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20050709 Anchorage AK 48/77 Clear, warm.
We had breakfast at the restaurant at Grand View, then headed east on the Glenn Highway toward Anchorage.
The first part of the road was new and in great shape. The remainder of the road as far as Palmer is in barely acceptable condition with lots of frost heaves and potholes. Most of its route follows the Matanuska River, but there are three or more places where there isn't enough room in the valley bottom for the river and the road. So, the road has to go up and over. At these points, there are some 30mph curves and steep grades.
After Palmer, the road is fine into Anchorage.
We looked first at the Anchorage RV Park, which looked fine but had no vacancies. Then we went to Ship Creek Landing RV Park and checked in there. It's close to downtown, but not very nice.
Some company provides Wifi here but charges $10 an hour for it. Foo. That's ridiculous.
So I sent our e-mail via the phone-and-modem route and looked at the Hurricane Center's outlook on Dennis. It looks to have moved its track slightly to the west to the Alabama-Florida border.
We went into town then, looked in a few stores, then went to church at the Anchorage Cathedral. It was nice.
We walked then to Club Paris, *the* place in town for beef. D had filet and crab, I had prime rib. Very good, excellent service. We told them we'd be back.
Then we drove back to the little house. I went back to the modem line to check Dennis. It looks like the track moved even farther west to the mid-Alabama coast. Probabilities at Panama City of high wind were somewhat reduced. If this holds, we'll get a lot of rain and wind, but we've had that before.
We'll be busy watching whatever we can watch tomorrow.
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20050710 Anchorage AK
Today was a slow Sunday. We got up late, made coffee, ate, read the Sunday paper (real estate is going nuts up here, too) and loafed.
We called son Bill to ask him to look at the Weather Channel and tell us what he could about hurricane Dennis's going ashore. We called back a bit later to hear him say it would go ashore at Destin.
We got onto the internet by modem here at the park and saw a radar presentation showing Dennis going ashore a little west of that - more near Navarre Beach. The farther west the better as far as we are concerned.
We checked again on the internet later and found Dennis ashore as a class 3 hurricane, less than it had been.
We couldn't reach our neighbor Daisy to check on our house, but we feel good about our house riding out the minor wind PCB received.
Then we went to dinner at Simon and Seafort's overlooking the Knik arm. The food was great but our server didn't have much of a disposition.
Then we returned to the little house, talked with neighbors for a while, and went in to read.
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20050711 Anchorage AK 57/80 Partly Cloudy, cool. Picture Link
We started slowly. Then I went to the local Cummins dealer and picked up some filters and oil for the truck's next oil change time. The truck has started making a grinding noise as I step on the brakes, so something's not right there.
We went on anyway to the Independence Mine north of Palmer, Alaska. It's now an Alaska state park, donated by the owner several years ago.
The mine was a gold producer from 1908 to 1943 and again in 1951-53. It's at 3500 feet and in a location that gets lots of snow, twenty feet not being unusual. The mine engineer/manager was way ahead of his time, making sure his miners and staff had the best possible living conditions and food. They, in turn, stayed with him and produced like mad. His machinist quoted Shakespeare in conversation, the chef came from a 4-star place and the miners had to compete to get a job here.
They're trying to halt decay and do some restoration at this park. The snow was six feet deep in early June, so they have a very short season to do work on the buildings. The ore processing sheds that string down the mountain have mostly collapsed. The buildings remaining include the manager's house, two bunkhouses, the commissary, the mess hall and the office/school building (yes, there were kids here).
This is a very interesting place, but you have to see the pictures to fully appreciate that.
We turned back and returned to Anchorage. We decided to get a quick Italian meal at Sorrento's, where we've dined before. Turning into the parking lot, the brakes groaned and squealed telling me we've got to do something.
The food was great. We asked the manager for a recommendations on brake servicing; he pointed out the Midas place at the end of his cross-street and said they do good work. We went over there and arranged to show up at 8:00am to get started on the fixing.
Then we returned to the trailer to settle in and take it easy.
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20050712 Anchorage AK 57/80 Partly Cloudy, cool.
I got up early and took the truck to the Midas shop at Northern Lights Blvd and Seward Hwy. I dropped it off and went to the Village Inn nearby for breakfast (very good). Then I came back to wait.
I'd brought the computer, so I did some picture-file-naming. Then I did some file cleanup. I also did a full run of virus-scan and ad-aware and spybot searching and destroying. I did Windows solitaire (easily the best feature in Windows) off and on.
A couple of guys wearing Adventures Caravans jackets were also waiting, so we fell into discussions on various aspects of RV-ing periodically. This caravan formed in Dawson, Yukon, when we were there. They have a mix of motorhomes and 5th-wheels. One guy needed muffler, then found a flange broken that required welding.
These two guys are from Ohio, just north of Cincinnati(sp?), so we could talk of a few things that I know from visiting Susan & Wyatt.
The brake problem turns out to be with the rear brakes, which just shows that sound propagates funny in trucks. The brake kit I'd installed 53,000 miles ago used some non-standard (to Dodge) parts, so they have to find equivalent parts. It took forever (including a call to the kit supplier for information) to find the parts, then the pads didn't fit so other pads had to be acquired, and they never could get a new left rear caliper. They finally put it all together and it works (at high cost due to the labor), after 6:00pm. Long day.
I told them to order the left rear caliper and that I'd stop on my way through Anchorage next week to get it put in.
They also advised that the front rotors are wearing down (they were replaced at the same time the rear disk kit was installed), but not too bad. Since I have spare rotors and pads at home for the front (long story about that deal), I'm going to try to get home for that. The front wheel bearings must be replaced at that same time.
All in all, a very boring and frustrating day. But such things happen.
Tomorrow, we're going toward Homer but not all the way to Homer. We want to look around down the Kenai peninsula.
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20050713 Anchorage AK (still) 56/75 Partly cloudy. Picture Link
We didn't go toward Homer today because we couldn't find an RV park that had an opening. Very busy down there this time of year, I guess. Even the place we're going to stay in couldn't help us by taking us in a day early.
We extended our stay in the park office and then got busy.
We did laundry out in town, came back, put it away, and had lunch. A set of three 5th-wheels came in about noon bearing Reines RV Sales, Manassas VA, stickers. I chatted with one and found he was from between Fredericksburg and Culpeper, south of our old stomping grounds in Manassas.
Then we went to the Alaska Zoo.
This zoo is a quiet, small, friendly place in the southeast quadrant of town. They're doing a bunch of construction this summer. A rework of the elephant house is in progress and a totally new seal & otter habitat is being built.
Some of the animals have been loaned out to other attractions to make room for construction but most of them are still here - moose, dall sheep, brown bear, polar bear, black bear, blue bear (a special coloring of a black bear), musk ox, foxes, coyotes, wolves, porcupines, deer, and a mess of birds are exhibited.
We got pictures of most of these critters and Dolores took a number of pictures of flowers.
Then we went to the commissary to top off a few things, and topped off the diesel tank for tomorrow.
We came back to listen to the news and fix chicken for dinner. Now it's a nice cool evening (8:30pm 66*) and we're taking it easy but still putting things where they belong on the road as we move around.
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