Starr Treks: Alaska trip Monday 6/22/15 Anchorage

STARR TREKS Monday 6/22/15 Anchorage AK

We left Valdez a little after 8 am — another overcast day. We drove back up the Richardson Hwy to catch Highway 1 going to Anchorage. If you keep going north on the Richardson, it goes to Fairbanks. We passed Bridal Veil Falls again — quite a bit bigger than our Bridal Falls in Fresnal Canyon. As we got past Thompson Pass, we went thru extreme fog, to sunshine! It was generally a pretty boring day of driving 302 miles— a lot of the highway had frost heaves, and became narrow and windy — not fun for Larry to drive on. We stopped at Willow Lake for lunch — the kind of water that mirrors the trees on the shore. We got to see another glacier along the highway— the Matanuska— it is 2 miles wide and 27 miles long! We drove on to Palmer and stopped briefly at the Visitor Center — just an interesting history— its economy has always been agriculture. In the 30’s, FDR was trying to get people off the “dole”, so recruited about 200 families of Scandinavian descent to move here from Michigan, WI, and Minnesota. Their descendants now grow the giant vegetables that you read about— it was too early in the season for anything in their garden nearby to be gigantic.

We used our GPS to find the RV park— the Golden Nugget. Again, not cheap— $42 a night, based on 7 nights and 8th night free. The other park I was interested in closer to downtown was even more expensive. The sites are pretty tight and Larry had to back in — he started backing into the wrong site, so I caught him, and another man helped guide him in. It is warm and sunny here— in the 70’s! We drove downtown to the Visitor Center to get info on hiking. It is supposed to be nice weather for the next few days, then rain is predicted. So we figured we would hit the museums at the end of the week. The lady at the Visitor Center was very ditzy — had never been to several of the museums I was interested in. She had been on some of the hiking trails, so that helped. Anchorage is pretty big— population almost 300,000, so there was a lot of traffic downtown. We will come another day to walk around some more.

We GPS’d to Costco, and it is actually across the street from our RV park. We just restocked on fruit for now. So for supper, we had leftover pork chops, green beans, oranges, green salad, and watermelon. We took a walk around the RV park and talked to a couple from Denton TX, saw several other motor homes from TX, a few from NM (they weren’t outside, or would have talked to them), one from Massachusetts, and several from Florida!.. The people right behind us are from Illinois— I am amazed at all these old people traveling so far in their RV’s.

Anyhow, we are not enjoying our long driving days much, even when there are glaciers to see along the road. It will be hard to make that long journey home again. We are enjoying AK, but for us it will be a once in a lifetime trip. (Even my photos are boring today.)