July 4, 2010

Happy Independence Day.  What is primarily a long weekend for most people is a hassle of crowded campgrounds for us.  We beat the crowd, though, and got an adequate site.

We have seen some interesting landscapes recently.  On our evening in Tolsona, we hiked a difficult mile through a bog to see the mud volcanoes.  If you stumbled upon this site, you would not have known what you were looking at; you would have just thought, “hmm, this is odd”.  The mud volcanoes are bubbling pools of mud.  Unlike Yellowstone, though, these lack the visual impact of steam and the odiferous impact of sulfur.  These are merely bubbling with methane.  The small circular pools are surrounded by a lifeless zone, apparently due to the salinity of the water that oozes out as well.  The pools are pretty deep.  People have stuck long sticks into them and we pulled one out over ten feet long.

Yesterday, we bicycled through the recent burn zone at the far end of Eklutna Lake.  It was interesting to see how the fire burned in some places and not others.  It was interesting to see that the trail blocked the fires in some places.  The last we saw of the burn zone butted up against the river, somehow not managing to jump the river.  The fire seemed not to climb the mountainsides.  We speculated that there could have still been some snow that stopped it from further advancing.  The normally lush floor of the forest was barren and black.  In places, the trees looked to have suffered only minor impacts.  In other areas, it was total devastation, a virtual field of partially burnt logs with nothing standing vertical anymore.  The smoky smell still lingered in the area.

We have completely lost track of the day of the week.  We try to keep up because it is important; some places get crowded on the weekends. 

We managed to arrive at Eklutna on Thursday afternoon, expecting to beat the crowds to the popular campground relatively close to Anchorage.  We were surprised that there were no single campsites.  The double campsites weren’t bad.  They simply shared a driveway.  Most of them appear to be intelligently set up with a good tent site on the right side and a good trailer site on the left.  We found a nice left side and claimed it.

We have had a couple of different tent people use the other half of the site this weekend.  The first group left on Saturday and were quickly replaced with a school teacher from Palmer and her 10 year old son.  The son invited us to their campfire yesterday.  The mother confirmed the invite so we went over with the remainder of our dinner wine and had a lovely conversation for about an hour.  We are not the most social of people, but we do pretty well when we put forth an effort.

Friday was a busy day.  We spent almost the entire day at the condo, testing how things will fit in the van.  We also rented a storage unit for a month so that we don’t have to run around with all this stuff until we are ready to leave.  It was more than I expected to pay, but my time is worth more than messing around with this.  Since it is at the same location as our trailer storage space and we got a unit right by the door, I took the easy way out.

In contrast, we found out that shipping odd sized parcels is expensive.  This changed our minds on shipping our skis.  Instead, we looked for items that we could repack into normal boxes and ship cheaply, thus making more room in the van for the skis.  I think we figured it out.  It initially struck me as a contradiction that the shipping was too expensive, but the storage unit was something I would spend money on.  I thought about it and realized that the storage unit represented reduced hassle over the next month, something I value greatly while I enjoy summer in Alaska.  The shipping cost was something that compared against the value of the things being shipped.  Is it worth it to spend $150 to ship something that might be worth less than $150? 

While we were in town, we made our first trip to a laundromat.  Our washing machine in the condo started acting up on the last couple of loads we put through it.  It needs repaired or replaced.  I feel bad that the thing broke in our last days there, but the buyers bought the condo with an old washing machine.  I don’t believe we have an obligation in the matter, but we let our realtor know that we thought there is a problem with the machine. 

The cost of the laundromat was a bit of a surprise.  We have used them before on extended vacations, but this was the first time in our new lifestyle.  We hadn’t really thought about including a budget item for laundry, but it is expensive enough to justify its own line item.

We went back to the condo today since it was raining and finished cleaning it out.  I missed a drawer in the kitchen when I packed so we had a few more things to take to the storage unit.  We spent a good part of the time hauling the trash that was piled up in the garage.  Most of these things were items that I was hesitant to throw away.  There were brackets that I thought I might need for fabricating cargo holds in the van.  There were old ski boots that we were on the fence about (one pair survived today’s final pass).  There were items that had sentimental value, but had long outlived their useful life.  And there were my hundreds of film photographs that I had scanned, but was still not sure enough to throw them in the dumpster.  So today was kind of painful, but when we left, all that was left was the car, the couch we are taking to Fairbanks, and a couple more donation items.

It is strange to be camped at this nice campground and commuting back to Anchorage to deal with things.  Everyone else is here to get away.  We are the exception, although I think a few of the people did come here Thursday night to claim a campsite and then went to work on Friday.

We have had some fun here.  Our bicycle trip that took us into the fire zone was a 10 mile bike ride and then a couple mile hike, and then return.  The hike was supposed to take us to a waterfall, but the trail got pretty vague and the runoff from the mountain made the creek crossings a bit more than we wanted, so we turned back with only a glimpse of the impressive water cascading off the mountain.  Twenty plus miles of bicycling on a rough gravel trail with a bike weighed down with camera gear and hiking gear was tiring, but it was fun, scenic, and a little scary; just like any adventure in Alaska.  Our first night here we took a hike along the lake and we took a slightly different route this evening.  Everywhere we have been, we have seen bear scat.  The place must be crawling with them, but we haven’t seen any.  We did see a couple moose this evening.

Today didn’t really seem like a holiday.  There was no long break from work.  Other people were doing their non-routine holiday activities like camping, grilling food, and enjoying the outdoors.  For us, it was just another day.  We did upgrade our grill food to steak to indicate to ourselves that we knew it was a holiday.