iron, and all those other necessities. This campsite is on a pipeline access road. It is nice and open to blow away the mosquitoes. There are a few marshy ponds down the road a little ways. We may walk down there this evening and see if we can see moose.
Wouldn't you know, it has been nice and mainly sunny all day today, but as soon as I started the generator it started raining. I put a poncho cover over it until the cloud passed and now it is sunny again. The weather changes on a dime. It can be sunny and nice one moment and then boom raining cats and dogs. We commented on the fact that we have not seen a completely clear sky since Montana. The sky up here constantly has clouds in it. Sometimes they are pretty clouds and sometimes thick and rainy, but clouds none the less.
When I mention gravel pits for camping, these are basically areas off the road where gravel was drawn from to build the highways. Most have a small lake in them where the gravel was dug out. They make great free campsites. The rule up here is that if there is not a 'No Camping' sign it is okay to camp there. Most of the land is public. We are on BLM "Bureau of Land Management' land now.
The roads up here are something else. The winters are extremely hard on them and when you are driving along you will notice how wavy the road is. These are frost heaves and they can really be dandies sometimes. If the heaves are too close together they create a dip that is quite significant. These can sneak up on you sometimes. We have hit a couple. One was significant enough to bend the 'c' bolts that I use to hold the camper to the ttie downswith. That was quite a shock. I have since replaced those. I've learned to drive very slow on most of the roads up here. Slow for me is about 45. Yes, I actually do that, I know it is hard to believe. That gives me a chance to brake when I see a bad heave. Most people up here, the natives, just fly on over them, but they don't have a 3000# camper in the back end. I tend to do a lot pulling off and letting people pass.
Another thing I have noticed up here is that since there is very little traffic a lot of the natives tend to ignore the yellow no pass lines. I've seen them pass where I sure wouldn't pass. One of these days that will catch up with them. The highways are almost deserted. In three hours of driving this morning we probably only passed about a dozen cars going north. I guess that will change when we get over to the Achorage and Denali area.
Friday, July 7
Friday morning we had breakfast and decided to hike down the road to the river. We had been here at this spot nearly 20 hours and we knew there was an Alaska Pipeline building down below us due to the fact that 3 trucks had come out including one security person who took down our license number. I talked to him and he said the facility below was a large refrigeration plant The pipeline had to be buried at this point because it was a migration route for the caribou and since it creates heat the refrigeration plant was used to keep the permafrost frozen under the pipe to keep it from shifting. Interesting.
We hiked down to the river and found some abandoned junk but not much else. We didn't even see any animals. When we got back we packed up and headed out. We hoped to get within a reasonable distance of Anchorage today. When we went through Glenallen we stopped at the visitor center. The lady there told us about a gravel road that went north off the Glenn Highway to a large lake named Lake Louise. We decided to make the side trip up there to look for campsites. It was only about 20 miles up and 20 miles back. It was pretty rough in spots though. One spot we tried a side road hoping to find a remote campsite at a small lake on the way. We made it about a half mile and found another deep muddy puddle blocking our way. This road was a little more difficult to turn around on since it is so narrow. I'm glad we have a sshort bedpickup. It gives us a much better turning radius.
We finally made it to Lake Louise and the state recreation area campsites there were not very pleasant at all so we headed back out to the Glenn Highway. We finally found a campsite about 80 miles from Achorage and parked for the night. We took a short hike after supper and saw a red fox Right after we got back to the camper the rain started falling, and falling hard. It rained off and on most of the night.
Saturday, July 8
The drive this morning was gorgeous with lots of views of mountains and our first views of glaciers. We stopped in Palmer at the visitor center and museum and learned about the city. It was started back in the 1930s during the depression in an attempt to bring more people to Alaska and as a depression era program. About 200 families were chosen to participate in this colonization effort. They came mainly from North Dakota, Minnesota, and Wisconsin, because the government thought these families of Scandinavian descent would have a better chance of surviving the extreme cold. This was an attempt to bring an agricultural base to Alaska. It was fairly successful. The long days of summer make for an excellent growing season up here, believe it or not. The vegetables they grow up here are huge.
An interesting fact about the Palmer colony was that a bunch of unemployed men from California were brought in to build the housing for the families that came up here in the summer of 1935 The families who were living in tents that summer would have nothing to do with the iitinerantlabor and would not let any of them stay after the construction was completed.
Palmer is just 40 miles out of Anchorage so we got to Anchorage around 1:00. The first campground we checked, a city campground called Centenial Park was kind of junky so we decided to look at other campgrounds in the Anchorage area. There is only one nice park in Anchorage (Anchorage RV Park) and they were full. We didn't like the rest so we ended up returning to Centenial Park and camping for the night. After that we went downtown to the weekend market and the visitor center. When we got back to the campground we fixed supper and I called Joyce Jackman's daughter Jennifer who lives here in Anchorage. We made arrangements to drop by and meet Jennifer and Joyce's grand daughter Dorie on Sunday afternoon. Jennifer's husband Carl works for Aramark. He is in charge of their operations at Denali Park. Aramark is the largest contractor in Denali Park. We got to bed about 10:00 and slept well.
Sunday, July 9
Woke up around 9:00 this morning. We just had a quick breakfast, cereal, and toast and then tried to decide what we would do today. We were kind of museumed out and wanted to do something else. We called Ray and Dianna since they had been to Anchorage a couple of years ago. They mentioned the Chaguch State Forest and some guided hikes. That sounded like an idea so we went on downtown to the visitor center to check on where the headquarters of the Chaguch State Forest was and they said it was probably Eagle River Nature Center. That is north, back toward Palmer so we decided to postpone that until after we got the truck worked on. We then went to an Imax type theater near the visitor center called the Alaska Experience. We saw both an Imax presentation on Alaska and then saw a movie relating to the 1964 earthquake. That was a major earthquake and killed several people. I vaguely remember it. After that we went to Earthquake park where a sizeable sub division was located. The earthquake caused collapse of ground under the sub-division. We also got our first glimpse of the Turnabout Inlet. The tide was out and there was a lot of mud flats showing. We then drove out by Hood Lake and the airport. This is one of the busiest seaplane airports in the world and we saw several seaplanes taking off and landing. We then headed out south toward Jennifer's house. We found a nice place to grab a sandwich on the way and arrived there just about on time.
Jennifer gave us a bunch of pointers on places to see and we really enjoyed Dorie. She has to be one of the happiest babies we have ever seen. She is a doll. Jennifer and Carl have a lovely house that has a great view of the inlet and is light and open. They seem to be adjusting well to life up here. I told Jennifer I admired her for having already spent a winter up here. Jennifer told us about the drive down to Girdwood and the festival that was going on down there, so when we left we headed down toward Girdwood. The highway parallels the inlet and it is a fantastic drive down the Seward Highway. We got to Girdwood kind of late and the festival was ending so we didn't stay. It was awfully crowded still and parking was really scarce. We got back to Anchorage about 7:00 and found a restaurant called Phylis's that had outdoor seating and good prices on Alaskan King Crabs so we ate there. The crab was delicious. We spent at least an hour after supper in a bookstore right next store.
This evening we decided we would spend the night over at the Cummins dealer so a mechanic could drive it in the morning and see what it was doing. We headed over there and found a place to park behind the dealer and hit the sack.
Monday, July 10
Woke up really early this morning, 6:00. Needless to say a diesel repair shop has a lot of activity with diesel engines early in the morning. We had an appointment for 8:00 so I went into the service area at 7:30 and probably got them moving a little earlier than they wanted. To make a long story short they looked and analyzed and determined that it might be a throttle sensor. A new one costs $450. They had to order it in from Indiana overnight. After that we started to head out and the truck wouldn't go at all, plus an engine light came on. They put it on the computer again and found a fuel problem. They decided to change the fuel filter and then wanted me to go fill the gas tanks since they were pretty low so they could do some more pressure tests. Well, the truck seemed to be running fine now. We went and filled the fuel tanks and came back and said we would just run some errands this afternoon and park here again tonight and see how it did in the morning.
