Alaska – Page 3 – The MoHo and Other Traveling Tales

Day 21 July 26 A Different Alaska, Anchorage to Soldotna

Our first business of the day was to take care of MoHo business. We were slide in, jacks up by 7 and decided to drive separately across Anchorage to the Johnson Tire Service shop south of town. We had called last night to double check if they serviced motorhomes but wanted to be first in line when they opened at 8. The sun was actually shining this morning, and it wasn’t raining, so we were encouraged.

This outfit is a well run, efficient store, and we were done in no time, with a full inspection, and complete oil change on our Ford 450 V-10 in less than half an hour and around 60 bucks. It costs that much at home! On the road again, we traveled south through morning city traffic on Alaska 1, merging from the “almost” freeway to the Sterling Highway.

The beautiful sunshine was fading and by the time we reached Turnagain Arm, it was completely gone, shrouded in deep, dark clouds. Again, we couldn’t see the mountains around us to their summits, but the cloud cover was at least high enough that we could get an idea of their grandeur. Even in the misty cloud cover, Turnagain Arm was a magical, beautiful place and we stopped at every pullover provided to take photos and search for beluga whales. I can’t imagine how you can see anything in that silty, silky gray water, fresh from glacial melt, but there were telescopes at strategic locations to help out if you spotted one, which we didn’t.

Someone recently asked about wildlife. We haven’t seen much at all on this trip. Two moose, which I photographed, three bear which I couldn’t, 1 fox near Dawson, and that is it. No moose wandering through our campgrounds, or on the city streets of Anchorage, and as we passed a place called Potter’s Marsh, south of Anchorage, we chorused in unison, “Here you can see moose, bear, caribou, dall sheep, and fox”. We have read this phrase so many times on this trip and still have yet to see the great number of wild animals proclaimed. It may be the time of year, it may just be the fact that Alaska is full of people right now, lots of people and lots of cars. It may be that we drive at the wrong time of day, although you would think our 530 am drive in Denali would have been early enough. But I digress…

Turnagain Arm is so named because Captain Cook had to turn around AGAIN when he was trying to find a route for the inland passage. Turnagain is an arm of the Cook Inlet. Another surprise for me was when I suddenly realized that Cook Inlet is really just somewhere in the middle of Alaska, not the western part as I imagined. Studying a map of Alaska yields surprises, especially if you have traveled up the southwest coast and the towns of Juneau, Skagway, and Ketchikan. They are east of here but very much on the western coast of Alaska.

The drive to Portage wasn’t long, and we decided that we should take the time to travel east to the Portage Glacier and then on to Whittier, port town on Prince William Sound. These places all are names I have heard, but I had never really paid attention to just how they related to each other in the landscape. At the visitor center at Portage Glacier, the large 3 dimensional map of Prince William Sound put it all into better perspective.

Portage Lake was lovely, even in the clouds, with a couple of little icebergs floating by to add to the ambience. The glacier itself has receded greatly since Mo saw it last, and there is no easy way to approach it. The Byron Glacier is closer, with a short mile and a half trail to it’s viewpoint, but the pouring rain made it less than an exciting prospect, so we decided to forego the hike. The visitor center was beautiful, though it’s movies cost an extra five bucks. I can only watch so many movies about bear, caribou, moose, dall sheep, and fox, so we didn’t do that one either. The glacier movie wasn’t scheduled until five, and it was something like ten in the morning.

By this time, I am starting to feel that we are still in DisneySka, with all the beautiful media attractions and visitor centers with their lovely displays and huge rv parking lots full of people and traffic. Still, we unhooked the rig for the short drive to Whittier, only to discover that we were in the staging line for the tunnel to Whittier that is 2.5 miles long and costs 12 bucks round trip. This brought back lots of memories to Mo, since she traveled through this tunnel with her car on the train. It was the only way to get to Whittier and the ferry back then. Although the 13,200 foot tunnel was built in 1942-43. it was only retrofitted to accommodate both trains and cars in 2000 (or 2002) I can’t remember which.

Driving through the Anton Anderson Memorial Tunnel is a real treat, especially since we were in the baby car without having to pay the big fees for the MoHo! Once on the other side of the tunnel in Whittier, the rain opened up in earnest and the small port town of Whittier looked a bit tattered. Whittier was developed by the Army during WWII as a debarkation point for cargo and troops for the Alaska Command. Looking for a hiking trail to the waterfalls, we saw one of the ugliest buildings I have ever seen, the Bucknell Building. Once the largest building in Alaska, it was built in the early 50’s as rental units for civilian employees and soldiers who were stationed at the strategically located Port of Whittier.

