OurTravels

We drove out of Williwaw during a pretty good rain and the first thing we came upon once we turned onto the Seward Highway was road construction and lots of dirt and gravel.   The coach is back to incredibly dirty again.

Something I have noticed in Alaska is the highway names will usually change numbers along the way.   From Anchorage down to the turnoff for Seward Highway 1 is the Seward Highway, but at that turnoff, Seward Highway 1’s name changes to the Sterling Highway and the Seward Highway continues on down to Seward on Highway No. 9.   If you go north from Anchorage on Highway 1, it’s called the Glenn Highway.   After talking to some locals about the highways here, it seems they only know the names of the highways and don’t pay attention to the numbers much.

After the Seward Highway turned off and we were on the Sterling Highway, the next town we came to was Cooper Landing.   It was a pretty little town with the Kenai River running along the road.  The water was that pretty color we had been seeing in a lot of Alaska where the glaciers feeding the river was fairly close.  It is the glacier flour that makes it the beautiful turquoise color.

As we passed the town, the road started getting a lot narrower and much more windy.   And something that gave me pause was the Armco (metal guard rail)  moved in right up to the white lines on the roadway.  Even more disturbing was that the Armco had been flattened by many, many vehicles rubbing along it for incredibly long stretches in the tighter curves.   Driving an 8′ 6″ bus thru there was a bit of a white knuckle experience as there were lots of RV’s, cars and trucks coming in the other direction.

The rest of the drive was uneventful all the way down to the Homer Elks Club.  When we got there, the rain was still coming down, so we thought it lucky to be in a motorhome instead of a trailer.  If you are pulling a trailer, you have to go out in the rain to get to your house.   Not so with the motorhome as you are already in there!

Later on we headed into the lodge to pay for the night and have a cocktail and maybe some dinner.   Unfortunately, they only serve dinner on Fridays and we arrived on Saturday ,so we asked for recommendations.  The Homer Elks Club is in the Old Town section of Homer, so there was a lot of places within waking distance.   The barkeep told us about three places close by that he said were really good:   AJ’s, Fat Olives, and Two Sisters Bakery.   We opted for Fat Olives, but ended up driving there as it was raining pretty good when we got back outside.

We would recommend it!    I had a small pizza and Kathy had a seafood plate on a bed of forbidden rice.   I had never seen black rice before.   My pizza was excellent and she raved about her dinner.

The next morning we packed up and headed down to the spit to camp for a couple of nights.

Allegro-Bus-Brochure-2006

Here is the brochure to our Bus.   Ours is the exact model shown with the exceptions that we removed the front TV and modified that cabinet to make the bottom of it go straight across and we replaced the couch on the right with a couple of euro recliners.   They will soon be replaced with flexsteels theater seating as the current recliners look good but are extremely uncomfortable.  And something very funny that I just noticed, we even have the dog bed where they show one.   I never noticed that till this morning.

We had stayed in Anchorage for a couple nights to empty the tanks from the convergence and fill the fresh water as we were going to drycamp at Williwaw Campground at the Portage Glacier.   We left early as we didn’t have reservations there and we knew it had a lot of first-come first-served sites.

The drive down was spectacular.  Kind of what I thought Alaska would look like prior to getting to the great white north.  The mountains with tops covered in clouds, the road carved between the mountain slope and the water of the Turnagain Arm of the Cook Inlet.    We were told it was called the Turnagain because Capt. Cook was looking for a shortcut from the Pacific to the Atlantic Ocean and the waterway was another bust and he had to turn again…

It was low tide as we drove and some of the areas have a long muck beach to the edge of the water.  Kathy heard that if you walked out in it, you would likely get yourself stuck and it was deep and difficult to pull yourself out of.

We arrived at Williwaw before noon and there were a lot of open sites, many of which could fit the largest vehicles.  We chose a double spot that was probably 60′ deep and 25′ wide.  It cost us $28 for two nights!  50% off due to the National Park Senior Pass.  I think that thing has saved us about $500 dollars since we paid the $10 for it at Montezuma’s Castle National Monument back in May 2017.   I just calculated that was a 4,900% return on that $10 investment.  Wow… I wish the stock market would give me a return like that.   I could retire!   LOL.

The campground was beautiful.  There was a waterfall coming down from what looked like a glacier right above us.  The sound from the falling water could be heard inside our coach.  It was a terrific background sound.   And the campground wasn’t full on Thursday or Friday night.   Kind of amazing for the end of July.  There are no hookups here, just a hand water pump and large dumpsters.   There were also pit toilets.  I didn’t bother to look in them.

This is an awesome campground to see the local area and I bet to fish as there is a lot of water all around.

We left Wasilla and headed out the Glenn Highway toward Glennallen, AK.   Along the way we encountered the Matanuska Glacier just south of the highway.  The pictures don’t really do it justice, it was huge and right next to  the highway, curving its way back up the mountains.  The town, if you could call it that, was aptly named Glacier View.   Apparently it’s the largest glacier in the US that is accessible by car.

In a little while we were at our spot for the night, the Roadhouse Lodge & RV.   Upon first sight it was a bit sparse, but the owner greeted me in the parking lot and took me to our campsite.   That was service I hadn’t experienced before.

After we set up, I went in to pay for the night.   We had 50 amp service, water and sewer.   That was what I wanted so we could be fully ready for a week of drycamping on Isabel Pass.

The owner, Karen, said she would be telling the history of the place around 6pm tonight, so we went back for a bowl of chili and the story that evening.

We met her husband, Andy, that evening, and talk about a workaholic, he never really stopped working the whole time we were there.   I saw him dig a long trench and lay electrical cabling for 5 new sites he was creating over by the creek.    In the morning he was putting siding up on a new addition to the back of the roadhouse for a large kitchen and liquor store.   We heard he had moved the existing building over to the other side of the grounds and would use that for something later.  It sounded like it needed a lot of work so he found it would be quicker to move it and build a new structure.

He mentioned that the kitchen should be open when we come back here on our way to Valdez in a couple of weeks.   That was hard to imagine, but we will know soon enough.

I asked what Andy had done prior to retiring to this full-time job.  He said he was a demolitions contractor and he always worked alone, preferring to buy bigger equipment than hiring and managing workers.   He mentioned he worked on the World Trade Center demo but was fired as the unions said he had to hire workers and he wouldn’t.   Interesting.

There was some new looking 9′ diameter galvanized pipe sections over on the other side of the campground and I asked him what they could be for.  He said he is building an underground walkway inside them from his cabin to the Roadhouse so he doesn’t need to go outside in the negative 70 degree winter weather.   I guess there isn’t permafrost on the site.

We left in the morning to drive the 100 miles to Isabel Pass on the Stewart Highway.  Here is a picture of what trees grow on top of the permafrost.  Black Spruce is the type and they look very stunted.  When you see them you know to look out for the frost heaves on the road!