I am writing this from Palmer, Alaska where we arrived this morning from Wasilla.  Palmer is around 50 miles outside of Anchorage.

Joan and I have now been on the road two months along with our dog, Daisy.  We may not quite like each other as well as we did when we left Ponce Inlet, but I think we will still be able to make the marriage endure.  I guess there are some little things that irritate with so much time together, even in a 44 year marriage.  For instance—when after a long day of driving I stop and the car battery is dead, I am pretty apt to utter words Joan does not use and does not like to hear from me.  But at the moment it makes me feel better even though she gets irritated with me.  And then there is Joan’s habit of having to read OUT LOUD every road sign that we pass.  She’s been doing this ever since I have known her, and on a one or two day trip it is fine.  But do you have any idea how many road signs we have passed on this 6,000 mile (so far) drive?!?!  And she reads them with such enthusiam too!—like its the most amazing road sign ever!

When we arrive at a new campground we have certain tasks that need to be performed to get set up for the evening.  There is always an electric line to be plugged in, circuit breakers to be switched on, and a water hose to be connected between the motorhome and camp water supply, and usually a sewer line to deal with.  Most other wives that I see in campers stay inside during this process, but Joan likes to come out with me and help, and I certainly appreciate her doing that.  Now, I don’t know if I have previously mentioned Joan’s mechanical abilities.  Probably not because she is just a tad weak in that area.  Lately she has started hooking up the water line.  About 95% of the time she turns the connection the wrong way.  And I’m there with my smart ass comment that “this is not rocket science”.  Its “righty tighty and lefty loosey”.  Then in typical woman fashion she begins arguing with me about which way is right and which way is left!!  And she points out to me that she actually knows TWO real life rocket scientists.

Speaking of rocket science, when I was in the 6th grade at First Ward Elementary School in Elkins, West Virginia my teacher was Mr. Pingley.  I remember him coming in one day, and he was all disturbed about the Soviets launching Sputnik, the first satellite.  He was quite alarmed that they were so far ahead of us Americans in the space and technology area.  I, on the other hand had just begun to look at some of my classmates (with names like Joyce Mullins, Linda Gibson or Shiela Hall) in a different manner.  The girls were on my mind and I could not get too excited about Sputnik.  I mention this because today I have become so dependent on satellites.  I’m not sure I could have gotten up here without my GPS to guide me.  And Wilda has a satellite system on the roof wherein I push a button inside the coach and the satellite dish raises up, looks around and locks onto a TV signal.  And as we drive along we can be listening to satellite radio from Sirius.  When we were up in Fairbanks (as far north as we went) neither the TV nor the radio could receive signals because the curvature of the earth blocked the reception.  There were satellite dishes up there, but where we have one that measures maybe 18 inches, those were about 3-1/2 feet in diameter, and rather than look up into the sky as they do elsewhere, up there they actually appeared to be looking at the ground.  Maybe Joan can get one of her two rocket scientist friends to explain to me how that works.

The day we left Fairbanks en route to Denali National Park it was raining and foggy.  But by the end of the relatively short 100 mile drive the sun had come out.  Access to Denali is much more limited than other national parks.  There is essentially one road into the interior and it is about 90 miles long, but with only the first 15 miles paved and open to private vehicles.  With an afternoon to kill, and it being a nice day, we drove the 15 miles and enjoyed the scenery.  We did not see any wildlife, but got some decent views of Mt. McKinley, the tallest peak in North America.  The weather forecast for the next day was iffy, but we decided to buy tickets for a 130 mile round trip bus ride into the park interior on the following day.  The departure was for 9:30AM, returning at 5:30PM, but in the middle of the night it started raining really hard.  But we were committed and stuck with our plan.  We made arrangements with the campground to have Daisy walked in the afternoon, we put a meal in the crock pot for our 5:30 return and headed out figuring how bad can it be??  Well, it turned out to be the bus ride from hell.  The bus driver was a nice guy and told us that the first part of the ride on the paved road rarely yielded much wildlife viewing, but after that on the gravel portion we should see, moose, caribou, grizzly bears and Dahl sheep.  He was almost sure that they would be out in the wet weather because it was cooler.  He was right about the beginning of the ride. We saw nothing at all on the first 15 miles.  And once we hit the gravel portion of the wet road the bus started kicking up a muddy spray that soon coated all of the side windows leaving no visibility.  The driver noted that, apologized, and told us we could squeegee them off at the upcoming rest stops.  We all did that at the first rest stop about 30 miles into the ride even though by now the rain had really picked up and a low fog had settled in.  Mt. McKinley was nowhere to be seen in the fog.  Just about as soon as we started driving again the windows were muddied as bad as before the cleaning.  Then we arrived at the second rest stop which was about 55 miles into the 65 mile one way trip.  Again we cleaned the windows and just as the bus was about ready to pull out the driver was radioed that there was an accident up ahead involving construction vehicles that had overturned and were blocking the road.  He was instructed to stay put.  Which we did for the next two and one half hours.  This meant that we would now be returning at 8:00PM rather than 5:30.  So much for our crock pot dinner, and we were worried about the now “regular” Daisy going that long without being out.  Once the road reopened and buses that had departed ahead of ours started returning we managed to get a seat on one, and head back early without completing the trip.  We got back around 7:00PM, salvaged the crock pot meal and Daisy was fine.  On the bright side, we met another couple on the bus who are motorhoming from California (surprisingly they’re not fruits, nuts or flakes) and we have been having some good times with them.  And once we left Denali, the weather improved and we got some beautiful pictures of Mt. McKinly on our drive down to Wasilla the following day.

Someone asked me if we were staying with the Palins in Wasilla.  We drove all over town trying to hook up with Sarah and get invited to stay or at least have dinner with she and Todd, but no such luck.  We did visit the Iditerod headquarters in Wasilla, and saw some interesting exhibits about the race.  They even had some dogs there in training and you could get a ride behind them in one of the wheeled sleds they use to train.  The dogs were smaller than I expected.  Not much bigger than Daisy’s sixty pounds, but looked like they could run forever, which is what they do I guess.  I also noted that beside many of the roads around Wasilla there are dirt tracks like bike trails that they use for training the sled dogs.  They are really into that sport in this immediate area.

One thing that has surprised me up here and seems to be a sign of the times is the number of people living permanently in these campgrounds in very old and decrepit campers.  Several of the campgrounds seem to rent spaces in the interior to overnight travelers such as us, and rent the perimeter spots to folks who are down on their luck.  I’ve seen that in the lower 48 as well, but its not as prevalent as here.  And I cannot even imagine spending a winter  here in some of these units I have seen.

Even though we did not see a bull moose in Denali or anywhere else on the trip so far, Joan thinks she has seen some signs that they are around the area.

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