Alaska RV Camping

September 16, 2007

12 hours 56 minutes of daylight

Low temps–40s, high temps 50s

Since the parks here generally close around Sept 15th, we decided to take one more trip to Eklutna Lake. Friday night the weather was pretty good and we got some nice pictures of the foliage color changes. But, as luck would have it, it started raining Friday night and rained all day Saturday. We finally gave up and went home in the late afternoon.

The highlight (or lowlight) of the trip was my son getting trapped in the spillway. He wasn’t able to climb out and the glacial water was way too cold to try and swim out. Luckily his friend was able to climb out and came to get us to help get him out.

It seems that whenever we go camping, I always forget something…..

Sometimes its certain foods, or contact lens stuff, or socks, or whatever…..

While I keep some things stored in the RV, there are others that have to move back and forth to the house between trips. Since we have a special needs child who requires certain medical supplies, my memory lapses can become specific trip-ruining events if I’m not careful. This summer we went on a one week trip to the interior of Alaska, and I managed to forget her supplies. If it wasn’t for an extra set that I kept in the RV, we would have been in trouble as these supplies would not be easy to obtain elsewhere.

This prompted me to make a list of special needs equipment for this blog and I’ve included it with links to other camping lists.

You can find these under “Pages” in the right hand margin menu bar.

I’d love to hear of other lists that you find useful for camping.

September 2nd 2007

14 hours 9 minutes of daylight

After a hectic week with visitors from the lower 48, we decided to ease down by spending a couple of nights at the Eklutna lake campsite in the Chugach mountains. Since it is a holiday weekend and the campground would be busy, Michael took the camper (and the 4 animals) up early on Friday morning, and the rest of us (Susan and 3 kids) came up after school. Great weather with high temperatures in the 60s and lows in the upper 40s.

Eklutna has some nice hiking opportunities, and we hiked up (and I do mean UP—oh my aching legs!) the Twin Peaks trail. It took us an hour and 40 minutes to hike up, partially since we were busy picking berries along the way.

The trail is steep in places so frequent stops were a good thing. Too bad it was cloudy and when we got to the top there wasn’t much of a view to enjoy.

Well, the camper has been in the shop now for about a week….waiting for the elusive “part” to come in. That’s ok I guess since it was back to work for me last week, and today the kids went back to school.

I’m very lucky to have summers off each year (so I know that I don’t get any sympathy when I grouse about having to go back to work in mid-August), and use my time during the summer to work on various hobbies…some of which are out of control. You can see one of those out of control hobbies by visiting my other blog.

Anyway, I bring this up because I hate to just sit around….so while in the camper I need to have a sufficient supply of creative materials. Obviously using a torch to make beads or a kiln to fuse glass is out of the question in the camper (ya think?), so during our travels I typically knit or work on beading. I particularly enjoy working on the heart pendants made of Swarovski crystals, or any type of wire wrapped pendants. Here are some pictures.

I also enjoy quilting, but it is too difficult to figure out how to move all of the associated stuff into the RV. Of course I am put to shame by the quilting trucker (Sue Lynch) who was featured on one of the Simply Quilts episodes in 2004, who somehow manages to squeeze everything she needs into an area of her truck!

We decided to head down to Williwaw Campground at Portage Glacier again since the weather was great. This trip not well planned though and we had an event to attend last night which made it hard to get on the road at a decent hour. Got to Portage around 11 pm only to find the campground at Williwaw full. Not much in the mood to head further down the road going south, we just decided to park overnight in the visitor center parking lot. One other RV there, probably caught in the same situation. Anyway, no one bothered us or told us to leave, so it was fine.

Welcome to our blog and website, Alaska RV Camping. Through this site we hope to provide useful and entertaining information about various campgrounds throughout Alaska. Since we travel in our RV, most all these sites are accessible through the major road systems in Alaska. We also welcome comments and other reviews of sites from readers. We generally go on camping trips from mid-May to mid-September, and usually will go to any one site from a period of 3 to 7 days. Our kids and 4 pets (2 dogs, 2 cats) accompany us on most trips.

We have two dogs and two cats who accompany us on most of our trips. I have to admit this is more out of guilt than anything else…seems rather boring to leave them at home with a pet sitter checking in…..but….what do they do on a camping trip? Here are some pictures to give you the idea: