First, let me finish last night's story - we were up late since we got in late, but were shocked to realize it was 12:10 am when we finished writing our blog - the sky was just beginning to dim, but outside was perfectly clear! We are approaching the Summer Solstice day here, especially meaningful since our days are now 19 hours and 20 minutes of daylight, with sunrise at 4:20am and sunset at 11:41pm, yet never completely dark! We have no trouble sleeping, but do forget to get to sleep since it's so light out! We were still getting over the excitement of our heli/dogsled tour yesterday, trying to be more practical with our time today. We first did a nice walk from the Bird Creek Campground along the Bird to Gird bike trail which follows the Turnagain Bay, running about 20 miles for that section. The bay is known for drastic changes in tides - when in, water fills the bay up the mountain sides, but dries out almost the whole way across the bay when tide is out. It leaves a mud floor that is like quick sand and can suck you down if you walked on it, and a fate even worse if the tide is coming in! So we just followed the trail and watched the muddy basin today. Then back in the RV, heading to Anchorage for several housekeeping tasks: most important is the RV service appointment early Monday, but also time to seek out a hairdresser (teal hair is very beachy I hear!), Costco for gas and dog food, and some groceries which are cheapest in Anchorage. But the choices of RV parks around the city are very limited, and we were trying to find something near RV repair since we have to be there at 7:30 am Monday! We found no campsites in the area, but lots of shopping - stopped in at RV dealer to confirm appt, find the location, and ask if we could boondock at the dealer the night before our appt. They said sure, you can see there are lots of people checking out RV's, so we should have parking spaces (but no offer of hookup sites like we found in Billings, MT) - and sure enough, the outside of their dealership looked like airport checkin lines - about 50 people and their luggage, and camping gear all over the sidewalk, waiting to rent their RV's. So then it's on to Walmart just down the road - all these stops are carefully coordinated to avoid extra turns or lane changes, since I am still not crazy about driving in city traffic. But needed to stock up on paper products and groceries, and finally broke down and bought my own extendable windshield cleaner. The Walmart parking lot was full of rental RV's, guess it's their first stop after picking up a rental unit. Next, found Costco just down the road, and we're thrilled to find gas for $2.45/gallon! We skipped the Costco store as we need to get to a campsite before they are taken and we may have to shop around since none sound great. We drove to Ship Creek Campground first, getting a little nervous as we go "over the proverbial tracks", along the loading docks, amongst 18 wheeler moving and freight trucks - not a pretty area of town. But it looked to be only about 4 blocks from the Slam'n Salm'n Derby, bike trails, and parks...the RV park looks a little sketchy at first, fenced in with just two rows of tightly parked RV's, the railroad tracks running along one side, but they boast laundry/wifi/full hookups/sewer! So here we are - the place has grown on us since they were very nice in the office, laundry is clean and cheap ($2/load!), and we have a few TV channels (not cable, but one national station - finally got to hear some news). But we have been wanting to see the salmon swimming, so we trek down to Ship Creek where this Derby goes on for 10 days - a winner is declared every day for the heaviest salmon and I guess the largest at end of 10 days wins the big prize, whatever that is! We wanted to observe "combat fishing" where the fishermen are lined up elbow to elbow on the river, and apparently this is a great place within the city to see this occur. They weren't quite that close, but it was a river full of mostly men, fishing at 7pm - one told us he was ignoring his phone because he had promised to be home 1 hour ago, but he was going to be forgiven because he caught a 15 lb King Salmon! There were just as many observers lining the banks as there were fishermen. While watching, we noticed the Bridge Restaurant, built on a 1920's railroad bridge across Shipp Creek - it had a great view of the river and a great looking menu of all Alaskan fish! Since we had Sara, we asked if we could get dinner to go, thinking we would miss out on their salad bar! But they were very accommodating and gave us each a box for our salad bar (including crab legs), and another box with our main course, rockfish and mixed grilled fish skewers plus grilled side vegetables. We saw many salmon caught, and a few lost, as we waited for our food. Then we packed up our dinner and headed back to base camp, where we started the laundry and ate a huge dinner in the RV - the whole salad bar box will make another meal for tomorrow and I was barely able to eat all the fish and veggies on my skewers. A great fish dinner! Tomorrow, we have our hair appt at Thale's shop (she was a hairdresser we met in Valdez and she didn't have teal colored hair, and she works at this shop when not in Valdez, and we got an appt !) so will have to pull up stakes to drive into Anchorage again - it might be the end of our selfies if the results are too bad!!