The Seward Highway
All of the campgrounds in Seward are busy this time of the year. Summer is their season and the number of RV’s moving around is huge. The City of Seward maintains and offers a large expanse of waterfront sites for RV’s. However, since the demand is great, the layout of the sites is quite tight. There is a waiting area for those hopeful to obtain a site. First come, first serve, paying a small fee. A few have electric. The view across the Cook Inlet is breathtaking. Obtaining a site is a little competitive. The City has provided a dump site for anyone to use for a small fee. At the same site, potable water is available, from a plumbed faucet, for no charge.
We had called the prior week, when we were in Soldotna, to reserve a site at Stoney Creek Campground, about 6 miles outside of town. This campground had full hookup. The campground was full every night we were there for the 3 nights. Taking advantage of the 3 days, we were able to catch up on laundry, a little computer work and scope out where our next boondocking adventure would be. The drive back to the campground is rough with some potholes. The campground sits well of the Seward Highway, so there wasn’t any traffic noise. There was a train as always. Our site was very close to the river, which we enjoyed. We were assigned a drive-in site and then, when leaving, had to back out. It’s a back in site just in reverse. I guess that easier to sell. It worked out. On the second night, a local resident strolled thru our campground with a male reindeer on a tether. As campers petted him, we took a couple of pictures. Of course, Cathy was compelled to pet him also. One certainly does not see a reindeer very often.
Our first trip into Seward confirmed our decision not to camp on the waterfront. It’s just too crowded and the spaces are not easy to get into. We are looking for easy, also removed from the rush and confusion of this kind of camping. We like the woods and quiet.
The Exit Glacier is on the way into town. We hiked the trail out to the Exit Glacier. Standing in front of the glaciers you can only see the tongue of the glacier and it doesn’t seem very big. As you drive in, it looks much bigger from the road. There are markers that show how much it has receded since around the turn of the 1900’s. A huge amount of the glacier has melted. The earth is changing. The trail is about 2 miles round trip. There were at least 2 pull-outs worthy of a boondocking overnight stay.
The drive beyond Seward took us out to Lowell Point. This is a small area about 2 miles south of Seward. There is a mix of camping and cottages out along the east side of the mountains. There are several trails and a park opening onto the beach. The trails go south for some distance. It’s a fun drive; close to the edge of Cook Inlet. There is dry camping out there and it’s good for small to medium rigs.
One afternoon we went to the Alaskan Sea Life Center. It’s a small aquarium looking out to Resurrection Bay. Sea water is pumped directly in the aquarium to keep it fresh. This Center does rescue and rehabilitation. Lots of really interesting facts about the sea life. There was an exhibit for children to touchy/feely some of the sea urchins, starfish, and other really pleasant creatures. Of course, Cathy needed to touchy/feely as well.
Alaska is about salmon and salmon fishing. Fisherpersons we met along the way describe salmon runs as combative. Some people fish with lines. Only Alaskan residents are permitted to dip-net. Dip nets are different sizes but mostly big. The idea is to stand on the edge of the river and hold the net until a salmon comes along and gets itself caught. There are fishing walkways that line the river’s edge and stairways down into the water. We saw a lot of this in Soldotna. Seward not so much. We saw people fishing all lined up along the river bank and heard stories of folk battling for space and fish. There is lake fishing and many fishing holes as we traveled some of the back roads and off the beaten path. In the back roads, one has to be conscious of the bears who are in competition for the salmon.
During our scoping out the area, we discovered several options to boondock. Since we have been spending the last 2 weeks on the Kenai Peninsula, we have not had to drive as far to our “next site”. This makes moving day really short. Yea!!!! We chose Trail River Campground, State run, just a few miles south of Moose Pass. This type of campground does not offer electric, sewer or water on the site. So, it is basically boon-docking. There may or may not be a dump station in the campground. Water is usually available thru a well hand pump. Fairly tough to resupply a big rig with water when there is a hand pump well. We arrived fully loaded and self-sufficient. River Trails was about half hour south of Stoney Creek Campground. Piece of cake!!! The bet was if we showed up mid-week we could get a site for the rest of the week and the weekend since they are first come, first serve. However, we did find out some sites were reserved thru the computer with some complex explanations. We decided to drive over at 10:00 at night prior to our leaving Stoney Creek Campground. We were able to find a non-reserved site and put our receipt on the post paying to claim our next campsite. It seems kind of late to be doing this, however, since the sun shines 19 hours a day, it wasn’t too weird. Locals are out and about since the days are long in the summer, short in the winter.
We spoke with the Trail River Campground host, a couple of days after we arrived, finding out we should have paid for the late night visit we made. She let us off the hook since we did not completely understand the system. One can only reserve a site on the computer.
We settled in looking forward to a few days of enjoying this beautiful campground—–however on the second day:
The solar was working fine and then it wasn’t. The reading on the monitor went crazy and then the solar just stopped working. It felt like the controller had failed. After assessing the situation, Brad decided to replace it as soon as we could go to Anchorage. We were visiting with some folks, from Anchorage, camping across from us. They recommended we go to ABC RV Parts. We were very grateful for their suggestion, as we had no idea where to go in Anchorage. We are also very glad, between us, we are able to figure out and fix almost anything on our rig. The shop was located on the Old Seward Highway at the south end of town. The trip to Anchorage was almost 2 hours, with the traffic, and 2 hours back. They had one solar controller similar to what I had but a newer version.
Oh, and I didn’t mention since we had a full water tank lying in the bed of the truck, we needed to use it. Water had been purchased at the free access point in Seward. Brad also had to buy a 12-amp water pump from this store. The story goes—- We had purchased a portable water tank to resupply the rig with water so we wouldn’t have to move to resupply water when we dry camped or boon-docked. The water tank was a last minute Amazon purchase before we left in May. We did not try it out at home first. It should have worked as a gravity flow, however, there was not enough pressure to fill the tank. This was discovered about the same time the solar controller went crazy. The solution was to get the pump and pump it in. The 12-amp pump worked just fine and Brad used the truck battery to power it. It’s not pretty, but it works. After all is said and done it is a pretty expensive water system. What’s new!!!! You can’t play this game if you can’t suck it up.
OK, so back to the solar issue. The new solar controller installed quickly and the power was back on. We had dropped to 60% and with the solar functioning at optimum plus a great sunny day, we were cooking again. Brad used the generator as well, reviving the power into the 90% range in a couple of hours.
Taking advantage of our long trip to Anchorage, we started looking for somewhere to purchase a new battery for our Cannon SX710 HS. Another incident!!!! Cathy lost one the previous week. We found a Best Buy and were disappointed when they were sold out. The sales guy suggested Battery Plus. They had what we needed. Bought 2.
Anchorage has 4G. We have “suffered” with 1X for about a week and we miss being connected. So we went for lunch and sat in the restaurant’s parking lot for almost an hour getting our Blog updated. We were only able to post a couple of pictures for now. We will catch up soon.
