Alaska 26. Road Warriors August 4

Things are quiet in the campground this morning, which I guess makes sense when you stay up well past midnight since that’s about the time it starts to get dark. When I was reading forums while planning the trip (what little I did), I read numerous posts trying to prepare first-time visitors for the locals and their ability to seemingly party all night long. I get it now. 

It was about 8:30 or 9 when we pulled out with plans to head toward Girdwood and the ski town of Alyeska. Dave is doing ALL the planning now because my time is spent cooking, writing and posting. I’m working FULL TIME, people. The least he can do is plan my time off. He seems a bit… resentful of this. But when the talent scouts stumble across the Road Warrior series and offer me a book deal, which will — of course — be followed by a movie deal, maybe he will turn that frown upsidedown? 

Just to be clear, I’m only going to sign over the rights to the movie if Dave and I get to play ourselves. If they cast someone like say… Greg Kinear as Dave, I’d never be able to hit my finer notes of exasperation, humor and downright annoyance. Just saying.

All I’m saying is: I don’t want to plan. So I’m practicing my excuses for getting out of it. Besides. I’m a TOTAL cheapskate. When Dave plans, we end up in planes, on trains, and at a bar with a bottle of wine in front of us. It’s a win-win for everyone involved. Including the local economy. 

I am in a sort of “I’m sick of this” mood… kind of missing my routine at home, my garden, my friends. Feeling like we don’t know what the heck we are doing… nothing huge. Just a general malaise…

Dave wanted to go back to the Noisy Goose for breakfast again, but it was too out of the way so I tried to find something similar in Wasilla. Wasilla is (apparently) a big town. Everyone we have met on the road who lives in Alaska seems to live in Wasilla. There were exactly two breaksfast places. Both rated a solid 3/5 — Which is not very good in the Googleverse. But beggars can’t be chooses so we picked the first one we drove by. The name doesn’t matter. It was quite bad. Why, why, WHY did I order the eggs Bennie? I guess because I thought you couldn’t screw that up? News flash: you CAN screw it up. Yuk. Wish I had a picture of the unnaturally yellow hollandaise. Still, I powered my way through most of it and washed it down with a few Mike and Ikes when we got back out to the car so that I could get the taste out of my mouth. 

And I am not even trying to be funny. I really did eat it and I really did eat Mike and Ikes in the car immediately after. How ridiculous is that?

Dave had corned beef hash. He said it wasn’t that bad, but that it also wasn’t very good. I snuck a piece of his toast and even thought that tasted a bit off. They didn’t have half and half for coffee. Just coffeemate.

OK, ok, you get the picture, I’ll move on. We continued on the road and since we were driving right past the fly shop I talked about earlier, we stopped back in because we needed more tippet. You see, upon returning to camp yesterday, I set about to make more bead rigs for when we are in the Kenai and realized I had lost my whole tippet holder off my fishing pack. Somehow, in all the bushwacking and tripping and falling, it must have come off. How, I cannot even fathom. It’s almost as much of a mystery as the solar panel… I would need a video showing just how difficult that thing was to attach to the pack. It wove behind an attachment point that isn’t ripped… It makes no sense. And I am very sad about it. Thankfully, I had taken off several of the smaller tippet spools we wouldn’t be using, so I have SOME tippet left (fluorocarbon tippet is spendy) just not the sizes we need for Alaska. Good reason to swing back in.

Had another fun chat with A.J., and headed toward Girdwood and Alyeska, the ski-town just south of Anchorage. 

We drove through Anchorage, which I had been looking forward to, since we had not yet seen any real “city” in Alaska. But Anchorage — at least what we saw of it — cannot be called a true city. It seemed more like a big suburb. But of what? We’ll have a better look at it when we head back there some time in the next week to hit the museum and pick up the grill regulator…

There weren’t a lot of camping options, so I made a quick rez at an old gold mine that is open for tours that had 8 camping spots, too. It actually wasn’t bad and — oddly — we had the whole place to ourselves! It was almost like dispersed camping, but hey!, you get to pay $35 fee for it! 

I was gravely opposed to paying for camping at the start of this trip, but I’m 100% over it. Well… I lie. I’m 75% over it. I know I said we were learning that even gravel turnouts that had signs clearly posted saying “NO CAMPING” are completely OK to camp at (verified by every local we have asked), but we haven’t trusted it. I can say that we are *almost* at the point of trusting it. So *maybe* you will find us at one of those some night soon. 

It was mid day when we got set up — and a beautiful day — I crawled in the camper (mostly to get away from the flies but also because I was still in my malaise) and laid in the sun coming through the stargazer window on my neatly made bed and recharged. Like our missing solar panel should have doing. It was warm. My book was good. It was glorious. It was just what I needed. No moving. No needing to be anywhere. Just reading.

When I thought Dave would lose his mind from boredom, I re-emerged, like a beautiful butterfly. Metamorphosis!

The “grim” forecast that Dave had been harping on and on about for the past many days seemed to me to be completely wrong. When I mentioned that to him, he quickly drew his phone from its holster, unlatched the safety and loaded his premium weather app as ammo to prove himself right. “See this?” (pulling up Seward, AK forecast).

100%. 100%. 100%. 100%. (That is the daily likelihood of rain in Seward.)

–Where I have been harping on and on about wanting to go.

To see the PUFFINS.

I didn’t drive (ride) 6,000 miles to NOT see the damn PUFFINS. I need to see the Puffins. In Seward.

But Dave is the planner now. And Dave is very good at it. And that is why we are in Girdwood, on the top of Alyeska Mountain in 100% sunshine drinking a delicious beer.

So I nod my head and say, “Yes…I see what you mean. That makes a lot of sense. That was really smart. I really appreciate that. This is beautiful.”

And lots of stuff like that so that Dave will keep planning everything for me. 

Because, you know, he’s good at it.

We had done a drive-through of the ski-town of Girdwood on our way to the campsite and found a “Laundromall” with a huge sign claiming to be the “#1 voted laundromat in North America”.

Bold.

But they also had showers. 

We were IN. And we had planned ahead and brought our laundry (and sheets, which is a whole nuther story) along with us from camp. 

And, after our tram ride, we headed to the laundry, loaded the machines, took fabulous hot showers, and headed to a sunny outside bar at a cute restaurant to eat at while the laundry dried. 

The food was amazing. We split a huge app of little clams and toasted bread. Then I had shrimp and grits and dave had a pork chop. We even got a bottle of wine! I guess with clean hair and underwear, we decided to be fancy like that.

This was the total mental-health day I so badly needed. I was so grateful. 

The only thing left to do when we got back to camp was to go to bed!

Wait. First I had to make the bed. Don’t you hate that?

Words can’t describe just how difficult it is to put sheets on this memory foam mattress in the camper. It’s heavy, you can hardly bend it. You definitely can’t do it from outside.

But Dave took this flattering picture of me in the process and I include it here for your entertainment:

So I finished making the bed, Dave waiting patiently and doing his part…

And we went to bed. On clean sheets. And I’m here to say there is nothing better than clean sheets. Ever. Even camping.