Trail River Campground, a big Mountain View Boon-dock, moving north to Portage Valley
Staying 2 days longer at Trail River Campground to make repairs on the solar was a success. Tuesday came and we were ready to move on. 5 to 7 days is about our limit. It seems, at that point, we are ready to try somewhere new. In our previous drives back and forth to Seward, we had seen a great boondocking site high on the Seward Highway just about 15 miles outside of town overlooking a magnificent valley surrounded by the Chugach Mountains. There had been other people boondocking, so we felt it was our turn. The trip was about 10 miles south of Trail River campground. Arriving around noon we got set up to enjoy the view for the remainder of the day. The sun was very bright with no impediments to block our solar collectors. We unhooked the fifth wheel and went into town to get fuel for the generator. Just in case. We loaded potable water at the city campground, as we had done before, to finish filling our fresh water tank. Since the purchase of the 12-amp pump, filling our rig’s tanks was easy. Brad even had enough to wash Big Red (our F350) and clearing bugs of the front of our 5th wheel. Trail River Campground had been particularly dusty.
The next day we headed over toward Portage Valley. We didn’t have any reservations, however, we had recently had a quick trip over to see if we could fit in the Williwaw Campground. It is a national campground honoring our National Park Pass. Upon arriving, we found a bunch of sites. The site we chose was in the back corner, was quiet and out of the traffic. It feeling right. Most are back-in sites. There are usually several pull-thru sites, however, they are nearly always filled and/or reserved. This day we had the sun on our side. Our rig’s energy was filled to the top. Awesome!!!!!! There are a couple of bars on the phone of 3G service. The Internet doesn’t play as well with 3G. Our booster helped. After setting up, we made our way over to the Portage Visitor Center. As always, there were some really nice exhibits packed full of information. We enjoy going thru Visitor Centers when entering a new area. We sat and listened to the story how the Alaska Wildlife Conservation Center had released a herd of Wood Bison into the back-country of Alaska in 2015. The entire process of moving them took several types of transportation and several very qualified people. At the time, we wondered where the Alaska Wildlife Conservation Center was located.
The weather had become cooler and rainy, so we decided to take a ride over to Hope, Alaska. The Hope Highway is about 30 miles south toward Seward from Portage. Turning onto the Hope Highway for an additional 18 miles finds one at the town of Hope at the end of the road. The town has a history with old, preserved structures. Very quaint. Just past the main part of town is an RV park. It was partially full. There are several back-in sites as well as about 8 pull-thru sites, large enough for a big rig. We decided to park and walk over to the 6-mile river that runs next to town. There were people fishing and catching salmon. Most were fishing with fishing poles. They were lined up along the river bank as the salmon were running up-stream. We don’t have much interest in fishing ourselves. Watching others enjoying themselves is a good thing. We meet a young couple, from Colorado, who were here on a 9-day vacation. They have 2 toddlers, leaving them at home with Grandma and Grandpa who came in from Michigan. How exciting for Grandma and Grandpa. We were able to watch them catch their first salmon. He was fishing with the pole and she was standing closer to the riverbank with the net. They both had waders on. From our vantage, a little downriver from their location, we could tell this was their first catch. She was trying very hard to stay upright when trying to capture the fish he caught in her net. The river is very rocky and fast flowing. They were excited and so were we. We told them we would have grabbed her if she had taken a dive into the river since we were downstream. We took pictures posted below.
Leaving the center of town, we drove up the Hope Highway a bit more, finding a small RV park at the end of the road with some great views of the Cook Inlet. We are too big to fit, however, a medium size to 30 feet could work in some of the sites, and, of course, tenting.
We then found ourselves returning to the Seward Highway. There was still daylight, until 11:15 pm. So, we figured we would keep checking out the area. Our next stop was going to be the town of Girdwood. Driving North on Seward Highway, we saw a sign for the Alaskan Wildlife Conservation Center. Somehow remembering the video presentation at the Visitor Center the day before, we were excited to be able to tour this Center. Their focus is a non-profit animal rescue. They have brown and black bears, Sitka deer, elk, caribou, moose, Wood bison, porcupine, fox and a pair of Lynx. We enjoyed the whole area and really like seeing the Bear being fed in an open area. We had arrived just in time for the brown bear feeding. There was a pair of bears who were brother and sister. Also, two other brown bears. They definitely know when their public feeding time arrives. A couple of them decided they did not want each other close to them. A disagreement ensued. One would not want to be close when bears decide to disagree. They are not interested in injuring each other, just asserting themselves. They were jocking for position. They knew when their caretakers walked down the walkway with big orange buckets, they were going to be thrown huge slabs of salmon. Yummy!!!! This was one of those unexpected parts of our journey we look forward to occurring.
Our finish to this day, after the animal visit, was in the town of Girdwood, situated just north about 10 miles from Portage Valley. Girdwood is a Ski Resort area. Since we are visiting in July, the resort is used differently. There is a restaurant on top of Alyeska Mountain. The transportation up the mountain is in an aerial tram. However, since it is rainy and very cloudy, not only today but for several days going forward, we probably won’t be able to enjoy this activity. There was a general store so we stopped in to purchase more drinking water. Side note here. We end up consuming about 1 ½ to 2 gallons a day. Seems as though drinking water is always at the top of the grocery list when boon-docking. We did enjoy being able to receive 4G signal in Girdwood. We could not resist using our smartphones before returning home. Another satisfying day.
Comments
Thanks for the updates Sue and I are enjoying them.