We left
Valdez this morning as the clouds were parting and the sun came out. The drive halfway to Palmer was nice and
partly sunny, then scattered rain the rest of the way. Alaska weather is funny, it’s dreary and
heavy overcast one minute then the clouds part, the temp raises 10 degrees and
you think it’s going to turn out to be a nice day. But no, dark clouds come back in as fast as
they left and it gets cold quick, and a torrential down pour could happen at
any time. Back in Liard River I went for
a walk when it was a beautiful sunny day.
All of a sudden it clouded over and rained, I was drenched before I made
it back to the rv, which was not far away.
I plan to always be prepared and have a rain coat handy I don’t care how
sunny it is. Back in Texas we have a
saying “if you don’t like the weather, wait a minute” because it changes a
lot. But NOTHING like Alaska. In Texas it changes in a day. In Alaska it changes in one minute,
literally.
We arrived
at Gary and Jill’s house in Palmer around 4:30.
We got a very warm welcome and were soon parked, hooked up to electric
and water and settled in. We’ll be
mooch-docking for a couple of days. Gary
and Jill split their time between Palmer and their property in Baja California,
Mexico. Real good folks with the
sweetest dog, Bella. She loves to play
ball. She’s got a lot of energy.
A note on
writing my blog: I follow a blog
“Phannie and Mae” who recently gave some very good pointers on blog
writing. One of them was to read what
you write before you post it. This gives
you a chance to edit, correct spelling and grammatical errors. I sometimes do this, and sometimes don’t. Since I read Mike’s blog writing entry I’ve
been trying to make sure I do read over my blog entries before I post
them. This often works, but many times I
don’t notice the mistakes I make when proof reading. I guess I know what I “mean” to say;
therefore when I re-read it I still miss these mistakes. Sorry, I’m just blog-tarded. I guess if someone doesn’t like it, well they
can just leave it. This blog is mainly
for me, my personal journal to reflect on.
And let’s face, my memory isn’t what it used to be. So being able to go back and read about our
travels refreshes my memory. And I do
know that there are a couple of people that are really interested in what and
where we are. Some people are
interested in details, some not. So I
put it out there and you can hang on every word, or skim over it. At any rate, I do enjoy reading Mike’s
blog. He’s is a very polished writer,
interesting and funny.
6/30/12
ANCHORAGE, AK
Yesterday
Gary and Jill took us for a tour of Palmer. Palmer has “Friday Fling” each
Friday during the summer which consists of booths selling their wares, food and
even fresh grown vegetables. What a
beautiful day for such a nice venue.
They had a girl band playing when we arrived that sounded
fantastic. We thoroughly enjoyed
listening to their music until they took a break. I did not realize Palmer was such a small
town. What a wonderful place to raise a
family. Gary and Jill knew a lot of
people in town, what a nice community. We
took a drive in the country side around a beautiful mountain (Butte) that has a
nice view of the area, only we did not hike it this day.
This morning
we all went to a wonderful restaurant for breakfast. Gary & Jill’s two little grandsons’
joined us and they were so darn cute!
Well mannered kids at that. It
sure made me miss my grandkids. Norm and
Gary fixed some damage that was done to the rear of our RV when we entered into
Alaska. Gary has a huge garage/workshop
that would be the envy of any man. We
said goodbye to our hospitable hosts and pushed on to Anchorage, a mere 45
miles or so on down the road. We got a
site at Centennial campground on the North side of Anchorage. This is a nice campground, forested but no
hookups. We only stayed here because it
seemed to be close and convenient to my old high school classmate Diane. Unfortunately we were not able to make
contact with her. Bummer. I wouldn’t have stayed here two nights if I’d
know we would not see her. But most of
all I’m disappointed I didn’t get to see an old high school classmate. Maybe on our return trip from the Kenai
Peninsula on our way up to Denali.
7/1/12
ANCHORAGE, AK
Today we
went to Kincaid Park in South Anchorage near the airport. We read that Moose
often gather at the fence by the airport and Norm really wants to get a good
look at a Bull Moose. This park was real
nice but very different from what I was expecting. Hilly and more like a forest with very nice
trails. Mosquito’s were pretty bad. No moose sightings or any wildlife. Anchorage seems to be a nice city but we did
not see much that really interested us. We
decided to look at a couple rv parks near the airport to see if there was one
close to stay at when we return to Anchorage in 2 weeks to pick up my brother. His flight gets in after 11:00 p.m. and he’ll
tour around with us for one week. The
first park was a pretty tight fit for 5th wheels. No space to pull
up in order to back in. The other,
Golden Nugget looked okay and is very large but in a very scary part of
town. This would be just okay. After shopping Home Depot we needed to make a
Wal-Mart run to stock up on groceries and such. I have a very long list. There
are not many (any) good sized stores to buy groceries or essentials so we
thought Anchorage being the big city would be good for shopping. But to my surprise Anchorage has several
small Wal-Marts but not a Super Wal-Mart. We decided to make the 12 mile trip to Eagle
River to their Super Wal-Mart. On the
way we checked out a campground in that area, Eagle River campground. It’s very nice; we may stay there on our
return trip to Anchorage even though it’s 15-20 miles from the airport. No hookups, but we’ll just be there a few
nights. What a nice little town Eagle
River is. After stocking up on supplies we arrived back at our campsite around
6:00 to find our neighbors fighting, again.
Boy, what a spectacle. They had a
lot of company that had arrived for the evening, they were all arguing. Norm wanted to complain to the office but I
was afraid of retaliation. “Just don’t
look at them Norm, keep your head down, or they might come over and *(%$ us up!”.
“Now go get me a beer and don’t look at them. I said don’t look! “. Haha, that man just can’t help but
stare. This is a nice campground but
seems to have homeless people living in tents here. We’ll be glad to leave this place
tomorrow. 
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