We went to Walmart and Fred Meyer and did some grocery shopping. And then we went by a fish market that we had found yesterday and bought a pound and a half of King Salmon. We decided to go to a park and fix supper rather than back to the Cummins dealer. We found a nice park on the greenbelt here and pulled in. We kept seeing a lot of people waling by with frisbees. We had to go and see what was going on. It turned out that there was a discgolf course there. It is similar to a golf course but you use frisbees instead of golf balls and clubs. There are tees and obstacles and the goal is to get the frisbee into a basket that had a bunch of chains hanging above it to stop the frisbee and let it fall into the basket. It is pretty neat and a lot cheaper than golf. By the way there are such things as driving frisbees and putting frisbees.
We cooked supper there at the park. It was great. Salmon, salad, fried potatoes, and french bread. All of this while we looked out on a lake with Canadian geese and mallards. We stayed there at the park until about 8:00 and now we're back at the Cummins dealer for the night. Both of us are hoping the fuel filter is all we needed to solve our problem.
After breakfast I grabbed my computer and camera and went over the park office where they have a plug-in and wifi. I downloaded photos and loaded the blog and checked email. Carol straightened up the camper. Since there isn't much to straightened she got done a lot sooner than I did. Around 11:00 or so we finished up, dumped the holding tanks and filled with fresh water. We headed up to the Chena Hot Springs Road. The Chena Recreation area is about 30 miles from Fairbanks on this road and runs for about 30 miles. Then there is a hot spring resort at the end of the road. We drove very slowly because of the rough roads and kept having to pull over and let people go by. We explored all the side roads and finally ended up at the hot springs.
We decided not to soak in the hot springs. It is pleasant but more commercial than Liard and the day was pretty warms so we didn't feel the need to soak in hot water. We headed back down the road to the recreation area. We found a couple of no name lakes that had a sizable area for camping and pulled in there. There were a couple of other camper there but they pulled up stakes and left in the early evening. We built a campfire and roasted some hhot dogsfor supper and watched a couple of beavers in the lake swim back and forth with branches to take into their house. We decided they probably had some little ones in there they were feeding. Carol said she knew where they came up with the phrase 'busy as a beaver'.
It was a fairly busy place up until midnight. People just don't seem to sleep up here, of course it is still light as a cloudy day at midnight. Finally everyone pulled out about 1:00 and we had the place to ourselves then.
We meet one fellow who was there with his son fishing. He lived on the road down toward Fairbanks. He came to Alaska in the late 70 right after the pipeline was built looking for work. Guess he has done okay. He is a carpenter.
Wednesday, July 5
We couldn't figure out where we wanted to go today, so we took a hike around the lake to try and decide. The mosquitoes just about carried us off so we crossed hiking off of the list. We finally decided to head up north a little further to see what we could see. Well, about fifty miles of the road up toward Livengood was all we could take. It was just too rough and the scenery was constantly the same so we decided to turn around and head back to Fairbanks and fill the propane tank and then drive on down south of Delta Junction to some lakes the man at the Public Lands place had told us about. One the way down I kept having some acceleration problems with the engine. We had been talking about taking the Denali Highway from Paxson on the Richardson Hwy over to the Parks Hwy. Now, with the engine problems not so sure about that since the Denali is pretty remote, slow and rough. Anyway, when we got to Coal Mine Road, our turnoff to the lakes we were looking for we took that. Talk about a rough road. We did get right up next to the pipeline and got a good photo of the camper right next to it with some peaks in the background. We went on up toward the lakes and low and behold, here was a huge mud hole blocking the road. If it had been more gravelly I would have tried making it through but at some time some one had put a large pipe in that the water was supposed to run through. The pipe no longer carried the water, the road did. It was muddy on one side and then you had to drive up over the pipe which I was afraid might hit my transmission and it was really muddy on the other side so we never did make it to the lakes. I found a campsite but it was so enclosed and buggy we decided to head back out to the highway and look further down the road. We did find a beautiful spot not too much later. A gravel pit with another no name lake that had a lot of wildflowers in it. We finally stopped for the night and it was 7:00. It had been a longer day than we like. We had leftovers for supper, read for a while and then off to bed.
Thursday, July 6
We decided after breakfast the wise thing to do with the truck acting up would be to head on into Anchorage and get it worked on. As we pulled out of the gravel pit I could not get any acceleration out of it. It chugged down the road at about 15 to 20 mph for about the first mile. Luckily, these are very unbusy highways.and no one came up behind me. The accelerator finally kicked in after about a mile or so and the truck was fine from then on. When we got to Paxson we called a Cummins diesel service center in Anchorage and talked to them. He couldn't work me in Friday without keeping the truck all weekend so we made an appointment for 8:00 Monday morning. Since we didn't have to be in Anchorage right away we started looking for campsites down the road a ways. About noon we found one and that is where we are sitting right now as I type this. We have the generator going to charge batteries and use the computer, hair dryer and curling iron, and all those other necessities. This campsite is on a pipeline access road. It is nice and open to blow away the mosquitoes. There are a few marshy ponds down the road a little ways. We may walk down there this evening and see if we can see moose.
Wouldn't you know, it has been nice and mainly sunny all day today, but as soon as I started the generator it started raining. I put a poncho cover over it until the cloud passed and now it is sunny again. The weather changes on a dime. It can be sunny and nice one moment and then boom raining cats and dogs. We commented on the fact that we have not seen a completely clear sky since Montana. The sky up here constantly has clouds in it. Sometimes they are pretty clouds and sometimes thick and rainy, but clouds none the less.
When I mention gravel pits for camping, these are basically areas off the road where gravel was drawn from to build the highways. Most have a small lake in them where the gravel was dug out. They make great free campsites. The rule up here is that if there is not a 'No Camping' sign it is okay to camp there. Most of the land is public. We are on BLM "Bureau of Land Management' land now.
The roads up here are something else. The winters are extremely hard on them and when you are driving along you will notice how wavy the road is. These are frost heaves and they can really be dandies sometimes. If the heaves are too close together they create a dip that is quite significant. These can sneak up on you sometimes. We have hit a couple. One was significant enough to bend the 'c' bolts that I use to hold the camper to the ttie downswith. That was quite a shock. I have since replaced those. I've learned to drive very slow on most of the roads up here. Slow for me is about 45. Yes, I actually do that, I know it is hard to believe. That gives me a chance to brake when I see a bad heave. Most people up here, the natives, just fly on over them, but they don't have a 3000# camper in the back end. I tend to do a lot pulling off and letting people pass.
Another thing I have noticed up here is that since there is very little traffic a lot of the natives tend to ignore the yellow no pass lines. I've seen them pass where I sure wouldn't pass. One of these days that will catch up with them. The highways are almost deserted. In three hours of driving this morning we probably only passed about a dozen cars going north. I guess that will change when we get over to the Achorage and Denali area.
Friday, July 7
Friday morning we had breakfast and decided to hike down the road to the river. We had been here at this spot nearly 20 hours and we knew there was an Alaska Pipeline building down below us due to the fact that 3 trucks had come out including one security person who took down our license number. I talked to him and he said the facility below was a large refrigeration plant The pipeline had to be buried at this point because it was a migration route for the caribou and since it creates heat the refrigeration plant was used to keep the permafrost frozen under the pipe to keep it from shifting. Interesting.
We hiked down to the river and found some abandoned junk but not much else. We didn't even see any animals. When we got back we packed up and headed out. We hoped to get within a reasonable distance of Anchorage today. When we went through Glenallen we stopped at the visitor center. The lady there told us about a gravel road that went north off the Glenn Highway to a large lake named Lake Louise. We decided to make the side trip up there to look for campsites. It was only about 20 miles up and 20 miles back. It was pretty rough in spots though. One spot we tried a side road hoping to find a remote campsite at a small lake on the way. We made it about a half mile and found another deep muddy puddle blocking our way. This road was a little more difficult to turn around on since it is so narrow. I'm glad we have a sshort bedpickup. It gives us a much better turning radius.
