Hello again! We moved to the Portage area on Saturday July 22nd. A beautiful area, on the Turnagain Arm, along Cooks Inlet. About 1 hour south of Anchorage. Had a great drive from the Denali area. I’m going to do a separate post on the Portage area with lots of pictures.
We woke up the next morning, planning to do a glacier boat tour and found one of our front tires completely flat on the truck! There was a nail in the tire. The nice guy who owns the campground filled the tire with air and also put some fix-a-flat into the tire so we could make it up the road about 10 miles to a little strip center were we can get cell and internet at. It was Sunday, we found out everthing was closed and we had to wait until Monday to get it repaired.
So we came back to the campground, and Kathleen, a nice 18 year old from California and traveling for the summer with her grandparents agreed to dog sit Gerry for us so we could go out to dinner. It was Steve’s birthday and we haven’t been out to dinner in a long time. So, we crossed our fingers on the truck tire holding, and drove to the Double Musky, about 12 miles away in Girdwood. It had been recommended to us by a few people.
A great place, very busy and no reservations are taken. But after about 45 minutes we got a table and had a great meal. Steve ordered crab legs…..2 full dinners of them! This is after we had an appetizer of these great cajun pepper steak bites, and he also had a bowl of Gumbo! I had the salmon. All was delicious and we took desserts to go – strawberry cream pie and some chocolate whipped cream layer thing. The tire held, we made it back to the RV with no issue and it was great to get out to dinner. Gerry had fun with Kathleen and their yellow lab Dozer.
We were bummed about the tire, but it could have been so much worse. It could have blown out while we were driving the day before, pulling the RV, which took us through Anchorage and more traffic than we’ve seen in a long time. Or we could have been stuck on the side of the road with the RV in tow. So we are not complaining. We found a Dodge Ram dealership in Anchorage and went there on Monday. At first they thought it could be repaired, then decided it had to be replaced. A 2 hour time estimate turned into a day and a half – yes, after waiting around all day, they decided right before they closed at 7:00 Monday evening they couldn’t get it finished and we should come back at 11:00 Tuesday morning. We had requested a few other things be done while we were having work done at the dealership – fuel filter change, oil change, front and rear differential (I still don’t know what that is), and since the tire couldn’t be repaired, 2 new front tires, balanced. We now have over 17,000 miles on the truck (which was just purchased new in November). So it was time to get a few things done.
We got a rental car and did some grocery shopping and a Target run while in Anchorage. Gerry was wiped out after a day in the big city as you’ll see in the photo below! When leaving for the night, we happened upon this great little restaraunt called the Lucky Wishbone. Been in business for 60 years and specialize in pan fried chicken. So we got to go orders and drove to a beautiful turn out along the Cooks Inlet on our way back to the campground and ate overlooking the water….life is good 🙂
The truck was ready the next day as promised and we got to spend some time with internet connection and catch up on banking, mail and phone calls. A few pictures below. Stay tuned for another post soon from this area with lots of pictures, I promise!
