We arrived at our pet sit in Eagle River and stayed just long enough to drop off groceries, start laundry and pet the sleeping kitties, Otis and Amber. We headed into Anchorage to pick up our Amazon package and to celebrate by going to a few breweries!
Wednesday, July 3, was our 300th day on the road!! This is the longest that we have been away from Michigan (we were gone for 239 days in 2018). We stopped at Matanuska Brewing and Onsite Brewing to celebrate. Onsite had a brew dog and Craig made an instant friend.
Then we met up with our friend Paulo again. He had a friend fly in to visit and we met them at the Moose’s Tooth Pub & Pizzeria which is a well known place in Anchorage. It was great to catch up with him and compare notes about where we’ve been and what our next routes were going to be. His friend, Jacoba, is from the Netherlands and she is a travel blogger and has been all over the world. It was really fun to hear her stories. If you didn’t know this, my maiden name is Van De Weg, which means “of the road” in Dutch, kind of fitting I think. After pizza, we went to King Street Brewing for another pint before parting ways. We were planning on meeting up with them at the Glacier View Car Launch for the 4th of July.
We got back to the house, settled in and Otis wanted to be friends instantly. We were happy to have comfy couches, a big TV and kitties that liked us. Unfortunately, he and Amber did not really like each other much. She sat at the top of the stairs and was very vocal about us being downstairs. We’d go upstairs and play with her and when I sat on the floor she would crawl in my lap and was so content. But then I’d go downstairs and she just did not want to be down there. It took a couple days but she finally stayed downstairs on my lap mere feet from Otis and did just fine.
We got up early the next morning and headed out to Glacier View planning on attending a crazy 4th of July celebration where they launch about a dozen cars, unmanned of course, off a cliff on a remote hillside and watch them crash and tumble down. They do this instead of fireworks. GPS said we were an 1 1/2 from our destination and that did not change after 45 minutes of driving. I wasn’t sure if it was due to construction or what but soon we seemed to catch up with the line of cars all headed east on the Glenn Highway. We were 4 miles out and traffic came to a standstill. We were in a section with 2 lanes, one for passing, so we had stayed in the right lane and realized our mistake. The traffic was building but all in the left lane and there was a bus intent on blocking anyone trying to continue in the right lane. We sat there for about a half hour and realized how crazy busy and crowded this event was going to be. We are all about going to fun events but this was ridiculous and we still had no idea what the set up was, where to park or how close we would get once everyone got in. So we called it and did a quick U-turn and headed back to the nice house we had to stay in. Turns out it was the 20th Anniversary of this event and it brought in the largest crowd it’s ever seen!
We passed Paulo and Jacoba in his bus on their way east and waved! Later we learned they parked about 2 1/2 miles from the entrance, on the side of the road and walked the rest of the way. They somehow got close enough to get some decent photos and it sounded like they had a great time. We don’t regret turning around. That’s just too much for us. My mom went probably 10 years ago when she did a mission trip to Alaska and said it was not that big and it was a free event with a community potluck. Times have definitely changed. We went back to the house and happily relaxed with the kitties and I got to watch some basketball and we binge watched some of our shows.
Friday looked to be our only nice day so Craig did an oil change, tire rotation and cleaned the interior of the truck. I cleaned the camper and did lots of laundry. It’s always so nice to be able to clean up everything, repack and reorganize after weeks on the road.
We were really enjoying hanging out with the kitties and just relaxed on Saturday. We had already gone to Odd Man Rush Brewery in Eagle River the week before. We were going to go back but cats and couches always win! I like to make dinners that I can’t do in the camper so I made my mom’s meatloaf with mashed potatoes and roasted carrots. Yum!! It was a great 5 days and we are really happy they chose us.
We are really bummed that we have been missing out on seeing our Alaska friends along the way. We first missed friends on Nebesna Road and then another family friend that lives in Anchorage left for Michigan on Wednesday before we got into town. And we had actually picked the sit in Eagle River to see our friends Barb & Steve. We had met them on the Dempster Highway in 2018 and they live in the next town over. We had no idea when we would get to their area and it turns out they were out of town. It’s hard to plan when the state is so large. We try to travel in a mostly efficient way without backtracking too much. We also didn’t want miss the things we did on our previous trip so it made it hard to give anyone a heads up on exactly when we’d be in town. So seeing all of our friends didn’t come together like we hoped it would.
We ended up having to stay in the area a little longer than we wanted. I had originally placed 2 separate Amazon orders (because I forgot to add one thing) and when they went to ship the largest one, there was an an issue that I thought I resolved quick enough but nope, they pushed it out another 2 weeks. We decided we could hang around the area but changed the order to be delivered to a UPS store in Wasilla on July 16.
So we left the pet sit and headed back into Anchorage to go to a few more breweries. We enjoyed Ravens Ring Brewing where we exchanged our first stickers with the owner and we met a couple from New Jersey that have been to 1,160 breweries!! It was fun to chat with people as enthusiastic about good beer as we are. We all headed to Glacier Brewhouse where they did a quick flight and then wanted to go fit in another brewery. We stayed for dinner and called it a night.
We headed to the Knik River where you can boondock where ever you want. It’s a vast wide open space with lots of quad trails through the woods and lots of rocky beach to ride up and down. We stayed for 3 nights and got sick of the road construction across the river, the quads busting next to our camper and the constant barrage of planes flying low over the river.
We spent a day in Palmer and went to Matanuska Brewing and Bleeding Heart Brewing. Both are great breweries and we enjoyed the beers at both places. We also did a short hike up Bodenburg Butte to get a better view of the Knik Glacier.
Then we headed back up to Hatcher Pass and paid $10 to park in a parking lot because we wanted to do a hike in the morning.
We headed to Independence Mine the next day and hiked up to Gold Cord Lake. We had done this trail with Gus in 2018 and we had loved it. This time it was really busy and it seems like a lot of the area is really trampled down around the actual trail. We are definitely noticing that it is just busier everywhere we go and it doesn’t feel quite as peaceful as it did 6 years ago. It was still so beautiful and we were glad to have a decent day. We wandered around the mine but didn’t stay long.
We decided to head back over Hatcher Pass and try and get a spot on Willow Creek that we had passed the previous week but was occupied. We were happy to see it was empty and got set up. It was larger than we remembered but it was still a one party camp. If we had friends with us it would’ve been great, but it wasn’t large enough to feel comfortable for random people to camp next to you, but apparently people don’t care about that.
We had 3 vehicles drive in on Friday. One circled our camper twice and a van literally parked next to us and said we wouldn’t see them much. Both times we just said we wanted privacy and if they stayed we would leave, thankfully they both left. It’s not like there isn’t any other places to stay on this road, we just happend to have one of the nicest spots on the river. We thought we were done fending off people when a truck with a travel trailer and a SUV with rooftop tent drove by very close to our camper at 10pm at night and drove out in front of our camper onto the rocky shore. Thanks, that’s exactly the view we wanted to see when we came to Alaska. They never talked to us or asked us if it was okay. They just parked and fired up their generator. Ugh!!
So the next morning we left, in the rain. We aren’t grouchy old people. We would just like a little respect and some privacy. We found another spot that was closer to the road but had a steep incline to get into and we could park on the rocks right next to the river. We thought that it was perfect!! It was, until about 2 hours later a tour of side by sides came whipping through, next to our camper to cross the river. All we could do was shake our heads. The tours came through twice a day and we got a couple random trucks that came down, realized there wasn’t much down there and left. It rained pretty good all weekend so we weren’t outside but it still made us just laugh at how we kinda attract people. It seems like people drive around and think, oh there’s a camper, lets go drive by them, maybe they parked there because it’s cool.
We were extremely happy when our Amazon package was delivered yesterday, a whole day early! We packed up and headed into town. Craig spray washed the truck which needed it after following the water truck and grader on Hatcher Pass.
We stopped at Bearpaw River Brewing for a couple beers and a pizza. We had booked a campsite at Matanuska River Park for last night assuming our package was coming in today. For $20 it was worth it for an unlimited hot shower!
We really do love this area but we are ready to move on.
Off to Talkeetna…