We finally made it to Lake Louise and the state recreation area campsites there were not very pleasant at all so we headed back out to the Glenn Highway. We finally found a campsite about 80 miles from Achorage and parked for the night. We took a short hike after supper and saw a red fox Right after we got back to the camper the rain started falling, and falling hard. It rained off and on most of the night.
Saturday, July 8
The drive this morning was gorgeous with lots of views of mountains and our first views of glaciers. We stopped in Palmer at the visitor center and museum and learned about the city. It was started back in the 1930s during the depression in an attempt to bring more people to Alaska and as a depression era program. About 200 families were chosen to participate in this colonization effort. They came mainly from North Dakota, Minnesota, and Wisconsin, because the government thought these families of Scandinavian descent would have a better chance of surviving the extreme cold. This was an attempt to bring an agricultural base to Alaska. It was fairly successful. The long days of summer make for an excellent growing season up here, believe it or not. The vegetables they grow up here are huge.
An interesting fact about the Palmer colony was that a bunch of unemployed men from California were brought in to build the housing for the families that came up here in the summer of 1935 The families who were living in tents that summer would have nothing to do with the iitinerantlabor and would not let any of them stay after the construction was completed.
Palmer is just 40 miles out of Anchorage so we got to Anchorage around 1:00. The first campground we checked, a city campground called Centenial Park was kind of junky so we decided to look at other campgrounds in the Anchorage area. There is only one nice park in Anchorage (Anchorage RV Park) and they were full. We didn't like the rest so we ended up returning to Centenial Park and camping for the night. After that we went downtown to the weekend market and the visitor center. When we got back to the campground we fixed supper and I called Joyce Jackman's daughter Jennifer who lives here in Anchorage. We made arrangements to drop by and meet Jennifer and Joyce's grand daughter Dorie on Sunday afternoon. Jennifer's husband Carl works for Aramark. He is in charge of their operations at Denali Park. Aramark is the largest contractor in Denali Park. We got to bed about 10:00 and slept well.
Sunday, July 9
Woke up around 9:00 this morning. We just had a quick breakfast, cereal, and toast and then tried to decide what we would do today. We were kind of museumed out and wanted to do something else. We called Ray and Dianna since they had been to Anchorage a couple of years ago. They mentioned the Chaguch State Forest and some guided hikes. That sounded like an idea so we went on downtown to the visitor center to check on where the headquarters of the Chaguch State Forest was and they said it was probably Eagle River Nature Center. That is north, back toward Palmer so we decided to postpone that until after we got the truck worked on. We then went to an Imax type theater near the visitor center called the Alaska Experience. We saw both an Imax presentation on Alaska and then saw a movie relating to the 1964 earthquake. That was a major earthquake and killed several people. I vaguely remember it. After that we went to Earthquake park where a sizeable sub division was located. The earthquake caused collapse of ground under the sub-division. We also got our first glimpse of the Turnabout Inlet. The tide was out and there was a lot of mud flats showing. We then drove out by Hood Lake and the airport. This is one of the busiest seaplane airports in the world and we saw several seaplanes taking off and landing. We then headed out south toward Jennifer's house. We found a nice place to grab a sandwich on the way and arrived there just about on time.
Jennifer gave us a bunch of pointers on places to see and we really enjoyed Dorie. She has to be one of the happiest babies we have ever seen. She is a doll. Jennifer and Carl have a lovely house that has a great view of the inlet and is light and open. They seem to be adjusting well to life up here. I told Jennifer I admired her for having already spent a winter up here. Jennifer told us about the drive down to Girdwood and the festival that was going on down there, so when we left we headed down toward Girdwood. The highway parallels the inlet and it is a fantastic drive down the Seward Highway. We got to Girdwood kind of late and the festival was ending so we didn't stay. It was awfully crowded still and parking was really scarce. We got back to Anchorage about 7:00 and found a restaurant called Phylis's that had outdoor seating and good prices on Alaskan King Crabs so we ate there. The crab was delicious. We spent at least an hour after supper in a bookstore right next store.
This evening we decided we would spend the night over at the Cummins dealer so a mechanic could drive it in the morning and see what it was doing. We headed over there and found a place to park behind the dealer and hit the sack.
Monday, July 10
Woke up really early this morning, 6:00. Needless to say a diesel repair shop has a lot of activity with diesel engines early in the morning. We had an appointment for 8:00 so I went into the service area at 7:30 and probably got them moving a little earlier than they wanted. To make a long story short they looked and analyzed and determined that it might be a throttle sensor. A new one costs $450. They had to order it in from Indiana overnight. After that we started to head out and the truck wouldn't go at all, plus an engine light came on. They put it on the computer again and found a fuel problem. They decided to change the fuel filter and then wanted me to go fill the gas tanks since they were pretty low so they could do some more pressure tests. Well, the truck seemed to be running fine now. We went and filled the fuel tanks and came back and said we would just run some errands this afternoon and park here again tonight and see how it did in the morning.
We went to Walmart and Fred Meyer and did some grocery shopping. And then we went by a fish market that we had found yesterday and bought a pound and a half of King Salmon. We decided to go to a park and fix supper rather than back to the Cummins dealer. We found a nice park on the greenbelt here and pulled in. We kept seeing a lot of people waling by with frisbees. We had to go and see what was going on. It turned out that there was a discgolf course there. It is similar to a golf course but you use frisbees instead of golf balls and clubs. There are tees and obstacles and the goal is to get the frisbee into a basket that had a bunch of chains hanging above it to stop the frisbee and let it fall into the basket. It is pretty neat and a lot cheaper than golf. By the way there are such things as driving frisbees and putting frisbees.
We cooked supper there at the park. It was great. Salmon, salad, fried potatoes, and french bread. All of this while we looked out on a lake with Canadian geese and mallards. We stayed there at the park until about 8:00 and now we're back at the Cummins dealer for the night. Both of us are hoping the fuel filter is all we needed to solve our problem.
Tuesday, July 04, 2006
July 1 through July 3
Saturday, July 1
Well, this was a 'Fluff' type day. We piddled and diddled all day. We got over to the library and loaded the blog and a few photos. Then we went downtown to the Public Lands Information Center and got some good pointers on some places to hike and camp. The ranger behind the desk told us about a place just off the Richardson Highway to camp that is suppose to have a great view of the Alaskan Range. We also checked out a couple of antique stores and by that time it was about 3:00 and we were hungry so we pulled into a recreation area and found a place to park while we ate a bite of lunch. After that we drove down through the southern part of town and then went by to pick up a couple of movies at the local Blockbuster.
It had been cloudy and windy and cool all day so we went back to the campground, but decided it was too early to fix supper so we decided to go over to a nearby laundromat and did our laundry. After that we just went back to the campground and grilled a couple of pork chops and made up a salad for supper. It was about 9:00 when we ate supper.
We've found when it stays light all the time it is difficult to stay on a regular schedule, but then I guess we don't need to stay on a regular schedule.
Sunday, July 2
It is another rainy day today. We're getting a real taste of Alaska weather. It has drizzled all day. We are ready for a little sunshine now. The first place we went this morning was the Fairbanks Alaskan Railroad depot. We checked on some rides we might take out of the Anchorage area. There is a model railroad area here in the terminal and I thought about Mike, my brother. I took a couple of photos through the window since it was not open. We also did a little shopping today and then ran over to the museum at the University of Alaska - Fairbanks It is a well done museum and we spent about four hours looking through the displays.
There were two displays that really caught my interest. One was on the internment of Aleutian indians during WWII. I had never heard about this before, but apparently our government in their infinite wisdom moved all of the Aleutian indians off of the Aleutian islands during the war. There was no pre thought as to where they were going to put them. Some were dropped off at closed canneries, others at deserted mining towns along the inside passage of Alaska. This appeared to have been done strictly because of race. Whites who lived in the Aleutians were allowed to stay, even the ones who were married to Aleutians. I wonder if the government thought these natives would turn on the country. They were given little notice of their internment and only allowed one bag each to take with them. The superintendents of the internment camps lived nicely while the natives suffered and many died from pneumonia and other ailments. Food was scarce and conditions were attrocious. It amazed me that our government, even as recently as the 1940's was still treating the native Americans so badly. There was a video with personal testimony of how these people were treated. It was really sad.
The other exhibit that really caught my attention was of a 10,000 year old bison that was preserved by mumification and discovered a few years ago. It was almost entirely intact. It had apparently died from an attack by a lion and was buried in river mud and preserved for centuries. They had a depiction of how it looked when found and it was fascinating. The paleantologists who worked on this were able to tell so much from this discovery due to the fact that it was so well preserved.
It was raining even more when we came out and it was getting close to supper time so we went back to the campground and started supper. We missed lunch entirely today. We had chili dogs and coleslaw. Now we're watching a couple of movies. It is nice to have electricity now and then.
Our plans tomorrow are to go to Piooneer Park and then head north to the Chena Hot Springs area. We found out about a couple of hiking trails up there we might check out on Tuesday, weather permitting.
Monday, July 3
Well this had been our fourth night at the Tanana Valley campground and we decided to vacate and see what we could come up with this evening when we were ready to settle in again. We've become quite the vagabonds, not worrying so much about where we might en up each night. That makes it more fun though. I hate having to be somewhere at a certain time. After showers and breakfast we broke camp and headed out to drop off the movies we had rented at Blockbusters. We had rented 'Insomnia' with Al Pacino and Robin Williams. Dave and Linda had recommended it due to the fact that it took place up here in Alaska and dealt somewhat with the lack of darkness at night. Good movie. We also rented 'Pushing Tin' which is about air traffic controllers. It was okay also but not as good as the other. Anyway, we took these back and decided to check out the local Sam's which was right next store. Needless to say we ended up buying some stuff. We keep finding places to store stuff in the camper. The only problem is that we forget where we put stuff and then find it a couple of weeks later. It is kind of like being on a rolling continuous easter egg hunt. We found our second poncho a couple of weeks after we needed it and now we've forgotten where it is again. Oh well.
Shelby used to have a bumper sticker that said 'Simplify'. Well, we have really simplified. We can cook up a whole meal now and dirty only about two dishes and 3 or 4 pieces of silverware. It is amazing how simply one can live is one tries. I know, I know, if I really wanted to simplify I wouldn't have brought a computer with me. Anyway, I'm getting off topic.
We went by a place called Pioneer Village and stopped in at their railroad museum. A volunteer there took us back and showed us their shop and we got started talking. He mentioned that one of the best things to see here in Fairbanks was the Riverboat Discovery. I had really pretty much eliminated this from consideration thinking it was just another tourist trip. But he convinced us that it was worth the money. We went back to the truck and called to check on tours this afternoon. It was about 12:00 and they had one leaving at 2:00, so we booked on it. Are we ever glad we did. It was a lot of fun and very interesting.
This whole thing was started back in the 50s when a man by the name of Jim Binkley decided to build a small stern wheeler and offer rides to tourists here in Fairbanks. He must have been quite an entrepreneur. There are 3 riverboats today and four tours per day. On this tour we saw examples of bush pilot take offs and landings, we found out about houses along the river, dog sleding or mushing, and quite a lot about the Athabascan Indian people.
The first thing right out of dock was the bush pilot who took off and landed twice right in the river beside the boat while we all watched. The route took us down the Chena River to it's merger with the Tanana River and the narrator discussed the costs of some of the homes along the river. Land runs about $75,000 an acre and most people buy from 2-5 acres. Building costs run about $200 a square foot, thus a 2500 square foot house would run about $500,000 to build, and if you put it on 4 acres that would run another $300,000. I'm trying to figure out how I could move my 12 acres and house up here. One thing we've learned on this trip is that Missouri is a very cheap place to live.
Next we stopped in front of Susan Butcher's home. She is a 4 time winner of the Ididatrod and has a large number of sled dogs. Sadly, she is in Seattle being treated for Leukemia. Some fellow dog sled racers are stepping in for her to keep things going while she is gone. They told about the dogs and gave a demonstration of the dogs pulling an ATV. It was fascinating.
We headed on down the Chena to where it merged with the Tanana, or the wedding of the rivers as the natives call it. It was interesting to see the clear water of the Chena mixing with the milky glacial waters of the Tanana. We went a ways downstream on the Tanana and turned around and came back upriver stopping at a model native fishing camp. They showed us the native fish wheel. The fish wheel was introduced to the natives by whites Prior to the fish wheel they would only catch about a dozen salmon a day. With the advent of the fish wheel they could catch several hundred a day. The fish wheel is made out of alder and netting. and the current actually turns it. Fish are scooped into the net as it turns and deposited down a gutter like apparatus. I'm sorry I didn't get any photos of this. The batteries died in my camera before we got to this point. Fish wheels are highly regulated today by the Alaskan Fish and Game Dept. due to the fact that they can take a lot of fish out of the streams in a very short period.
Finally we stopped at a model Athabascan indian village. The folks that run this program did a great job of getting a few hunderd ( about 500) off the boats and taken to various spots around the village and our guides gave each group a talk about the culture and living conditions of the Athabascan Indians pre and post European influence. Did you know that reindeer were brought to Alaska by missionaries who wanted to help the natives become less nomadic. Reindeer are domesticated caribou. Prior to reindeer the tribes followed the caribou herds seasonally to hunt them. Reindeer had been domesticated in Asia and were brought to Alaska.
There were examples of native winter wear at the village. It was amazing how they had developed the expertise over the years to sew and make clothing to protect themselves in such harsh conditions. An example is the fact that the fur of one of the animals, and we can't remember which one is oily and will not collect moisture when people breath on it so it was used to line the outside edge of a parka hood. Tree fungus (mushroom type thing) was used to store fire embers so that it would continue to smolder all day and a new fire would not have to be started at night. This was an extremely facinating, well done, and well organized tour. We would highly recommend it.
When we were pulling into the docks, the narrator pointed out the floatation devises in the dock. These were some remenents of the oil pipeline. It seems that Jim Binkley had the idea of using some cast off pipe to weld ends into and fixed it so that they could be flooded to sink the dock and pull the river boats up onto and then refill with air to float and raise the uboats out of the water for dry dock purposes. When the pipe came up for sale he called the oil company and asked if he could buy just a portion of pipe. They said no, he had to bid on the whole lot that was going up for sale. He ended up buying about 6,000 feet of pipe and only used about 1,000 feet. He had pipe stored all over town. A couple of years later the oil companies called and needed some pipe. They asked if they could just buy a portion. Binkley said no, all or none. They bought the 5,000 feet that was left. I'll bet he made a nice profit on that.
We got back to the dock about 6:00 this evening and had to decide where to go for the night. We decided to try a state recreation area here in Fairbanks. That is where we are now. Very nice campsites. I started charcoal to grill some pork. As I was cooking it the rain moved in. I ended up standing over it with an umbrella to keep the rain from putting out the coals. It did turn out pretty good though, even if I do say so myself.
It has been a good visit to Fairbanks, tomorrow we head out to see what some more of Alaska will provide us.
Good night.
Well, this was a 'Fluff' type day. We piddled and diddled all day. We got over to the library and loaded the blog and a few photos. Then we went downtown to the Public Lands Information Center and got some good pointers on some places to hike and camp. The ranger behind the desk told us about a place just off the Richardson Highway to camp that is suppose to have a great view of the Alaskan Range. We also checked out a couple of antique stores and by that time it was about 3:00 and we were hungry so we pulled into a recreation area and found a place to park while we ate a bite of lunch. After that we drove down through the southern part of town and then went by to pick up a couple of movies at the local Blockbuster.
It had been cloudy and windy and cool all day so we went back to the campground, but decided it was too early to fix supper so we decided to go over to a nearby laundromat and did our laundry. After that we just went back to the campground and grilled a couple of pork chops and made up a salad for supper. It was about 9:00 when we ate supper.
