On to Portage Valley

Robert, Wednesday, July 30
We made it to the battery shop for new batteries. We were told it would take them at least a day to decide if the old batteries were defective and therefore covered under the warranty. We decided to just get two new batteries and leave the old ones. If they found a defect, we could come back for a refund. Then the owner of the battery shop came in. The first two workers there could have combined their IQs and still not managed to break 100. I asked the owner to test the old batteries as the two workers either didn’t want to or didn’t know how. I suspect the latter. He tested them and said they were fine. As that meant there would not be any adjustment on the price, we took the two old batteries with us. I will keep them charged and this fall I will get another battery rack put in the trailer so we can have four batteries rather than the two we have now. Then we drove to a campground in the Portage Valley called Williwaw Campground. Portage Valley is southeast of Anchorage about 40 miles. It is located just off of Turnagain Arm and is where the Portage Glacier is located. The campground is run by the Nat’l Forrest Service so with my Golden Age Passport it only costs $9 per night. I hope the name doesn’t describe conditions here. A Williwaw is a sudden, violent blast of wind that descends from mountains along the coast to the sea. After we got settled, we drove to the Portage Glacier Visitor’s Center and checked out the exhibits. When we were at the glacier in 1988, we walked from the visitor’s center about two miles to where we could touch the glacier. Now you can’t even see the glacier from the visitor’s center. We returned to the trailer and I ran the generators for more than four hours. After dinner we had a campfire but finally gave up and went inside.