Day Fifteen-Left Beaver Creek at about 7:30 and arrived in Anchorage 13 hours later. The Alaska mountains damned near killed me. I saw a speed limit sign that said 50 mph so I was doing 50 mph when I rounded the corner of the mountain to find myself on a 9% grade. A 9% grade is tantamount to driving off a cliff. The trailer brakes were smoking. Betha the Beast’s brakes were smoking and no matter how hard i jammed down on the brakes she wasn’t stopping and was only barely slowing. I made the 90+ degree turn at the bottom just barely escaping a 200 ft drop through the guardrails and very nearly ending the lives of several people in a small car. I came within inches of going through the guard rail and only a foot or two from hitting those poor people head on. As this was happening, I was pretty sure that this was the end. It is, apparently, true that God does look out for fools and children.
We arrived in Anchorage after thirteen hours of hard driving. The roads were pretty good but dippy until we got to the Tok Cutoff. It made the ALCAN look like a major super highway. The damned road was so bad that I spent most of the time at about 30 mph.
The RV park had no pulll through sites. However, since it was off season they let us park across several sites to accommodate our extreme lengths at no extra charge. The commode problem persists. Thankfully, they had an extremely clean bath house.
When we arrived Summer walked the dogs and met a couple traveling with a camper trailer. They were from Australia. I went over and chatted with them after getting our own trailer connected to the various facilities. Later the husband came over and invited us to dinner. They were about to close up the trailer and put it into storage. This was the ‘clean out the refrigerator’ dinner. They served us broiled salmon and sautéed vegetables, sweet potatoes and mashed potatoes. It was far more than I could eat and I left a good deal on my plate. Summer and I were very grateful for the dinner. We were both so tired that we’d have probably just opened a can of Campbell’s and called it dinner. It was a nice evening and we retired early.