Sarah Sighting?

We woke up a little earlier today (8ish) and headed over to the airport area. I dropped the guys off at the Alaska Aviation Heritage Museum and Dori & I went shopping. The guys really enjoyed the museum and got a lot of time on the flight simulator. Dori & I shopped at the Alaska Shop at the visitor’s center in downtown Anchorage and then went to Trapper Jack’s a few doors down. It’s good that we had a time limit or I would have spent 100s of dollars. That store is so stuffed with every souvenir there is.We headed out of Anchorage around noon and headed NE. Right after we passed through Palmer we stopped at a scenic overlook and our day was changed by Sarah Palin. OK…it wasn’t Sarah Palin, but the woman looked like her from behind. She had a bunch of girls out for a birthday party and they were putting out a geocache. I was first to sign the log and the woman asked where we were headed. She encouraged us to go visit the Independence Mine State Historical site. We were going to go down the road a little further, but we ended up backtracking 2 miles into Palmer and we are camped at a GREAT little public campground. It’s called Matanuska River Campground and it’s only $15 for a site with electric. It’s been the cheapest night of the trip. There are tons of sites open.After we got settled we headed up to the Independence Mine. The elevation up there is 3500 ft, so we miscalculated our time. Eric was very excited when he realized that this was a place he saw on Lonely Planet once and wanted to visit. Our visit there was short because Eric & Parker were scheduled for a 4pm white water raft trip.They had a great time on the rafting trip. It was just them and the guides. The one guide drove along the river with them and took several photos. They burned the photos to a CD and gave it to us at the end. They had a GREAT time! The rafting trip was with Matanuska Madwater Rafting Company. Scott, the owner, did a great job to giving instructions to Parker. They provided neoprene dry suits so that they stayed warm and dry. At the end they had the guys practice a rescue swim. Parker jumped right in and floated about 40 yards downstream and then grabbed the rope they threw. He loved every minute of it!

The campground doesn’t have WiFi and my phone reception isn’t strong enough to tether, so I am down in town long enough to post this and upload Eric’s vlog entry. I wanted to make sure I posted today as we are going to start hightailing it east tomorrow. We might even make it to Canada. If not tomorrow evening, then definitely the next day. We will only post when we have WiFi at a campground for the next week or so til we hit the US again. We plan on going down the Cassiar Hwy and might even go down into Washington to visit friends, but it will all depend on how the roads are and how many miles we cover each day. We just found out some other friends are in Seattle right now and would like to visit with them too…but that will probably really be pushing it. There are things we still want to stop and do along the way…so we will see. Our time here in Alaska has been wonderful. Outside of being wet and cold that first night in Seward, the state was VERY enjoyable. I could totally live here *IF* it was like this year around~ long days (ok…not any darkness) with coolish days. BUT~ we all know that winters have got to be pretty tough…so I will pass! Will we ever return to Alaska? Who knows?!! Maybe years from now when we are retired we can come up and be hosts at a nature center or similar. I can say that we won’t be driving up here anytime soon. It’s a LONG drive!!!! One that we are NOT looking forward to making home right now. Eric reminds me that our trip isn’t over. We are just vacationing toward home. Good thing to keep in mind!

Thanks for following along. We will be making trip recommendations and even add a list on the sidebar of places we loved. We hope that our suggestions will be helpful to others as they travel.

**I never did find any WiFi last night, so I posted this as soon as we had access in Tok.