Sunday July 11th, Anderson, AK

100 Miles

Got away from Fairbanks late morning after chatting with Jo and Nick and some other “Walmart” campers, very windy and not nearly as hot. We are traveling on what they call the Parks Highway leading down to Anchorage which was quite busy with all the weekend traffic.  It was a very easy drive and seemed such a contrast after last weeks trip.

Spotted some girls with a puncture on the side of the highway, so Sir Galahad turned around and went back to help them. Jean and her daughter and 2 other girls were returning to Fairbanks from a camping weekend in Denali and her husband had gone on ahead! They had the spare out and were in the process of jacking the car up, so with all Ian’s practice he had it changed in no time…they were extremely grateful.

Stopped at the small town of Tanana on the river, which is a murky shade of grey. This is a major tourist route and the town seems to survive on them with lots of pretty tacky tourist shops.

Read in the Milepost about a “rustic” campground in Anderson, about 5 miles off the highway. Evidently they have a Bluegrass festival here in the end of July, there is a huge area of campsites and mown spots in amongst the birch trees, and we only spotted 2 other campers. The wind is really strong, managed to find a spot out of the worst of it.