First bad weather day of the trip, combined with first problem of the trip.
It was raining for most of the morning, chilly, and miserable.
We got the coach all closed up, dumped and filled with fresh water, and then spent an hour trying to hitch the car to the rear end.
The problem was the two arms have to lock into place, and the little devils wouldn’t!
So, after lots of tries, and curses, we decided to leave, and Marlipops drove the yellow peril behind the coach.
After 20 miles or so, we found an empty pull off at the side of the road, so we tried again, and again and finally the locks locked and off we went.
We saw lots and lots of racing type cyclists, all over the place, both coming towards us and going in the same direction, and we couldn’t work out what was going on, until we read the daily paper, which told us that there were several different races, of differing lengths, over all sorts of routes. Whatever, they are all crazy, with the ups and downs of the roads and wild bears and mooses and lions and tigers!!
As we drove along the Richardson Highway, built during the second world war, the road got progressively worser, and finally we came to a female construction worker, brandishing a huge STOP sign, who informed us that there was a 20 minute delay due to construction blasting and other assorted road work stuff.
So, we had a leisurely lunch, while everyone around us was just sitting and fuming at the delay.
I forgot to tell you about the kid in Valdez.
We were looking for a particular store, and a kid was sitting on his bike eating ice cream, so we asked him if he knew where the store was, and he said, “Follow me”. So he went straight across the road, onto the sidewalk, through the forecourt of a gas station, and up the sidewalk again!! We did our best to dodge the traffic and followed him to the store, but an interesting concept of travel.
Anyway, we got to the city of Anchorage, and parked on a Wal Mart parking lot. We then discovered that the do not allow overnight parking, so we didn’t shop in their store and went to Home Depot. They welcomed us, and we have permission to stay again Sunday night.
Now to the part that fascinated Marlipops.
Anchorage is a large, typical U.S. city, so it has all the usual fast food places in abundance. Right next to us is a drive through Dairy Queen, and the drive through line never got less than about 15 cars, all evening at least until 11.30 when we went to bed. This amazed Marlipops. She is going over there tomorrow to see what the great attraction is!!
Wildlife watch today was zippo, weather was badly.