Even in the clouds and mist, I could see the dozens of waterfalls crashing down steep canyons all round the bay from the glaciers above. It was a moody, misty place, without much around. The trip back through the tunnel revealed more clouds and rain on the other side and we traveled the few miles back west to the highway junction and continued south toward Soldotna and Kenai.

Right after leaving Portage, the highway climbs the dramatic and beautiful Turnagain Pass, and the clouds began to thin enough that we could see a bit higher. The landscape is dominated by huge moraines from the last ice age below high glaciated mountain peaks. The tree line here is only 1,500 feet above sea level, and the variations in habitat are clearly visible on the mountain slopes around the pass. The sun came out again, with just enough billowing clouds to make things look really beautiful, and we stopped for an Abby swim at a small lake before turning west on the highway toward Cooper’s Landing.

Cooper’s Landing is renown for salmon fishing along the Kenai River and the sockeye red salmon run is now in full swing. The traffic was heavy and the river was lined with people fishing from the bank and rafts going downriver. They call it “combat fishing”, and if you are interesting in the whole fishing thing on the Kenai Peninsula, Judy at Cool RV’rs on the Road, has done a fabulous job describing this unique culture.

Judy also was the one who mentioned the Fred Meyer boondock site in Soldotna. Mo and I originally planned to use our CampClub USA card here, since there are two parks that honor that 50 percent discount, but when we saw the digs at Freddy’s we decided it was perfect. They even have a free dump and support the RV’rs who park there with a minimal amount of rules, the typical ones for parking lots, no chairs, no awnings, no bbq’s, and a three day limit.

We settled in, turned on the fan for Jeremy, loaded Abby up with us in the Tracker and continued west to explore the little town of Kenai and the Cook Inlet coastline. It was almost five and the clouds were gone and the early evening sunlight was warm and brilliant. Perfect for a walk through the small historic town following the visitor center brochure. The girl at the center said to be sure to go to the park to watch the “dip net fishing” and that we were lucky to be here to see it. We, of course, had no clue what she was talking about until we passed a couple of old guys hauling a huge dip net down to the beach.

It’s an amazing scene that could have come from thousands of years ago except for the plastic ice chests and cars. But the idea was the same, hundreds of people lined the shore and waded into the incoming tide with nets as large as 5 feet diameter. The salmon, anxious to get home to spawn, swim right into the nets. Big salmon they are, too! Each Alaskan head of household is allowed 25 fish, with 10 more fish for each member of the family. It’s subsistence at it’s finest, and there seems to be enough for everyone, including the fish, because the runs are still strong. It was an amazing thing to see, with old white guys in brand new waders, and native Alaskan families of different tribes all catching fish, cleaning them, throwing the entrails to the tide, and the fish into the ice chests. There were big salmon heads littered everywhere on the beach and Abby thought incredibly interesting.

With that awesome sight in mind, we wandered back through town and after a short drive north along the Inlet to an oil town with views of 13 platform rigs in the inlet, we headed back toward Soldotna for the evening.

We were pretty worn out, and ready to crash and burn, but instead were routed a very long way around and back into town due to some kind of accident. The traffic still in this area was incredibly heavy and most of the license plates were Alaskan.

I was glad to get back to our boondock site at Freddy’s. The few RV campgrounds we had passed were jammed in slide to slide, front to back, and here we only had neighbors along the curb and everyone was pretty quiet. We even had a grassy forest outside at the edge of the curb, and sitting at the sofa with the view out the door we could have been all alone in the middle of nowhere. I slept like a log.

The rest of the photos for this day are linked here

Miles driven today in the MoHo: about 150

Road Condition: better than many in the Mainland, 2 lane and 4 lane with excellent surface

Day 20 July 25 Talkeetna to Anchorage, The not-so-glamorous side of RV life

Sometimes when writing memories of our travels, there is so much to talk about that I forget that it’s not all sweetness and light out here on the road. Sometimes it’s just about laundry. And rain. And a lot of dirt.

When we left Talkeetna yesterday I felt great, in spite of the rain. With several hours spent doing laundry, I also had time to finish writing about the last few days on the road and get everything completely caught up in blogland, reading all the blogs I follow, with even a chance to comment here and there as well. It felt great, and lasted just about as long as a clean house with a houseful of kids. Yeah, I remember those days well. I also remember doing laundry in laundromats with three babies in diapers, my 2 1/2 year old still in night diapers when my third baby was born. When Maryruth read the blog about Talkeetna and laundry, she called and laughed with me about those days of diapers in laundromats. That is the kind of stuff that comes up now and then with 47 year old friendships!

