June 20, 2012 – Fred Meyer Parking Lot, Soldotna, Alaska

We are trying something new for us tonight! We left Denali this morning and drove with overcast skies for almost the whole day. We have two nights reserved in Homer and talked about going all the way today. But, the drive was getting LONG and we decided to just stop. We’re only about 70 miles from Homer, but Soldotna has a nice Fred Meyer store and is even listed as the most popular campground in the area. So, we decide to try out staying in a store parking lot. I checked the TV and we only have 3 channels if we run the generator. No internet service either, so we will post this tomorrow. But, it is a free night, the sun is shining, and we’re having a great time. Karen has gone into the store to see what they have for supper and to see if there is something we cannot live without. I’ll let her finish this when she gets back.

Karen: I bought us some fried chicken, potato wedges and some broccoli salad. As we were almost done eating, I looked out the window and saw a moose eating on some brush at the edge of the parking lot. Larry grabbed the camera and said “We drive all this way and where do we see a moose but a Fred Meyer parking lot.” By the time he got out there with the camera, we saw there was a bonus, a moose calf! Several people drove up or come out of other campers to take pictures too.

Mama Moose

Mom with Calf

Like Larry said, the drive was getting very long. We drove about 400 miles today and it took about 8 ½ to 9 hours. An additional 70 miles doesn’t sound like much, but it would probably have been another 2 hours on these roads. We had a good drive today even though it was overcast all day. If it hadn’t been so cloudy, we would have had several good views of Mt. McKinley, but as it was, we could only see parts of it. One stop we made along the way was to take a picture of Hurricane Gulch Bridge. It spanned 550 feet and was 260 feet high over Hurricane Creek. We are definitely in fishing territory and it is the beginning of trout fishing season. It’s still a little early for the salmon fishing.

Hurricane Gulch Bridge

Well, we’ll see how we like camping in a parking lot. It is listed in our campground book as the most popular campground in Soldotna. We probably won’t do it often, but an occasional night of cards or reading won’t hurt us. We have a generator, but we’re not sure how long it will run on the gas we have. We’ll need to run it in the morning for coffee. So far, there are about 8 or 10 campers parked on here.