Quiet 4th of July

Leslie Thursday, July 3 and Friday July 4, 2008

Thursday was a travel day. The road from GlennAllen to Palmer wasn’t too bad. There are still some frost heaves that are difficult to see until the truck bounces upon them but it was far superior to the beginning of the Alaska Highway. When we’re towing it is difficult to get many pictures because we can’t easily pull off the road. We did pass the Matanuska glacier. When we return to GlennAllen in a week and a half, I plan to stop there for some photos.

We’re now staying in MountainView RV park in Palmer. Palmer is about 40 miles north of Anchorage. The park is a grassy field with rigs places very close together (in other words, a grass parking lot). Being out in a field instead of back in the trees is less appealing visually but it does mean that we have fewer mosquitos. That’s good.

It is also much warmer here than we have experienced in the past month. Temperatures actually reached the mid-60s on Thursday and over 70 on Friday! Our shorts came out for the first time.

Fireworks seem not to exist in Alaska. There is only one town in the state where fireworks can be legally sold or used and there don’t appear to be any public displays. That makes sense considering it is still light for most of the night. It was a quiet 4th of July. We did watch the fireworks display from Washington, DC on the local public TV station.

Our roof-mounted antenna is able to pull in three TV stations here. One of the stations is broadcasting digital TV that has an amazing picture. Now at least we know that we don’t need a converter box for this TV. This may be the first time we’ve used the antenna so we weren’t sure about the digital issue.

Communication technology on the road is always a challenge. We’re now both able to send and receive email and get on-line (although not at the same time). At this campground the WIFI system was installed by the local telephone company. We were able to sign up for a month of one account. We share the WIFI account so only one of us can be logged in at a time.

We’re using this time in Palmer to organize and plan for our camping trip to Katmai National Park next week. That is the grizzly bear trip – I’m so excited!