So here we are, in our new home! We pulled in Wed. May 16th. The road up from the lower 48 was really very good, and we are most grateful. The last 50 miles in the Yukon before the Alaskan border was quite awful, but most all the rest was good. Those frost heaves cause havoc with the roads this time of year.
Our campground is very nice, and we have a wonderful spot, on the end of the first row. We are snuggled in among the spruce trees, right along the highway entering Glennallen.
We are little ahead of the game, coming in earlier than the campground owners expected us. We had agreed to start work on June 1. but we have been busy since we got here, although the park hasn't been full yet, there are a few early birds on the road. We usually have between 4 and 8 campers each night. They tell us after June 1, it is full every night. We only have 26 sites, and we inhabit one of them!
We found coming up that there were a lot of things not open yet. We used the trusty Mileposts book as our bible, as everyone should that is coming up to Alaska, and many of the places advertised in there weren't open yet.
You can see from the photo top right, that Barry is hard at it! He was just hangin' around! Not really, he was putting up the flagging that runs from tree to tree in front of the park. The park as indentions in the ground throughout. The snow is all melted, but water stands in all the dips in the park. We pump the water out of them daily and more just keeps coming up as the permafrost melts. It is amazing. The ground is also very squishy when you walk on it. The sites are solid, where you park, but all of the grassy areas are soft and will remain that way all summer. Has something to do with the frost and the tundra growth.
Tomi and I went to the greenhouse today, about 40 miles from here and ordered the flowers! It was quite fun and a wonderfully large greenhouse. These people take their summer plantings very serious. I got two Sweet 100 tomato plants that I am going to put in pots by the trailer. Will be fun to see how they do with continuous daylight and lots of rain. We won't put the flowers out until after Memorial day as the evenings still get a little chilly.
There are about 500 people in Glennallen. It is an interesting little town. Appears to be a large portion of the inhabitants are Christian fundamentalists and most of the rest are native.
At least this area of Alaska has a lot of people that are here for a reason, i.e. they are felons, coming here to start a new life, or they are running from something. Most everyone it seems has some substantial baggage.
Every citizen of Alaska, (at least the adults, I don't know about the kids) gets an annual check for $2000.00 each. Isn't that amazing? I think AK is the only state that does that. Perhaps they feel it helps offset the high cost of living here. Last year it was only about 1400.00 but they got a raise this year!
Oh, you can't tell from the photo of Barry, but we each have shirts that have our names on them and Northern Nights Campground! Wow, we feel pretty darn special. We feel like we are on a bowling league, or we work in a gas station!
Speaking of gas stations, today we went to Valdez, about 120 miles south of here and there is a convenience store there that has full service gas! When was the last time you saw that? Been a while for us.
Valdez is an interesting little place, about 5,000 people, (I thought it was bigger), and it all centers around the harbor and the Sound. There are ferries coming and going all the time, and I'm sure tankers as well, although we didn't see any tankers today. I stopped at a fish market right on the bay and got some halibut cheeks. We had them for dinner and they were delish. Awfully expensive, but I guess halibut don't have chipmunk cheeks, so they are a little scarce. The drive to Valdez is magnificent. Sooo many mountains it just takes your breath away and there are lots of glaciers near the highway too.
We plan to leave here the 24th and go to Anchorage until the 28th for National DU Convention. They are good enough to pay our registration fees this year, since Barry retired last. That worked out great, with our free year being Anchorage. Convention here is always well attended. We were here for one in 1995. Wow, that is 12 years ago, how time does fly by!!
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