7/12/12 EAGLE RIVER, AK

The town of Eagle River is located just north of Anchorage.  We found a nice campground here as the ones in Anchorage are terrible.  They have a four day limit so we will stay here four nights then move into Anchorage closer to the airport the last night in this area.  My brother’s flight gets in around 11:00 p.m.  We took the truck into the Ford dealership to get the oil changed yesterday.  We got a later start than we should have (not unusual for us) and had to wait a few hours until the truck was done.  In the meantime we walked over to a motel just a block up the street to check out their little rv park.  It’s expensive, sites are tight, pretty much a crap hole, in the bad part of town next to a busy highway.  But it’s close to the airport and has cable, we’ll take it.  After picking up the truck we checked out a Fred Meyers to see if we could possibly camp there one night.  Fred Meyers is a grocery store chain that often times lets you camp overnight in their parking lot.  We did not see any campers, but did see signs saying “No parking for longer than 24 hours, violators will be towed”.  I think it would be okay for an overnight but it was extremely congested with vehicles and we weren’t comfortable dropping the trailer there while running out to the airport.  So we’ll stay at the crap hole we saw earlier.  

We’re just relaxing and enjoying the sun when it makes an appearance.  There are a few places in Anchorage I want to check out as well as Eagle River.  We have to stock up on supplies and wash laundry.  I don’t even have clean dirty clothes to wear any more.  I brought just a little of everything.  A few short sleeves, a few long sleeves, shorts, capris, long pants (light, medium and heavy weight), so I could be ready for all kinds of weather.  But the only thing I’ve been wearing is long pants (jeans), long sleeve tee shirts, a hoodie and at times a light weight rain proof jacket.  That seems to be all you need in Canada and Alaska.  It may get warmer as we get closer to Fairbanks next month.

This morning I was talking to Norm when all of a sudden I saw a black bear come out of the woods behind our rv!  My jaw dropped open and I couldn’t speak, probably because I was shocked to see this bear.  Norm turned around to see what I was looking at.  We watched him as he meandered by our picnic table and fire ring.  He just kept going, right on through our camp site.  It was amazing.  We hadn’t seen a bear since Canada and were beginning to think we wouldn’t see another one until we drove back through Canada.  This one was a little too close for comfort, I was glad we were safe inside our rv.  Just yesterday morning we were sitting right out there drinking our coffee.  I’m glad it was too cold to do that this morning.  I had my camera nearby and got a pretty good picture of him.  I’ll try to post it when/if I get fast enough wifi.