Mo and I didn’t have too far to go, but with each passing mile I felt us slipping into a very different Alaska from the one we have seen so far. The highway was wide and smooth, with lots of traffic. Much of it was really beautiful, with the Chugach mountains rising on the east and the alluvial plains that are the foundation of Anchorage to our south.

It rained almost the entire day, with just a few breaks here and there that let us see as least part of the rugged mountains surrounding the road to Anchorage. On the way, we found a delightful little museum a few miles west at the old townsite of Knik, on Knik Arm and right on the Iditarod Trail. It housed artifacts about the history of the Knik area, but also was called Musher’s Museum with paintings and stories of the famous race. The best part of the museum was the curator, but a woman not like any curator you ever knew. She ambled into the building at 1 on a Sunday afternoon, after seeing us waiting outside in the rain for the place to open. The Milepost says it opens at 12 but that isn’t correct at all.

As we walked around looking at old photos and artifacts, she started talking, and talking, and talking some more. She had a detailed story about every single thing we looked at, and it sounded just like your neighbor was talking across the fence while you hung the wash. It was a perfect stopover.

By the time we finished, we were hungry, and Mo wanted Mexican so I punched Mexican Restaurant on my AroundMe iPhone app and up came a place in Wasilla. yup, that Wasilla. We wandered around Wasilla a bit, trying to get the lay of the land, but it seemed like a fairly strange place and didn’t show itself until we left the main street in town and headed south again through the line of big box stores and traffic that makes up the better part of Wasilla. The Mexican restaurant called La Fiesta was in a small strip mall, not fancy, but certainly adequate for the mood and the dark rainy day.

By the time we reached Anchorage, it was about 3 in the afternoon, and we have found that is a good time to stop if you don’t have reservations and want a place to sleep. Our plan was to stay at Elmendorf AFB Family Camp, but it was a bit confusing because Elmendorf has combined with Fort Richardson Army Base, and there is also a campground there called Spruce. I had read about Spruce, but in the rain I didn’t have a clue where it was, and when we made our way through the Elmendorf gates, the FamilyCamp was right there so that was right where we landed.

It was time to spend two nights, and finish up the rest of the laundry at a buck a load at the campground laundry. It was still raining, but at least we had power and could use our little electric heater to stay cozy. Still, the antenna only brought up a very strange channel and we decided TV wasn’t on the list of todo’s anyway. We planned two days in Anchorage to see a bit of what the city has to offer, but also planned to get the MoHo serviced the next day. I didn’t have internet, but the phone worked great with 3G and five bars to get me around the internet to search out locations and options for our time in the city.

After realizing that the rain wasn’t going to let up, we decided to take a drive downtown and check out the lay of the land. With it being Sunday night we thought it would be quiet enough that we could do that fairly easily. Anchorage isn’t nearly as big as it sounds. The listed population of more than 265,000 people must include an awful lot of the rural area and the city limits actually encompass an area bigger than some states. We drove around downtown, noticing all the souvenir shops before we found Earthquake Park.

Once again, Mo was to be a bit disappointed with what was left of this park. Now there are a few signs, a memorial, but the park is thick with vegetation and great trails, but not a lot of information about the actual quake, and nowhere can you view any of the rifts or slides that were part of that great disaster. We ambled through the rain back home and went to bed early to read and hope for a bit less rain tomorrow, although the weather forecast wasn’t very encouraging.

Waking again to very dark skies and pouring rain, I looked around the MoHo and was glad for a day to try to get out some of the grime. RVing can get awfully dirty, especially with a dog and a cat and mud and rain. We couldn’t see any of the beautiful mountains that supposedly surrounded Anchorage, but I sure was dragging in a lot of local dirt. I washed all the rugs, the bedding, and shook and washed and polished and scrubbed, and wiped until I had some semblance of a decent place to live, before I finally managed to get to the last of the dirt out of the house. Once I finally finished that project, I was in a better space to deal with the awful dreary skies, but RVing on this rainy dirty morning felt anything but glamorous, believe me! I wondered out loud how the Alaskan homesteaders managed to live in those tiny cabins with kids and wood heat and probably dogs as well. It must have been a really dirty life.

