Robert, Thursday, July 24
We drove to Palmer today. Actually, Leslie drove to Palmer and I was the navigator. We wanted to try a different campground but the one we wanted didn’t have space so we ended up in the campground where we were before. After we got set up, we went to get fuel and groceries. We got to Palmer with low fuel warnings on both fuel tanks. I’m guessing we had five or six gallons of diesel left when we got here. Just after we left the campground, we drove past a small parking lot. Standing in the middle of the lot was a young moose. He was less than fifty feet from us. I pointed and said, “Look at that!” to Leslie. Her response was, “What’s that?” I now think I know why we haven’t seen many moose. If you don’t know what a moose looks like, how can you spot them? Normally I am driving and watching the road while she is looking for things like moose. And this was one of the few times we didn’t have a camera with us. We got to the store and got groceries and then got fuel. We only got ten gallons as it is much cheaper in Anchorage and we plan to drive there on Saturday. We also got a propane tank filled. Ours are 40 pound tanks and this is only the second time we have had one filled since we left home. When we got back to the trailer, one of our neighbors had a cat on a lease outside their RV, The cat was friendly and really wanted to be petted. We stopped to talk and then unloaded groceries. The sun came out and it was actually warm so I grilled supper outside.
Thursday, July 24, 2008
Back to Palmer
Leslie Thursday, July 24, 2008
Our plan for today was to drive from Glennallen back to Palmer. As we were unhooking our water and electric connections, a woman (mid 30s) who had ridden in on her bicycle stopped by. She asked, in a strong French accent, if we were going to Palmer today. We replied, yes. Then she asked if we had room for two bicycles – in unison we replied, “no”. We’re guessing that they had ridden from Palmer to Glennallen and knew that the road consists of many up hills and down hills ...and if the weather held as it began .... very low clouds threatening rain... it would not be a pleasant ride. While observers may think that because we have a large rig we have lots of extra storage, in fact that is not the case. With four slides, when we close the slides, all of our floor space is gone. There is no extra storage. While I’m always looking to “adopt” foreign exchange students, we really don’t have room for bicycles.
I drove the trip from Glennallen to Palmer. We traveled 130 miles in slightly over 4 hours. There is one section of blasting where we had to wait for a pilot car. The journey through the blasting area takes 20 minutes and is over dirt “roads” – ha! Our rig that was so recently clean is dirty again.
We’re staying in Palmer at Mountain View RV Park, the same place we stayed when we were here previously.
http://www.mapquest.com/maps?city=Palmer&state=AK#a/maps/m::4:61.599701:-149.112793:0::/e
I’m sure some of you are wondering why we are doubling back on our route. The reason is that we had little time to make the trip from Haines to Anchorage to fly to Katmai to see the bears. We weren’t able to go to Valdez on the way. We wanted to go back and see Valdez before we continue down the Kenai Peninsula. That meant that we had to double-back on the Glenn Highway.
Unfortunately like our earlier trips on this route, the clouds remained low and we didn’t see any great pictures of the Matanuska Glacier. We returned to the Mountain View Campground in Palmer. After unhooking and getting things organized, we decided to head out to Three Bears (a COSTCO owned grocery store) and Safeway. It was around 5:00 pm and as we drove out the access road what appeared but a MOOSE. YES, A LIVING, SMALL MOOSE. She (I think) just stood there about 20 yards away and watched us. She was in the front yard of an auto repair place. She stood there and looked at us as if to say, “well, you wanted to take pictures so here I am.” Unfortunately for probably the first time since we left Colorado on May 9th — I didn’t have a camera! What – we had long ago decided to always leave the little camera in the truck in case we saw something along the way. Blast it – the little camera was in Robert’s backpack in the trailer. Bummer. It gets better tomorrow.
Three Bears and Safeway were welcome places to resupply. We learned that if we spend $100 at Safeway, cumulatively, we get a 10 cents discount on fuel. We’ll come back tomorrow to ensure that we get the fuel discount.
Our plan for today was to drive from Glennallen back to Palmer. As we were unhooking our water and electric connections, a woman (mid 30s) who had ridden in on her bicycle stopped by. She asked, in a strong French accent, if we were going to Palmer today. We replied, yes. Then she asked if we had room for two bicycles – in unison we replied, “no”. We’re guessing that they had ridden from Palmer to Glennallen and knew that the road consists of many up hills and down hills ...and if the weather held as it began .... very low clouds threatening rain... it would not be a pleasant ride. While observers may think that because we have a large rig we have lots of extra storage, in fact that is not the case. With four slides, when we close the slides, all of our floor space is gone. There is no extra storage. While I’m always looking to “adopt” foreign exchange students, we really don’t have room for bicycles.
I drove the trip from Glennallen to Palmer. We traveled 130 miles in slightly over 4 hours. There is one section of blasting where we had to wait for a pilot car. The journey through the blasting area takes 20 minutes and is over dirt “roads” – ha! Our rig that was so recently clean is dirty again.
We’re staying in Palmer at Mountain View RV Park, the same place we stayed when we were here previously.
http://www.mapquest.com/maps?city=Palmer&state=AK#a/maps/m::4:61.599701:-149.112793:0::/e
I’m sure some of you are wondering why we are doubling back on our route. The reason is that we had little time to make the trip from Haines to Anchorage to fly to Katmai to see the bears. We weren’t able to go to Valdez on the way. We wanted to go back and see Valdez before we continue down the Kenai Peninsula. That meant that we had to double-back on the Glenn Highway.
Unfortunately like our earlier trips on this route, the clouds remained low and we didn’t see any great pictures of the Matanuska Glacier. We returned to the Mountain View Campground in Palmer. After unhooking and getting things organized, we decided to head out to Three Bears (a COSTCO owned grocery store) and Safeway. It was around 5:00 pm and as we drove out the access road what appeared but a MOOSE. YES, A LIVING, SMALL MOOSE. She (I think) just stood there about 20 yards away and watched us. She was in the front yard of an auto repair place. She stood there and looked at us as if to say, “well, you wanted to take pictures so here I am.” Unfortunately for probably the first time since we left Colorado on May 9th — I didn’t have a camera! What – we had long ago decided to always leave the little camera in the truck in case we saw something along the way. Blast it – the little camera was in Robert’s backpack in the trailer. Bummer. It gets better tomorrow.
Three Bears and Safeway were welcome places to resupply. We learned that if we spend $100 at Safeway, cumulatively, we get a 10 cents discount on fuel. We’ll come back tomorrow to ensure that we get the fuel discount.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)