Although we didn't get out til 11:20 am, we only had a short drive to Hope where we had planned to camp and hike today. Matt, my sister-in-law's nephew who lives in Anchorage, had recommended this trail and we didn't stop on our way south, so now we are catching it on our way back north towards Anchorage. The reviews on this campground were not great, mentioned noisy weekend partying, so we are glad to be arriving on a Monday. We were pleasantly surprised by the Porcupine forest service campground - the campground host has the restrooms very clean and was leaf blowing all the sites. We also have a beautiful view of Turnagain Bay - we are on the south side in Hope, the north side is the suburbs of Anchorage. Hope is one of the early Gold Rush towns, and the old historic town is pretty much unchanged since the 1800's, except it seems a little more like a ghost town since the 3 businesses are only open Wed - Sat and we are here on Monday! But we came into camp with almost full sewage tanks, so staked our claim at a "good view" campsite, talked to the campground host who thought there was a dump site in Old Towne Hope, and decided to drive back in to dump - unfortunately, we found no dump, but did find a cute, very old town! So back to the campsite with plans to waste very little water tonight -it's the gray tank that's full, so at least we can still use the potty, but must be very careful of sink water waste. Next it was time to try Matt's hike, which started next to campsite 13 here in our campground. This is Gullrock Trail, which continues out the west end of Turnagain Arm Bay for about 6 miles. The views look across the water towards the snow capped mountains of Girdwood (the ski resort we hiked in on our way south) and the beaches of Hope and the Kenai Peninsula - except these beaches are way down below rocks and are mucky mud when the tide is out - kind of like quicksand, so we won't be going out on the beaches. But the trail is beautiful, changing landscape frequently from fern forest, to pine forest, to rain forest, to a fairy tale forest like Hansel and Gretel hiked through. Sara was delighted to be able to run free, and we were delighted that is was fairly level until we hit Avalanche hill, and some waterfalls. But we hiked about 3 1/2 hours, had not reached the end, but met a single girl headed out to camp overnight, and later 2 other women who were just doing an evening hike (we passed them heading out at 5 pm, but they reminded us it is light til midnight!). We were happy to be back at the RV by 6:30 so we could have dinner at our picnic table - it was actually very warm on the hike (I only wore one long sleeved shirt, shed the windbreaker), but felt cool when we stopped walking. I forgot to mention that I met a couple this morning at our Summit Lake Campground who were from Finland - they flew into Vancouver and with a group of about 20 other couples were touring Alaska over 7 weeks! They have done this in Florida and California on previous trips - amazing the people you meet and the things they are doing in the US!! Still no signs of our blue Peugeout couple from Switzerland, missing them!! We had leftover veggies and pork chops on the table in 20 mins, but no dessert for tonight :( Sara is unconscious from her exercise! All resting well tonight and getting one TV station working while the generator is on - waiting for news of the moose attack survivor!