Quiet Day in Glennallen

Robert, Tuesday, July 15

As we have a good internet connection in the campground, I spent some time downloading software updates to my computer. Sometimes a campground internet restricts how much you can download in a day. As some of the downloads are quite large, you can quickly use up your limit. We also did the laundry. The campground laundry only has two washing machines so this meant multiple trips back and forth. Fortunately, our site is fairly close to the laundry room. I bought a CB radio just for this trip as most places on the highway there is no cell phone coverage. When I tried to get it to work before we left home I didn’t have much success. The problem there was that it was indicating that I needed to tune the antenna. Tuning the antenna means that you must change the length of it. You do this by either raising it in its base to make it longer or you cut small pieces off to made it shorter. I didn’t want to try at home as the truck was sitting right next to the house and it should be away from things like that before you tune it. Therefore I just threw it in the truck and decided to tune it later. So when I set it up here, I moved the antenna on the roof of the truck. It is a magnetic mount and will stick wherever it is placed. Maybe moving it worked or maybe not sitting next to the house worked but for whatever reason, today it indicated the antenna did not need tuning. We also decided on the next couple of weeks. We will stay here until Friday. Then we will go to Valdez for four days. Then back here for a couple of days and then back to the Anchorage area. We want to be in Anchorage on a weekend to go to the open air flea market. After that we will wander south toward Homer. We had another camp fire tonight. The mosquitos came out in force so we got out our bug zappers. We bought one coming up the southeast coast (mine) and then bought another in Palmer (Leslie’s). They are a little different and the second one is far better than the first. When you get a mosquito with it you can actually see a spark and it makes a popping sound as it zaps the bug. The first one often doesn’t do anything. It seems that the wire grid might be too spread and it allows small mosquitoes to pass through unscathed. Now I have zapper envy. When we see another like the second one we bought, I’m going to upgrade. The mosquitoes finally drove us inside for the night.