Glenn Highway to Palmer

Robert, Thursday, July 3

This was a driving day. This campground in Gkennallen is so nice that we made a reservation to come back after we get back from Brooks Camp. The campground is on the road to Valdez and so we will stop here for four days on the way there. We may even stay here again when we leave Valdez and head for Homer. The only other place on the south coast we have talked about seeing is Seward but we have been there twice before and so we might just not go there for a third time. Also the campground we have seen there (and the most popular) is not very nice. We’ll decide about Seward later. The drive to Palmer was uneventful. The road was pretty good except for five miles that was under construction. We went through there at 20 mph and still shook. Then there was about twenty miles of narrow, twisty road coming downhill almost all of the way. There were signs along the road that said if you have five or more cars being held-up behind you, you must use the pullouts to let them pass. I wish more places had laws like that and that they enforced them. We pulled over several times to let cars get by but the most we were holding up was three. The road we were on is the Glenn Highway. It seems that many people here use the name of the highways rather than the route number. Watching the news, they talk about things like accidents that are on highways by the name. Anyway, we got to Palmer where our campground is located. Palmer is the place that often is on the news in the lower 48 for the giant vegetables that they grow; things like cabbages that are three feet in diameter. We asked at the campground where we could buy fresh produce and it turns out that immediately next to the campground is a truck farm. They pick produce on Fridays to take to the farmer’s market on Saturday. If you show up on Friday after 5:00 p.m., they will sell produce at the farm. We plan to go buy produce tomorrow. Palmer is about 40 miles to the northeast of Anchorage. We are in a full hookup site until we leave for Brooks camp. Then we will move the trailer to an electric only site while we are gone. When we come back, it’s back to a full hookup site. The electric only sites are much cheaper and by having an electric hookup, every thing in the freezers and in the refrigerator will be OK. After we got set up it was almost 4:00 p.m. so we decide to go find lunch as we had not eaten on the way here. We found a coffee shop and after that went to the store to pick up a few things. Having eaten so late, neither of us was very hungry for supper so we just ate some popcorn followed by summer sausage, cheese, and crackers. By then it was late so it was off to bed.