THURSDAY |
ALASKAN STOP #33Eagle River Campground
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After spending the night in the Fred Meyer parking lot we drove across town to see what was available at the Eagle River State Park where we planned to visit next.
Originally we planned to spend this week at the City of Anchorage's Centennial Park Campground, but about a month ago our reservation was cancelled becuase they closed the park for the rest of the season to operate it as a homeless shelter.
Recently there has been a mild crime spree aimed at the homeless population in the area and they needed a place to gather everyone to keep them safe until the police can get everything back under control.
We arrived at the State Park very early, but still found many of the sites vacant. We moved into what we considered one of the better sites and when I went back to the gate to pay for the week I found a sign informing everyone there is a 3-night maximum visit for this park. I usually catch those kind of restrictions when researching our travel plans, but this was an on-the-fly kind of choice after our other reservations were cancelled.
What to do now? No worries, on Monday morning we have an appointment to get some work done on THE POD so we'll spend Sunday night in another nearby Fred Meyer parking lot, then after the service work is finished we'll come right back here to the State Park and spend another 3-nights.
Our campsite here at Eagle River State Park is a little on the tight side and far as parking space, but the site itself is rather large. It will do just fine because most of the time we won't be hanging around the park anyway.
The driveway is just a little bit too short to park ROVER properly ...
... but Site #28 itself is very roomy.
Behind our site is a narrow view of Eagle River where we've seen salmon fishermen each day.
ROVER then wisked us on a 30-minute drive into Anchorage. It seems we needed to be there a full hour before departure to get our boarding passes. At 8:20AM the northbound train for Fairbanks was going to leave Anchorage with or without us onboard. Oops, gotta go, just heard someone yell "All aboard"!
During the first week of July we made several trips into Talkeetna, so we've seen most of what there is to see here. With nearly 5½-hours to visit before needing to reboard the southbound train, we even managed to find two new places to get a bite to eat.
We didn't take very many photos today, instead we just enjoyed our long train ride. It was a long day, nearly 12-hours after departing Anchorage we were back and still had a 30-minute drive to get back to THE POD.
The highlight of the ride for me, especially since the clouds and fog limited the mountain vistas, was seeing a momma moose and her 2 calves running from the train.
Talkeetna is one of my favorite towns in Alaska, I'm so glad we enjoyed another stroll through town. - T
OUR ALASKAN CHALLENGE: |
| COMPLETED | PROGRESS BAR |
STILL TO GO |
| 84 | 16 |
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