We've found when it stays light all the time it is difficult to stay on a regular schedule, but then I guess we don't need to stay on a regular schedule.
Sunday, July 2
It is another rainy day today. We're getting a real taste of Alaska weather. It has drizzled all day. We are ready for a little sunshine now. The first place we went this morning was the Fairbanks Alaskan Railroad depot. We checked on some rides we might take out of the Anchorage area. There is a model railroad area here in the terminal and I thought about Mike, my brother. I took a couple of photos through the window since it was not open. We also did a little shopping today and then ran over to the museum at the University of Alaska - Fairbanks It is a well done museum and we spent about four hours looking through the displays.
There were two displays that really caught my interest. One was on the internment of Aleutian indians during WWII. I had never heard about this before, but apparently our government in their infinite wisdom moved all of the Aleutian indians off of the Aleutian islands during the war. There was no pre thought as to where they were going to put them. Some were dropped off at closed canneries, others at deserted mining towns along the inside passage of Alaska. This appeared to have been done strictly because of race. Whites who lived in the Aleutians were allowed to stay, even the ones who were married to Aleutians. I wonder if the government thought these natives would turn on the country. They were given little notice of their internment and only allowed one bag each to take with them. The superintendents of the internment camps lived nicely while the natives suffered and many died from pneumonia and other ailments. Food was scarce and conditions were attrocious. It amazed me that our government, even as recently as the 1940's was still treating the native Americans so badly. There was a video with personal testimony of how these people were treated. It was really sad.
The other exhibit that really caught my attention was of a 10,000 year old bison that was preserved by mumification and discovered a few years ago. It was almost entirely intact. It had apparently died from an attack by a lion and was buried in river mud and preserved for centuries. They had a depiction of how it looked when found and it was fascinating. The paleantologists who worked on this were able to tell so much from this discovery due to the fact that it was so well preserved.
It was raining even more when we came out and it was getting close to supper time so we went back to the campground and started supper. We missed lunch entirely today. We had chili dogs and coleslaw. Now we're watching a couple of movies. It is nice to have electricity now and then.
Our plans tomorrow are to go to Piooneer Park and then head north to the Chena Hot Springs area. We found out about a couple of hiking trails up there we might check out on Tuesday, weather permitting.
Monday, July 3
Well this had been our fourth night at the Tanana Valley campground and we decided to vacate and see what we could come up with this evening when we were ready to settle in again. We've become quite the vagabonds, not worrying so much about where we might en up each night. That makes it more fun though. I hate having to be somewhere at a certain time. After showers and breakfast we broke camp and headed out to drop off the movies we had rented at Blockbusters. We had rented 'Insomnia' with Al Pacino and Robin Williams. Dave and Linda had recommended it due to the fact that it took place up here in Alaska and dealt somewhat with the lack of darkness at night. Good movie. We also rented 'Pushing Tin' which is about air traffic controllers. It was okay also but not as good as the other. Anyway, we took these back and decided to check out the local Sam's which was right next store. Needless to say we ended up buying some stuff. We keep finding places to store stuff in the camper. The only problem is that we forget where we put stuff and then find it a couple of weeks later. It is kind of like being on a rolling continuous easter egg hunt. We found our second poncho a couple of weeks after we needed it and now we've forgotten where it is again. Oh well.
Shelby used to have a bumper sticker that said 'Simplify'. Well, we have really simplified. We can cook up a whole meal now and dirty only about two dishes and 3 or 4 pieces of silverware. It is amazing how simply one can live is one tries. I know, I know, if I really wanted to simplify I wouldn't have brought a computer with me. Anyway, I'm getting off topic.
We went by a place called Pioneer Village and stopped in at their railroad museum. A volunteer there took us back and showed us their shop and we got started talking. He mentioned that one of the best things to see here in Fairbanks was the Riverboat Discovery. I had really pretty much eliminated this from consideration thinking it was just another tourist trip. But he convinced us that it was worth the money. We went back to the truck and called to check on tours this afternoon. It was about 12:00 and they had one leaving at 2:00, so we booked on it. Are we ever glad we did. It was a lot of fun and very interesting.
This whole thing was started back in the 50s when a man by the name of Jim Binkley decided to build a small stern wheeler and offer rides to tourists here in Fairbanks. He must have been quite an entrepreneur. There are 3 riverboats today and four tours per day. On this tour we saw examples of bush pilot take offs and landings, we found out about houses along the river, dog sleding or mushing, and quite a lot about the Athabascan Indian people.
The first thing right out of dock was the bush pilot who took off and landed twice right in the river beside the boat while we all watched. The route took us down the Chena River to it's merger with the Tanana River and the narrator discussed the costs of some of the homes along the river. Land runs about $75,000 an acre and most people buy from 2-5 acres. Building costs run about $200 a square foot, thus a 2500 square foot house would run about $500,000 to build, and if you put it on 4 acres that would run another $300,000. I'm trying to figure out how I could move my 12 acres and house up here. One thing we've learned on this trip is that Missouri is a very cheap place to live.
Next we stopped in front of Susan Butcher's home. She is a 4 time winner of the Ididatrod and has a large number of sled dogs. Sadly, she is in Seattle being treated for Leukemia. Some fellow dog sled racers are stepping in for her to keep things going while she is gone. They told about the dogs and gave a demonstration of the dogs pulling an ATV. It was fascinating.
We headed on down the Chena to where it merged with the Tanana, or the wedding of the rivers as the natives call it. It was interesting to see the clear water of the Chena mixing with the milky glacial waters of the Tanana. We went a ways downstream on the Tanana and turned around and came back upriver stopping at a model native fishing camp. They showed us the native fish wheel. The fish wheel was introduced to the natives by whites Prior to the fish wheel they would only catch about a dozen salmon a day. With the advent of the fish wheel they could catch several hundred a day. The fish wheel is made out of alder and netting. and the current actually turns it. Fish are scooped into the net as it turns and deposited down a gutter like apparatus. I'm sorry I didn't get any photos of this. The batteries died in my camera before we got to this point. Fish wheels are highly regulated today by the Alaskan Fish and Game Dept. due to the fact that they can take a lot of fish out of the streams in a very short period.
Finally we stopped at a model Athabascan indian village. The folks that run this program did a great job of getting a few hunderd ( about 500) off the boats and taken to various spots around the village and our guides gave each group a talk about the culture and living conditions of the Athabascan Indians pre and post European influence. Did you know that reindeer were brought to Alaska by missionaries who wanted to help the natives become less nomadic. Reindeer are domesticated caribou. Prior to reindeer the tribes followed the caribou herds seasonally to hunt them. Reindeer had been domesticated in Asia and were brought to Alaska.
There were examples of native winter wear at the village. It was amazing how they had developed the expertise over the years to sew and make clothing to protect themselves in such harsh conditions. An example is the fact that the fur of one of the animals, and we can't remember which one is oily and will not collect moisture when people breath on it so it was used to line the outside edge of a parka hood. Tree fungus (mushroom type thing) was used to store fire embers so that it would continue to smolder all day and a new fire would not have to be started at night. This was an extremely facinating, well done, and well organized tour. We would highly recommend it.
When we were pulling into the docks, the narrator pointed out the floatation devises in the dock. These were some remenents of the oil pipeline. It seems that Jim Binkley had the idea of using some cast off pipe to weld ends into and fixed it so that they could be flooded to sink the dock and pull the river boats up onto and then refill with air to float and raise the uboats out of the water for dry dock purposes. When the pipe came up for sale he called the oil company and asked if he could buy just a portion of pipe. They said no, he had to bid on the whole lot that was going up for sale. He ended up buying about 6,000 feet of pipe and only used about 1,000 feet. He had pipe stored all over town. A couple of years later the oil companies called and needed some pipe. They asked if they could just buy a portion. Binkley said no, all or none. They bought the 5,000 feet that was left. I'll bet he made a nice profit on that.
