We went to Hidden Lake on the Kenai, and had a pretty good time (more about that in another post). However, when we were getting packed up to go home, the bedroom slide was stuck in the “out” position. This means that the entire bedroom was sticking 18″ out from the side of the RV. You can’t drive it it like that, so we immediately started to try and get it to move in manually.

First off…thanks to Jayco….for an extremely poorly written manual. I wanted to mention this once before, but didn’t bother. But this time it was really a huge hassle. The Owner’s Manual that we got with the RV is semi-applicable to several different models of RV. This in itself is a problem, but even if you can find a section relevant to the problem, you can be sure that the information will be useless. A favorite thing throughout the manual is widespread use of pictures (illustrations, not actual pictures) that take a tiny component out of context and picture it by itself.  Usually, the manual also doesn’t give you much of a clue where to find the component (it varies with models…but they don’t tell you where it is in each model).  So, we (inluding nice campers who helped us out), spent a long time trying to find the elusive part. In the end, it didn’t matter because the guys ended up taking the slide motor out, leaving the slide like  a giant drawer that has no track. We tried to stabilize it with transit bars, and then had to drive home (120 miles) in this unstable situation.

RV is now in the shop again, waiting for a part, while the short summer quickly passes us by.

I really wanted to go to Portage Valley, but it seemed (from the never-correct weather report) that the Willow area was going to have better weather. So, we packed up and visited South Rolly Lake once again. Actually the weather wasn’t too bad, and we were lucky to get a spot right on the lake. It was a nice relaxing long weekend–went out on the porta-bote a few times and did some bike riding. Looked high and low for interesting animals and did see some loons and Arctic terns out on the lake. No bears or moose, or not even a porcupine. However, the park ranger said that every evening there are porcupines running around, and every morning and evening you can see black bears along Long Lake Road.

One thing to add here…about the fishing. The BB at the campground says that the lake was stocked with trout in 2008. Come to find out (from the host) that this isn’t true at all. The lake hasn’t been stocked in a long time…..they are waiting for the pike to die out or something like that.  This explains why no one was catching any fish…..

OK, we did have a few warm days last week…maybe 2 or 3 of them…and it was only warm if the sun was out.  (Warm = 70 degrees F. )   We are still waiting for the real summer to start, but it is looking a bit bleak. Anyway, we’ve actually been out camping once so far this “summer”—4 days down in Homer in early June, staying at the Heritage RV Park.  We’ve stayed there 3 years ago, and as before, we really enjoyed it. We rented a spot right on the water and had a gorgeous view. Of course something usually goes wrong on each trip, and this time we found out that we didn’t have any hot water. This was apparently because the hot water tank was never filled up and reconnected when we had the camper de-winterized. After unsuccessfully trying to get it to work, we finally gave up. This meant that if we wanted to take showers, we had to take them in the Heritage Park facilities. Well, this turned out to be a nice surprise…I’m not a fan of taking showers in public facilities, but in this case it was a pleasure. Heritage Park does a great job of keeping the facilities clean (I mean, really clean!). Also, the shower worked great 

One problem with this trip was that it rained for much of the time, and it was cold and windy. This made it difficult to bike ride or really want to go hiking or anything. However, the highlight of this trip was an 8-hour excursion with the Center for Alaskan Coastal Studies. We went on a low tide tour and coastal forest hike where we saw a variety of marine and coastal life, and geological formations. The tide was at -5, making it a unique experience (much more sea/coastal life was exposed with the tide this low). It was a great experience and I highly recommend it if you are in Homer. One night we took the Kachemak Bay Ferry (the Danny J) across to Halibut Cove where we ate at the Saltry Restaurant where we had a mouth watering meal, drank too much wine, and then walked around to look at some of the galleries on the island.

10 hours 40 minutes of daylight

Low temps: 20s, high temps: 30s

Eagle River Nature Center has miles of trails, nature programs for adults and kids, and public use cabins for camping. Since we live only about 10 miles away it is one of our favorite spots for hikes (short or long) and quick get-aways. We just did a short hike (about a mile) and enjoyed the views and fall scenery. Unfortunately it was a bit overcast, which didn’t result in great pictures and also kept the temperatures quite low. Lots of indications of bear activity, but we didn’t see any bears. In the slides below I’ve included a picture of bear scat on the trail. This was a large pile (ie: large bear) that was full of berries.

Termination dust appeared Saturday night, signaling the end of summer and beginning of fall (ie: winter, part I). Termination dust refers to the initial dusting of snow in the mountains….in this case, the Chugach mountains. The weather is cold, wet, windy, and cold (oh, I already said cold….but it bears repeating). On the thermometer it isn’t that cold, but the wind is fierce. making it seem that much worse. The camper is partially unpacked and might be done for the season.

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.

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.

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.

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!