The FamCamp was also an adequate place to stay, with sites well spaced under trees, with electric and water. It was very relaxed compared to the last camp we enjoyed in Tucson, with very little enforcement of rules and regs. Laundry was cheap, and the onsite rv dump was basically a pipe in the ground without any water. We got to shop for groceries at the commissary, and it was very convenient to downtown Anchorage and just outside the gate was a megamall. If we had managed time to shop, we could have gone to target, Lowe’s, PetSmart, and a bunch of others, or we could have even gone to see one of 16 movie screens at the theatre. Instead, I was too tired from cleaning dirt to do anything but crash into bed when we got home from town. It was quiet and dark at night, and probably the only thing I didn’t like was the muddy, dirty sites. Have I mentioned dirty?

Around mid day, we drove again downtown to walk around in the rain and look at “stuff”. Stuff it was, awful stuff actually, and the main part of Anchorage around the Chamber Visitor Center felt a lot like a cruise terminal in a third world country. Store after store, proclaiming authentic Alaskan “art” filled with Ulu knives and cheap tee shirts welcomed us to this bustling city of the north.

One bright spot of the afternoon was a visit to the National Public Lands Visitor Center, with great displays, maps, videos, and movie presentations of all the national parks in the different regions of Alaska. Thank you, Erin, for bringing this to my attention, I might have missed it. The second bright spot was from another recommendation from a friend, Jeanne, who sent us to Humpy’s Ale House for brew and halibut. The halibut was the freshest I have ever eaten, and the ambience was upbeat Alaskan locals mixed with folks from the nearby federal building and tourists.

Our unglamorous forecast for the next day was for more rain. The plan was to get the MoHo serviced on our way out of town tomorrow and then head south to the Kenai Peninsula.

Miles driven today: 113

Road condition: irrelevant, we aren’t in wild Alaska any more

There are more photos for this post linked here and here

Day 19 July 24 Rainy Day in Talkeetna

We are getting close to our half way point of the trip, and this is the first morning that looks like what I had prepared myself to see in Alaska. It rained all night and there was only one train roaring by at 5 this morning and I slept well, and actually didn’t wake up until five. Guess it is getting a bit darker as the days begin to get shorter, as we get farther south, and just maybe I am getting used to it.

When we left our camp yesterday, it was cloudy but not raining. The road south toward the Talkeetna turnoff has two formal viewing sites for Denali that are part of the Denali State Park, and many other places where the mountain is visible on clear days. With the next few days of predicted heavy rain, I am more and more grateful for that brilliant morning leaving Fairbanks with Denali in full view.

Talkeetna is a popular place it seems. There are lots of cute little rustic Alaska style shops, two visitor centers, with one geared to folks planning to climb Denali. After my four hours doing laundry with one dryer, we drove the short distance to town to check it out. It was raining fairly hard by then, but folks were still walking around the little town, doing the shops and eating in the several restaurants. I didn’t take photos, but if you want to see the town, Dennis and Carol did a great job on their blog when they were in Talkeetna a couple of weeks ago.

The Princess and Holland America buses are here, right behind the RV Camper Park. When the train whizzes by in that same vicinity, you see railroad cars labeled Princess and Holland America since this is a stop off/pick up point for transfers from the train to the buses. If you have a ticket for this 115 mile stretch for the train, you can get on and off at will and the train will stop for you. There are lots of trees and thick vegetation, which seems even thicker in the drippy, dense rain. Last night I was feeling a bit claustrophobic, but if you look at the header photo and then today’s photos, it might be understandable.

This photo is NOT what we saw in Talkeetna, but is a view from the Parks Highway some distance north

We walked to the park on the edge of the Talkeetna River and laughed at all the tents and campfires in an area heavily posted with “No Camping” signs. We caught the aroma of people smoking pot, and saw a lot of youthful activity around, and garbage. Wet sleeping bags draped across tents, boots sitting outside in the rain, that sort of thing.

The river itself looks scary. The current is fast and the water is milky from glacier melt and filled with debris. Not a place I would want to launch my boat, that is for sure! We heard a loud noise going upstream and it wasn’t until I re-read Dennis’s posts about Talkeetna that I realized that it was a jet boat tour, one of the many local tourist activities available. I hear there are some good restaurants with good food and service, but we are saving our eating out bucks for salmon and halibut on the peninsula, so we will skip the local spots in spite of the good reviews.

Today we plan another fairly short drive of less than 100 miles to Anchorage and the Elmendorf AFB Family Camp. Since Mo is retired military, there are no reservations, so we are hoping for a site since the camp is so accessible to Anchorage and it’s time for a MoHo oil change and some city stuff. I won’t have internet at the campground, but if so inclined I am sure I could find many places in town. There is much to do in Anchorage as well, but I’m not really interested in city sight seeing for some reason. Yes, I know, I will probably never drive here again, but this is our big road trip, and the city stuff, even the town stuff just doesn’t trigger my excitement button. I do really want to see the Earthquake Park. I had an old friend that lived through it, and her stories were terrifying.

The rest of the photos from yesterday and this morning are linked here

Day 18 July 23 Catching Up in Talkeetna, Alaska

After a short hundred mile drive south on the Parks Highway from Cantwell 8 miles from our boondock site, we are tucked into the only RV park in Talkeetna this afternoon, after four nights without hookups. Time to catch up on laundry, to upload photos if possible, and catch up on the blog. Who knows when I’ll ever get the chance to check in on the rest of the world, but it may not be right away.

I have been posting blog entries by actual date traveled in addition to the day of our trip (see above title). Since we have been away from the internet, you may have missed a few posts, so you are interested in knowing where we have been, check the archives to the left.

The new header photo is from last night’s beautiful boondock site along Joe Lake on the Denali Highway, just a short eight miles from the main Parks Highway and up 5 miles of gravel. Instead of the beautiful isolation and quiet we enjoyed last night, we are now in Talkeetna Camper Park with electricity and water, lots of neighbors tight around us, 2 washing machines and one working dryer, and intermittent internet. I’m heading for the laundry room right now, hoping I can get enough of a connection to post the last few blogs from my LiveWriter.

Wish me Luck!

It is interesting that I have to take my computer up to the office to get a decent connection while Mo happily surfs away with the Netbook using our WiFi booster purchased last December in Desert Hot Springs. I still haven’t found Windows 7 driver for the gadget, so I guess I am out of luck for the time being.

Miles driven today: 126

Road condition: excellent highway except for the repetitive joints to protect from frost heave. Better than frost heave, though!

Day 17 July 22 The Denali Highway

Once again, we are camped within feet of a lake, but this time we are not just dry camping in a primitive campground, we are actually boondocking. We are just a bit more than 8 miles east of the Parks Highway and Cantwell on the Old Denali Highway 8. This road continues east to Highway 4, the road to Valdez, and then back north to Delta Junction where we were a few days ago. I am terribly behind in writing, and it seems the only way to get going again is for me to start with the here and now, this moment.

Mo is cutting some dead wood nearby along the lakeshore and feeding our campfire while we watch the evening sky shift and change across the lake. It smells wonderful. A very occasional car or truck passes our site, but we aren’t really visible until they are almost right on top of us, so that works just fine. This morning when we drove this highway, for a very long time we were the only ones on the road.

We began our day in the Riley Creek Campground at Denali National Park, with a 5:30 am drive west on the park road to Savage Creek, the extent where private vehicles are allowed in the park. Except for the green and white shuttle buses, already taking people into the deeper recesses of the wilderness, we were the only ones on the road. We thought perhaps an early morning drive might yield some critter viewing, but it wasn’t to be. Again, we saw squirrels and snow shoe hares and nothing else. Unlike yesterday, this morning the Mountain was clouded over and if we hadn’t seen it last night we would have had no idea where it was on the horizon.

The tundra was beautiful at dawn, though, with pale shades of misty green on the high hills to timberline glowing in the morning light. Once at the parking lot at the Savage Creek trail, we were delighted to be the only ones there. Rules said that we couldn’t leave Abby untended in the car, and of course she couldn’t go on the trail, so Mo sat with her while I took off on a beautiful, silent walk along the river. The only sound breaking the silence was the river, the sounds of birds calling, and an occasional rumble as a shuttle bus crossed the bridge to the security point. When Mo was here so many years ago, she was able to drive to a campground farther into the park, but even back then the only animals she saw were a small herd of caribou in the distance. There are no guarantees that you will see any wildlife at all, even on the bus that travels the entire 85 miles to Wonder Lake.

I have a friend, Jeanne, who lived in Alaska for several years and told me we should try the Denali Highway for a true wilderness experience without the crowds of Denali. So after our morning drive, we packed up the MoHo and headed south on the Parks Highway 3 toward Cantwell and the Denali Highway junction. Mo checked in with the owner of the Tesoro station at the junction and he said it would be fine to leave the MoHo there while we took the Tracker on the gravel road leading east through the wilderness.