We got back to the dock about 6:00 this evening and had to decide where to go for the night. We decided to try a state recreation area here in Fairbanks. That is where we are now. Very nice campsites. I started charcoal to grill some pork. As I was cooking it the rain moved in. I ended up standing over it with an umbrella to keep the rain from putting out the coals. It did turn out pretty good though, even if I do say so myself.
It has been a good visit to Fairbanks, tomorrow we head out to see what some more of Alaska will provide us.
Good night.
Saturday, July 01, 2006
June 27 through June 30
Tuesday, June 27
We got up a little late. Didn't take long to get use to the time change. We wanted to be out at Dredge #4 at 10:00 for the first tour of the day. We had a light breakfast and packed up and got away about 9:35. I didn't realize that Dredge #4 was 13 kilometers out a winding and rough road though. We managed to make it on time but just barely. We had expected John and Eileen to be here for this tour but they didn't show up. could be they were running a little later than we were.
This Dredge #4 is a gold dredge that was built in the early 1900s and continued to operate until 1959. In 1959 the owners just salvaged what they could from it and left it where it had ceased operations. It lay in disrepair and in ice and mud until 1981 when the Parks Canada began to salvage it for historic tours. The salvage operation simply consisted of raising and turning it and cleaning it up some. They have not done any repairs or made cosmetic improvements. It is a huge piece of machinery that was built in Ohio and shipped piece by piece to the Yukon on riverboat. The tourguide said that it cost the man who built it about half a million dollars and he recovered that the first year. The purpose of the dredge was to go up and down creeks and litterally clean the gold out of it. This gold that it found was basically like sugar and flour particles. The dredge would dig not only the creek bed but adjacent to the bed and down to bed rock at 57' below the surface. It moved several tons of rock in an hour and it had an elaborate system for sifting rock and separating the gold. It was indeed a fascinating tour. It is hard to imagine working on one of these. Supposedly the noise from it could be heard in Dawson City which is twenty kilometers away, or about 15 miles. The workers were given cotton to plug their ears with. They had no problem finding workers though due to the fact that it was such a good paying job.
Next we drove further up Bonanza Creek to the discovery claim where the first discovery of gold started the 1897 gold rush, and then a couple of kilometers further is an area where you can pan for gold yourself so I gave that a try. No luck. I had hoped to pay for some gas with the gold I found. By this time it was about 12:30 so we decided to head on up the road to see what we could see. We had to drive back through Dawson City and there we caught a ferry across the Yukon River. What a treat. From here to the US border, about 60 miles the highway is known as the 'Top of the World' Highway. Highway is really a misnommer it is really a gravel road and full of pot holes and frost heaves. We drove along a ridge that basically stayed on top of the mountains. We could see mountain tops on both sides stretching as far as we could see. Of course, there were the times when we drove through clouds and couldn't see more than 10 feet in front of us. We crawled, and creeped, dodged, and darted our way to the border.
Four weeks on the road and we were finally in Alaska. Well, not quite, we had to get through customs. It turned out that wasn't very hard though. We showed our passports and he asked a few questions, primarily if we had bought anything that cost more than a $1000 while in Canada. I replied only gas, and he smiled and let us go on.
The road on the American side was even worse than the Canadian road, and to top it all off it had started to rain. We sloshed and slid our way about 20 more miles and I found a little pull off next to a stream and we stopped there for the night.
Nothing eventful happened. There were a lot of moose droppings near our camp but we didn't spot any moose. We ended up going to be kind of early, about 9:30. Guess what we had another time change at the border. Yep, the old clock had to go back another hour. We had supper and read for awhile and went to bed about 9:30, which the previous night was actually 10:30 and a few nights before that was 11:30, and back home is 12:30, oh never mind. Can a person get jet lag in a truck camper?
Wednesday, June 28
I got up fairly early this morning. I walked the road for about a quarter mile in both directions hoping to see some animal life, but no luck. Carol was still waking up. We both finally got up and about and we got on the road about 8:30. We got to Chicken, Alaska about 10:00. This is quite a place. It was originally a gold town and the founders wanted to name it Ptarigan after the native fowl, but no one knew how to spell 'Ptarmigan' so they named it chicken. There was another gold dredge here that I took a few photos of. The population of Chicken is about 30 so it obviously isn't too large. We browsed a little and I bought a bumper sticker that says 'Where the hell is Chicken, Alaska?', and then we headed out again. We saw the post office up on the hill on our way out so we had to stop and take a photo of that for our friend Buddy, who is a postmaster. It is a very small log cabin with an outhouse. Count your blessing Buddy.
As we stepped onto the front porch of the post office we heard the post mistress yell, 'Wait, and I'll take both of you together.' Sure enough she came out and even had props, a rubber chicken for us to hold. We chatted with her and she offered to open the community center, right next door, so we could pick some books to take with us. We said sure. I guess we probably spent about an hour there with her browsing through books. We left some of ours we had read and took some others. Quite a deal. The postmistresses name is Robin and she is a very out-going person. We really enjoyed our visit.
We made it to Tok, Alaska about 1:30. We stopped at the information center to find out where the post office was. Barb had mailed some mail to us last week general delivery and sure enough it was waiting for us. We also had cell phone reception here so Carol called Had and Barb, and Shelby and Rob, and checked our voice mails. We tried Don and Helen but they weren't home. I called the British Columbia ferries to see what our status on the ferry out of Prince Rupert on August 19 was. We are still on a waiting list.
We got a lot of chores taken care of here at Tok. We washed the truck, got the oil changed, and bought new wiper blades and put them on. We went by the grocery and picked up a few items. By then it was about 5:00 so we headed north west toward Fairbanks. We spotted a little lake off the highway a little ways with a nice large area for parking so we pulled in to spend the night. This is where we sit as I type this. the sun looks as though it is 6:00 but it is actually 9:15. Last night I looked out the window of the camper at 1:00 in the morning and it was very light out. We are now in the land of no nights. I thought it would be hard to sleep with the light, but I'm certainly having no problems.
Good night all.
Thursday, June 29
It sprinkled slightly during the night and didn't get very cold. It was 61 in the camper when I got up this morning. No other campers had found our little nameless off the road lake and we slept the night through completely undisturbed. The day dawned relatively clear and warm though. Carol made biscuits for breakfast this morning and after doing dishes we were once more back on the road. The truck acted a little funny this morning, when I first started out it wouldn't accelerate even when I pushed the gas all the way down. I figured it had something to do with the oil change. It seemed to work itself out and was fine the rest of the day.
We were headed for Delta Junction this morning. The end of the Alaska Highway. On the way we crossed over the Gristle Bridge over the Tanana River and we drove down to a rest area where access to the river bed was readily available. We walked down to the river bed. There was a gorgeous sight of the Alaskan Range off to the south west. We also found some really neat toadstools that I took a couple of photos of.
We made it to Delta Junction and while at the visitor center a lady gave us a brochure and asked us to visit the Sullivan Roadhouse across the street. Since she said it was free we thought, why not? It is sponsored by the Delta Junction Chamber of Commerce and it is an excellent historic exhibit. It is an old roadhouse that was on the winter route of the Fairbanks to Valdez road, so it wasn't on the main summer road (it was only open in the winter) but the route taken when everything was frozen over and they could make the route shorter and more direct not worrying about swamps and rivers. The summer is when they gardened, repaired, and prepared for the winter. 'Ma' Sullivan would bake up to 25 loaves of bread a week in the winter. They charged $2 for a meal and $1 for a bed. In Seattle you could get a meal for $.15. They would grow vegetables and potatoes in the summer and store in a cellar, that was their main food source besides game. They would also collect berries, and to preserve them cut the top out of an empty Blazo (white gas) clean it up, put in a layer of sugar, then a layer of berries and mashed them down. They kept layering berries and sugar and the berries would keep all winter that way without freezing. They used it for syrup over bread and pancakes. The hardest thing to get was eggs. A crate of eggs might cost $20. Overall, it was a very well done exhibit and fascinating. It showed how hard life was back at the turn of the 20th century in the cold cold north country. People still came up here at all times of year though in search of the precious gold. For winter travel roadhouses were located every 20 miles. That was about the limit of a days travel in the frigid temps. It was one of the nicest roadhouses around. Carol and I both found this to be much more interesting than the state sponsored roadhouse we stopped at 20 miles up the road called Rika's roadhouse. The Sullivan roadhouse had lots of photos and narrative done by a man who worked there for several years. His name was J. T. Geoghegan. Here is a small portion of one of his naratives.
