Day 11 Anchorage 31^st Aug









 It looked like our desire to see the 39 glaciers of the Juneau Icefield in all their glory from the air would be thwarted as the rain was just tipping down and the cloud started about knee height; never mind, we were off to Anchorage to collect our RV – our motorhome for the next 12 days.

After a completely cloudy flight with all the views obscured (boo) we were collected by a shuttle from Great Alaskan Holidays – our choice of RV provider - and transported to their depot. It was really busy with people collecting and returning their vehicles, but we were eventually shown into a booth to watch a video all about how to drive and operate the RV. It was FULL of information, and had we not had previous experience of using one plus owning a caravan at home, I'm sure we would have been totally overwhelmed – our brains do not work as fast as they used to.... as it was, we watched with interest, completed the paperwork and found our vehicle.

We had chosen a 31ft Winnebago RV with a slide-out, far too big really for the 2 of us, but we wanted a walk-round bed (dodgy knees) and the extra living space (room to dry the expected wet coats etc). I’ve always wanted a slide-out, and I finally got one! We did an inspection of the van – first impressions were how big but dark it was, as vehicles in the US seem to favour dark worktops and dark wood, but it was fine. We then got on the road to Walmart to stock up with supplies: we wanted to get on the road as soon as we could, but of course it takes ages to go round a store in a foreign country as a) you don’t know where anything is, and b) its all so fascinating. The only problem we found was that we needed relatively small amounts of most things, and goods in the US seem to come in very large amounts. But I already had my trusty teabags, and we’d reserved a kettle with the RV - coffee makers come as standard but you have to opt for a kettle (and pay extra!) if you want one - so life would be fine.






 It took us a while to get used to the road signage, especially in a city with 8 lane roads and Saturday teatime traffic, but fortunately hubby has no problem driving long/large vehicles and I’m fine with map reading. We headed N up the Glenn Highway, me with The Milepost on my knee calling out everything we were passing – when we travel, I’m a sort of speaking SatNav-cum-tour-guide. Milepost is a GREAT book, recommended by many Alaskan experts, and should be compulsory reading for anyone contemplating travelling in Alaska. It is the travellers Bible, and shows everything of significance on every mile of every major road in Alaska - camp sites, shops, petrol stations, viewpoints, things of interest etc etc. The format took a while to get used to (sometimes having to go backwards up the page) but we both decided we couldn’t do without it.











 As we would be arriving during the evening, I’d prebooked a site so we could guarantee somewhere to stay – we arrived at Fox Run RV Park just off the highway towards Palmer. We had a gravel pull-through, always a bonus with a long vehicle, but we actually looked quite small compared to some of our neighbours. We rarely see vehicles of this size in Britain as a lot of our roads are fairly narrow, so its great to observe how people holiday in these behemoths.



On the adjacent pitch we came across our next example of the lovely helpful people we encountered all over Alaska – our neighbours gave us some aluminium foil for the oven (no tray, no baking sheet or anything to rest a pie on), asked us about our future plans, then gave us their phone number and said to ring if we needed any help and to come and stay on their land if we were anywhere near Soldotna. What a lovely welcome to South Central Alaska.