Plans–
Plan to head down toward the Kenai Peninsula today. Will stop along the way to visit various small towns and maybe see Denali Mountain. It is supposed to rain most of the day today so the chances of Denali being seen today are slim. We will do our usual meandering pace travel and see what we can see.
Boondocking–
The temp. this morning in Fairbanks was 47 degrees F. and it was broad daylight when we woke. Left our “boondocking” spot in Walmart and went to Fred Myers to buy some new throw rugs for the Lazy Daze. Alaska has lots of places to boondock with little restriction. We’ll boondock south of Healy, Alaska tonight.
RV Essentials–
Took care of the RV essentials this morning before taking off south on Parks Highway. Many places offer free dump sites and free potable water. We just call a nearby gas station and ask. If they don’t offer the service they almost always know which business does offer the service. So we dumped, filled with fresh water, got gas and ordered our mail to be sent to a town further down the road that we will get to in a few days. We called the post office in the small town that our mail will go to and asked how long they will hold the mail if we are very slow in getting there. They hold the mail for 30 days, perfect. Paid $4.24/gal. of reg. with the 10 cent discount for having a Fred Myers “rewards card”. As for the rugs, we never seem to hike in “clean” places so usually return with plenty of dirt on our shoes. Don’t usually take our shoes off when we enter the RV so the throw rugs play an important role in keeping the place clean and the pale gray carpet we have stain free. The throw rugs we started with almost two years ago have been beaten, vacuumed, spot cleaned, and washed repeatedly. They were starting to look really shabby, especially after all the Alaska dirt roads we’ve been on and tracking in dirt and mud, despite our best efforts. So their time was up; out with the shabby ones. Now, with the new ones, the place looks presentable again. There’s no sales tax in most places in Alaska and today was senior discount day so we paid less for the rugs than we thought we would. I noticed the checker didn’t even ask if we were seniors, just went ahead and gave us the discount. Hey, we resemble that assessment! I know, I know. Lots of people don’t get to be old, so I won’t complain, too much.
Travel today–
We are driving slowly down the Parks Highway and have gotten just passed the “town” of Healy. The Parks Highway offers beautiful views and we are quite enjoying just moving along slowly. Not too much traffic to contend with but we just pull over and let everyone that comes along pass us by.