"A mile or so away was a nice lake where the moose use to wade. Say, if you want real work when you are alone, kill a moose on the edge of a lake. Get a horse or mule and get in the water, mud, and snow up to your knees. Quarter the moose. Quarter rough 150 pounds and when the flesh is soft and "squirmy". Stand beside the horse and lift the 150 pounds up to the pack saddle. Then the horse snorts when he smells the blood and sidesteps, and you deposit the quarter, your arms, face and chest in the mud and snow and try again."
I've gained a real admiration for the people who came up here back at the beginning of the 1900s. It was a rough, rough way of life. I can't imagine doing it myself.
We arrived in Fairbanks about 5:00 and found the campground we wanted to stay at. It is the campground next to the state fairgrounds, but it is very woodsey. It is also next to a large nature preserve and a farmer's market to be held on Saturdays. We registered and then went to the store and picked up a couple of items, pop and water, and ran by a Jo-Ann Fabric store so Carol could check on some material, but they didn't have what she wanted.
Carols' Comment: As we were driving into Fairbanks, there is an air force base runway right beside the runway. A jet fighter made a pass over the airstrip and did a 90 degree turn and loop at the end of the strip right in front of us. Cool.
We registered for four days. We plan to stay here for awhile. We will go down to the visitor center in the morning and just get accustomed to the city. Tomorrow night we plan to go out and eat to celebrate our 39th wedding anniversary. We also want to visit the University of Alaska Fairbanks museum which is supposed to be one of the best in the state.
We had some spagetti and french bread for supper and are relaxing now. We really know we're in a city now though we have television stations, radio stations, and cell phone coverage. Unfortunately we don't have wifi at this campground.
Friday, June 30
We lazed around again this morning and didn't get off too early, taking advantage of the campground showers. This gave us a whole new outlook on life and each other. We were ready to explore Fairbanks. We headed down to the visitor center to explore and orientate. We decided to check out a couple places to eat dinner since it was our anniversary. Celebrating is not cheap. Oh well, once a year.
After lunch we went to the Creamer Dairy, no not for ice cream. This was a dairy farm from about 1900 to the 1960s. It became a waystop for birds on their way south due to the cleared fields and the grain grown for the cows and the marshy areas (this whole countryside is solid with dwarfed evergreen trees, birch, cottonwood, so a cleared area would be a draw for the birds). In the 60s the dairy farm became less profitable because of improved shipping and freight from the lower 48, and when Mrs. Creamer died her husband decided to sell the farm. It consists of about 2,000 acres right in the heart of Fairbanks. The local community and the state government decided to purchase the property and preserve the bird sanctuary for the future. We took a guided nature hike with a botanist. We saw sandhill cranes, and swallows, and a lesser yellow leg, WOW!!!! It was fun and interesting though.
One thing we are finding out is that the folks up here don't let the weather bother them, they just go and do what they want, come rain, or cold weather, so guess that is what we are going to have to do. Get use to it Bucko, it probably isn't going to be warm and sunny again until you get to the lower 48 again.
Last night we finally went to a restaurant recommended by a couple of ladies at the Creamery. It is called the Turtle Club. It was nice, we had a glass of wine and each order giant prawns. The salad bar was great. The prawns were okay, but didn't seem to have as much taste as shrimp. By the way, prawns are shrimp, they're just really, really big.
After supper we drove several roads in the area, all of which seem like roller coasters. You have to go real slow to avoid bucking the camper out of the bed. The winters create frost heaves and do a number on the roads up here. We also drove around the University of Alaska at Fairbanks and then found a new shopping center with a Sportsman's Warehouse (similar to Bass Pro Shops) and a Barnes and Noble. There is civilization up here after all.
Well, that's about it for today. Tomorrow is my first official day of retirement. I'll let you know what I think of it after I get use to it.
We got up a little late. Didn't take long to get use to the time change. We wanted to be out at Dredge #4 at 10:00 for the first tour of the day. We had a light breakfast and packed up and got away about 9:35. I didn't realize that Dredge #4 was 13 kilometers out a winding and rough road though. We managed to make it on time but just barely. We had expected John and Eileen to be here for this tour but they didn't show up. could be they were running a little later than we were.
This Dredge #4 is a gold dredge that was built in the early 1900s and continued to operate until 1959. In 1959 the owners just salvaged what they could from it and left it where it had ceased operations. It lay in disrepair and in ice and mud until 1981 when the Parks Canada began to salvage it for historic tours. The salvage operation simply consisted of raising and turning it and cleaning it up some. They have not done any repairs or made cosmetic improvements. It is a huge piece of machinery that was built in Ohio and shipped piece by piece to the Yukon on riverboat. The tourguide said that it cost the man who built it about half a million dollars and he recovered that the first year. The purpose of the dredge was to go up and down creeks and litterally clean the gold out of it. This gold that it found was basically like sugar and flour particles. The dredge would dig not only the creek bed but adjacent to the bed and down to bed rock at 57' below the surface. It moved several tons of rock in an hour and it had an elaborate system for sifting rock and separating the gold. It was indeed a fascinating tour. It is hard to imagine working on one of these. Supposedly the noise from it could be heard in Dawson City which is twenty kilometers away, or about 15 miles. The workers were given cotton to plug their ears with. They had no problem finding workers though due to the fact that it was such a good paying job.
Next we drove further up Bonanza Creek to the discovery claim where the first discovery of gold started the 1897 gold rush, and then a couple of kilometers further is an area where you can pan for gold yourself so I gave that a try. No luck. I had hoped to pay for some gas with the gold I found. By this time it was about 12:30 so we decided to head on up the road to see what we could see. We had to drive back through Dawson City and there we caught a ferry across the Yukon River. What a treat. From here to the US border, about 60 miles the highway is known as the 'Top of the World' Highway. Highway is really a misnommer it is really a gravel road and full of pot holes and frost heaves. We drove along a ridge that basically stayed on top of the mountains. We could see mountain tops on both sides stretching as far as we could see. Of course, there were the times when we drove through clouds and couldn't see more than 10 feet in front of us. We crawled, and creeped, dodged, and darted our way to the border.
Four weeks on the road and we were finally in Alaska. Well, not quite, we had to get through customs. It turned out that wasn't very hard though. We showed our passports and he asked a few questions, primarily if we had bought anything that cost more than a $1000 while in Canada. I replied only gas, and he smiled and let us go on.
The road on the American side was even worse than the Canadian road, and to top it all off it had started to rain. We sloshed and slid our way about 20 more miles and I found a little pull off next to a stream and we stopped there for the night.
Nothing eventful happened. There were a lot of moose droppings near our camp but we didn't spot any moose. We ended up going to be kind of early, about 9:30. Guess what we had another time change at the border. Yep, the old clock had to go back another hour. We had supper and read for awhile and went to bed about 9:30, which the previous night was actually 10:30 and a few nights before that was 11:30, and back home is 12:30, oh never mind. Can a person get jet lag in a truck camper?
Wednesday, June 28
I got up fairly early this morning. I walked the road for about a quarter mile in both directions hoping to see some animal life, but no luck. Carol was still waking up. We both finally got up and about and we got on the road about 8:30. We got to Chicken, Alaska about 10:00. This is quite a place. It was originally a gold town and the founders wanted to name it Ptarigan after the native fowl, but no one knew how to spell 'Ptarmigan' so they named it chicken. There was another gold dredge here that I took a few photos of. The population of Chicken is about 30 so it obviously isn't too large. We browsed a little and I bought a bumper sticker that says 'Where the hell is Chicken, Alaska?', and then we headed out again. We saw the post office up on the hill on our way out so we had to stop and take a photo of that for our friend Buddy, who is a postmaster. It is a very small log cabin with an outhouse. Count your blessing Buddy.