I owe it to Jeanne, because we might not have taken the time and trouble to travel this long gravel road. Even though unpaved, the road was in much better shape than the Top of the World Highway, and we could have driven the MoHo all the way to the eastern junction with Highway 4 without any problems, I am sure. We spent many hours on the trip, mostly because I had to keep stopping to take pictures and walk out over the hills for wider vistas. Along the way, we saw many places that would be perfect for boondocking, but this one at mile 8 was our choice because of the lake and the proximity back to our route on Highway 3 south to Talkeetna tomorrow.

We drove as far east as the Susitna River crossing where the landscape changed dramatically. This is about the half way mark of the road, and also marks a great landscape shift where the Sustina River flows south to Cook Inlet, and the Nenana River we had been following for many miles flows north into the Tanana River, the Yukon, and eventually the Bering Sea.

The reward for our many miles of gravel road highway was the expansive wild landscape of the Nenana River valley flowing at the southern base of the Alaska Range. During the morning, on our route east, the skies were clear enough that we could see Mt Deborah and Mt Hess among the rugged peaks of this beautiful range that also is the home of Denali as well. The Susitna River lodge, east of the river, was boarded up, and when we decided to turn back at mile 77 we were starting to get a bit hungry. Silly me, I was so excited about the trip that I completely ignored the possibility that we might need sustenance, so we had nothing with us. A few miles west of the river is a tiny enterprise called Gracious House Lodge B&B at historic milepost 82, with the supposedly famous Sluice Box Bar, and a café.

We stopped thanks to the handwritten sign on the road proclaiming pie and espresso, but the restaurant was closed and the only pie available was a wondrous creation that had been frozen for $30 bucks each.

Carol was delightful, and assured me that her pies were world famous, and that if we weren’t outsiders, we would know that they were a deal at any price. I agreed with her, but still couldn’t quite opt for a 30 dollar pie. I did buy an espresso for me and a latte for Mo and enjoyed visiting with Carol who told me all about the lodge, the slow summer, the reason for closing the restaurant, and all about her kids, grandkids, and husband. They have lived here for 31 years, (her husband actually lived her for 55 years), have traveled the Highway to the south five times because they get cabin crazy, and are really wanting to sell the place and leave the wilderness.

With a good jolt of java we continued west, enjoying the views. For a day or two now, the exhaust pipe on the Tracker has been loose and rattling, and Mo tied it up with a piece of wire till we can get it welded. But the sound we suddenly heard on the gravel road was something new, and Mo pulled out immediately to a beautiful spot overlooking the Nenana River Valley and the Alaska Range to see one of her brand new tires going very flat. The spare was ready, the lug nuts were loose enough to actually remove, and we got the tire changed without a hitch. We were both amazed to see that the puncture was caused by the 1/2 inch hitch latch bolt that had run right into the tire. Who knows how it managed to get in there but it had punctured it and was all the way inside the tire.

We continued west back to Cantwell, checking that our chosen boondock site was still unoccupied, and asked the nice Tesoro guy where we could get the tire repaired. Of course, there was a tire repair shop right in Cantwell, although I say that loosely. We paid 40 for a used tire and 20 to mount it and it was worth every penny. Especially considering the old man who wandered out of the house to help us. By the time he was done, Mo knew most of his life story as well. Folks in Alaska are very friendly it seems, and like having someone listen to them.

We picked up the MoHo and drove back to our lake, which I since discovered aka the Milepost, is Joe Lake, used by a local air service, and that our boondock site south of the road can flood. I don’t think that will be a problem tonight. After our evening kayak, we are still sitting out by the fire with a glass of wine, enjoying the evening unhampered by bugs, wind, or rain. I somehow never envisioned moments like this when I imagined what this trip would be like. I was ready for mosquitoes, for rain, for dreary skies, for hordes of other RV’s on the road. Tonight at least, we have none of that. Just wilderness all around us, a sky that is many shades of blue and white and gray, a glassy lake all to ourselves, and a free campsite.

One last thing. Erin asked the other day about how I manage the Pelican Waterproof Camera case in the kayak. First of all, we have Adirondack boats from Swift Canoe in Canada, and bought them specifically for the roomy cockpits so that Mo could paddle with Abby. For me, that equates to plenty of room for the Pelican. I lock it up while launching and if the water is smooth, I’ll open it up and can even switch lenses mid stream if needed. Seems to be a great system and I no longer have to be afraid to take the good camera out on the water. Hmm, that wide angle lens does really great things for my legs. ewwwww!

Miles traveled today in the MoHo: 37

Miles traveled in the Tracker on the Denali Highway 150 or so

The rest of the photos for this day are linked here