As we stepped onto the front porch of the post office we heard the post mistress yell, 'Wait, and I'll take both of you together.' Sure enough she came out and even had props, a rubber chicken for us to hold. We chatted with her and she offered to open the community center, right next door, so we could pick some books to take with us. We said sure. I guess we probably spent about an hour there with her browsing through books. We left some of ours we had read and took some others. Quite a deal. The postmistresses name is Robin and she is a very out-going person. We really enjoyed our visit.
We made it to Tok, Alaska about 1:30. We stopped at the information center to find out where the post office was. Barb had mailed some mail to us last week general delivery and sure enough it was waiting for us. We also had cell phone reception here so Carol called Had and Barb, and Shelby and Rob, and checked our voice mails. We tried Don and Helen but they weren't home. I called the British Columbia ferries to see what our status on the ferry out of Prince Rupert on August 19 was. We are still on a waiting list.
We got a lot of chores taken care of here at Tok. We washed the truck, got the oil changed, and bought new wiper blades and put them on. We went by the grocery and picked up a few items. By then it was about 5:00 so we headed north west toward Fairbanks. We spotted a little lake off the highway a little ways with a nice large area for parking so we pulled in to spend the night. This is where we sit as I type this. the sun looks as though it is 6:00 but it is actually 9:15. Last night I looked out the window of the camper at 1:00 in the morning and it was very light out. We are now in the land of no nights. I thought it would be hard to sleep with the light, but I'm certainly having no problems.
Good night all.
Thursday, June 29
It sprinkled slightly during the night and didn't get very cold. It was 61 in the camper when I got up this morning. No other campers had found our little nameless off the road lake and we slept the night through completely undisturbed. The day dawned relatively clear and warm though. Carol made biscuits for breakfast this morning and after doing dishes we were once more back on the road. The truck acted a little funny this morning, when I first started out it wouldn't accelerate even when I pushed the gas all the way down. I figured it had something to do with the oil change. It seemed to work itself out and was fine the rest of the day.
We were headed for Delta Junction this morning. The end of the Alaska Highway. On the way we crossed over the Gristle Bridge over the Tanana River and we drove down to a rest area where access to the river bed was readily available. We walked down to the river bed. There was a gorgeous sight of the Alaskan Range off to the south west. We also found some really neat toadstools that I took a couple of photos of.
We made it to Delta Junction and while at the visitor center a lady gave us a brochure and asked us to visit the Sullivan Roadhouse across the street. Since she said it was free we thought, why not? It is sponsored by the Delta Junction Chamber of Commerce and it is an excellent historic exhibit. It is an old roadhouse that was on the winter route of the Fairbanks to Valdez road, so it wasn't on the main summer road (it was only open in the winter) but the route taken when everything was frozen over and they could make the route shorter and more direct not worrying about swamps and rivers. The summer is when they gardened, repaired, and prepared for the winter. 'Ma' Sullivan would bake up to 25 loaves of bread a week in the winter. They charged $2 for a meal and $1 for a bed. In Seattle you could get a meal for $.15. They would grow vegetables and potatoes in the summer and store in a cellar, that was their main food source besides game. They would also collect berries, and to preserve them cut the top out of an empty Blazo (white gas) clean it up, put in a layer of sugar, then a layer of berries and mashed them down. They kept layering berries and sugar and the berries would keep all winter that way without freezing. They used it for syrup over bread and pancakes. The hardest thing to get was eggs. A crate of eggs might cost $20. Overall, it was a very well done exhibit and fascinating. It showed how hard life was back at the turn of the 20th century in the cold cold north country. People still came up here at all times of year though in search of the precious gold. For winter travel roadhouses were located every 20 miles. That was about the limit of a days travel in the frigid temps. It was one of the nicest roadhouses around. Carol and I both found this to be much more interesting than the state sponsored roadhouse we stopped at 20 miles up the road called Rika's roadhouse. The Sullivan roadhouse had lots of photos and narrative done by a man who worked there for several years. His name was J. T. Geoghegan. Here is a small portion of one of his naratives.
"A mile or so away was a nice lake where the moose use to wade. Say, if you want real work when you are alone, kill a moose on the edge of a lake. Get a horse or mule and get in the water, mud, and snow up to your knees. Quarter the moose. Quarter rough 150 pounds and when the flesh is soft and "squirmy". Stand beside the horse and lift the 150 pounds up to the pack saddle. Then the horse snorts when he smells the blood and sidesteps, and you deposit the quarter, your arms, face and chest in the mud and snow and try again."
I've gained a real admiration for the people who came up here back at the beginning of the 1900s. It was a rough, rough way of life. I can't imagine doing it myself.
We arrived in Fairbanks about 5:00 and found the campground we wanted to stay at. It is the campground next to the state fairgrounds, but it is very woodsey. It is also next to a large nature preserve and a farmer's market to be held on Saturdays. We registered and then went to the store and picked up a couple of items, pop and water, and ran by a Jo-Ann Fabric store so Carol could check on some material, but they didn't have what she wanted.
Carols' Comment: As we were driving into Fairbanks, there is an air force base runway right beside the runway. A jet fighter made a pass over the airstrip and did a 90 degree turn and loop at the end of the strip right in front of us. Cool.
We registered for four days. We plan to stay here for awhile. We will go down to the visitor center in the morning and just get accustomed to the city. Tomorrow night we plan to go out and eat to celebrate our 39th wedding anniversary. We also want to visit the University of Alaska Fairbanks museum which is supposed to be one of the best in the state.
We had some spagetti and french bread for supper and are relaxing now. We really know we're in a city now though we have television stations, radio stations, and cell phone coverage. Unfortunately we don't have wifi at this campground.
Friday, June 30
We lazed around again this morning and didn't get off too early, taking advantage of the campground showers. This gave us a whole new outlook on life and each other. We were ready to explore Fairbanks. We headed down to the visitor center to explore and orientate. We decided to check out a couple places to eat dinner since it was our anniversary. Celebrating is not cheap. Oh well, once a year.
After lunch we went to the Creamer Dairy, no not for ice cream. This was a dairy farm from about 1900 to the 1960s. It became a waystop for birds on their way south due to the cleared fields and the grain grown for the cows and the marshy areas (this whole countryside is solid with dwarfed evergreen trees, birch, cottonwood, so a cleared area would be a draw for the birds). In the 60s the dairy farm became less profitable because of improved shipping and freight from the lower 48, and when Mrs. Creamer died her husband decided to sell the farm. It consists of about 2,000 acres right in the heart of Fairbanks. The local community and the state government decided to purchase the property and preserve the bird sanctuary for the future. We took a guided nature hike with a botanist. We saw sandhill cranes, and swallows, and a lesser yellow leg, WOW!!!! It was fun and interesting though.
One thing we are finding out is that the folks up here don't let the weather bother them, they just go and do what they want, come rain, or cold weather, so guess that is what we are going to have to do. Get use to it Bucko, it probably isn't going to be warm and sunny again until you get to the lower 48 again.
Last night we finally went to a restaurant recommended by a couple of ladies at the Creamery. It is called the Turtle Club. It was nice, we had a glass of wine and each order giant prawns. The salad bar was great. The prawns were okay, but didn't seem to have as much taste as shrimp. By the way, prawns are shrimp, they're just really, really big.
After supper we drove several roads in the area, all of which seem like roller coasters. You have to go real slow to avoid bucking the camper out of the bed. The winters create frost heaves and do a number on the roads up here. We also drove around the University of Alaska at Fairbanks and then found a new shopping center with a Sportsman's Warehouse (similar to Bass Pro Shops) and a Barnes and Noble. There is civilization up here after all.
Well, that's about it for today. Tomorrow is my first official day of retirement. I'll let you know what I think of it after I get use to it.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
