Chickenstock Friday June 9

The organizers said do not come in until after 2 PM today.  2 PM? How strange of time.  So we took some quickee showers.  Then we  (Carol) cleaned up the inside of the rig.  I checked the liquids under the hood.  The engine oil is a tan in color but not real dark.  I think that’s good.  The engine needs an oil change.  I checked with an outfit in Tok.   They said probably next week and check back with them then.  My Ford blend oil and Ford filter and their labor $30 bucks.  I don’t have to crawl underneath plus get rid of 6 quarts of dirty oil.

I got a front tire that is showing a little unusual wear on the inside tread.  It’s an easy check for a bad ball joint.  That’s probably not it but it’s a first thing that should be checked.  It’s probably an alignment thing.  Maybe down in Anchorage I will have it checked.

So anyhow we leave for Chicken which is 18 miles away.  There was about 5 miles of rough gravel road but doable of course. 

We get there at 2 PM which was the start time.  Yes, the place looked full and was. It’s a girl!…..

and here’s our site.

These animals were all over the place.

They changed bands about every 20 minutes.  They went until after 2 AM.  At least that is what we were told.  Not within in our time frame.

They set up on old parts of a dredge.

The sound guys in the see thru tent were awesome.  They had to change the sound for each band.  Very professional.  They were running around like chickens with their heads cut off.  cluck cluck cluck….

So it’s working out the first day.  Carol and I sat down in there somewhere.  Dana Jones, Loosey Goosey member, came over sat with us for awhile.  The bands seem to me more folk and country type.  A one guy band (serious type) was Cousin Curtiss.  He’s an up coming star he’s that good.  He got the audience up and dancing with his kind of music.  They gave him an extra 20 minutes.  Yes we bought his CD.

It tried to rain later on but really didn’t.  The outside shaded temperature got up to 87 degrees.  Damn…. I went looking and found some shorts, t-shirt and sandals.  It was HOT!  They said this was the most unusual hot weather they’ve had here in many years.  Whew is it hot up here.

Carol said I ate too many eggs.

Retirement is trying something different. What the hell!

See ya when we see ya…..

BLM Taylor Hwy Thur June 8

We’re still at the West Fork BLM campground 18 miles South of Chicken.  It was mostly a sunny day with temps near 80 degrees, unbelievable.  The temp was still 75 degrees outside at 9 PM.  We slept with the windows open. It’s really a warm hole at this campground.  The only problem is that the wind is constantly blowing.  It doesn’t lower the temp at all.  It keeps the bugs away which is nice.

We walked the campground this morning and basically stayed outside most of the day.  No big animals around.  The host said that they don’t get any large animals around here and this is his second year here.  So if we do see a large animal, it’s lost!

We watched some campers come and go and a few stayed overnight.  No big rigs sat all.  Mostly slide in campers.  The campground itself will take any size rig in most of the 25 sites.  It usually had about 4-5 overnighters.

The solar is doing OK.  We get some direct sun in the afternoon.  I think having daylight for about 20 hours a day is the main factor.  At 6:30 AM this morning we were at 12.4 volts.  That’s pretty good.  We have no big electronic draw.  Maybe  when we do a little charging of the electronic stuff at the most.

Nice and quiet even with a few other campers.

Friday afternoon we head for Chickenstock which will be interesting getting in.

Retirement is needing more medical attention when you least want it.

See ya when we see ya….

Towards Chicken Wed June 7

We tried to sneak out from the park but Jan Mains and Harry Schoolcraft caught us.  We shared goodbyes and we will see each other again down the road.  Thanks guys…

The Chickenstock Festival doesn’t start until Friday afternoon.  They say they won’t take early arrivals for the free camping for registered attendees.  In the same breath (email) they say when you arrive then it’s first come first serve.  It don’t sound real good because I’ve been told that there’s people already there.  If we arrive when we were told too and they have no spot for us I’m gonna be very pissed and they will know.  We shall see what we see.

Anyhow, we leave the campground and go on down the road to Taylor Highway.  At the junction of the Alaska Highway and Taylor Highway is this old roadhouse.  It wasn’t open in 2000 our first trip up here and it isn’t open now or in previous trips.  Interesting….

Anyhow, we turn North (only direction) and get on down the road doing about 45-50 mph most of the time.  The road is a little different but OK if you don’t try to do the 55 mph speed limit.

And this was about 50 miles of this road and we came up on West Fork BLM Campground.  We planned this.  No one else was there.  We picked the best spot we liked and settled in.  No hook ups.  $10 unless your an old fart. Carol qualifies and paid $5 bucks a night.  They have outstanding vault toilets.  Best we ever seen.  Plus, they have one public water spigot.  Not to shabby. 

Carol looks at her phone after turning it on and it  has a recorded voice message from her brother to call him.  That’s very rare.  There is no cell service out here.  So, we packed up and headed back down the highway. 

We got back to the Alaska Hwy and still no cell service.  We drove towards Tok and picked up cell service about 5 miles down the road.  Carol called her brother back in Maryland.  Carol’s Mom entered the hospital a few days ago and is now being released today.  It appears that her new meds might have been screwed up.  Carol’s brother is trying to work things out and is starting to go down the road of Medicaid for their Mom.  It appears that some changes will have to be made for the care of their Mom.

After the call we drove the 50-60 miles back to the campsite and settled in again.

Backyard….. 

We are at the edge of being off the grid it seems like.

We had a campfire and had some s'mores.  I think we went to bed about 8 PM.  I just woke up and it’s 6 AM.  Of course the sun has been up for hours.  No wind early in the morning, sunny and it’s 55 degrees.  Pretty good for us….

Retirement is wanting to explore the unknown at times.

See ya when we see ya.

Tok Alaska Tuesday June 6

This morning I got the Honda off the front of the camper. It was sunny and in the 50’s.  Carol got on and we went riding around the back roads.  Very interesting with all the different types of living quarters.

The campground, 3 Bears, was pretty empty until some Loosey Goosey Members showed up. No pictures as you can see.  That don’t make sense.  Harry/Carlena and Bill/Jan Mains showed up around noon coming in from Canada.

Of course you go to Fast Eddy’s for dinner.

Briggs and Anne joined us. 

and after… everybody enjoyed dinner and the portions.  Harry had to stay an extra 6 hours to finish his hamburger.

Earlier we talked the new arrivals into going into Muckluck Land.  They said they had a blast!

After dinner we all sat out for a short while our food was digesting.  That would take a few more days.

Tomorrow we are heading North towards Chicken, AK to arrive Friday.  It’s all off the grid so the blog probably won’t come out until Monday or so.

Retirement is never having to say sorry for it.

See ya when we see ya.

Tok Alaska Monday 5 June

Here’s our site at Three Bears.

We got a pull thru FHU (30 amp) for $28 a night.  No tax.  Not too shabby.

This morning I woke up at 3:30 AM.  What do you do at that time and it’s daylight outside on top of it.  Oh Alaska….. It’s raining sprinkling out so that idea went to poo pretty quick.  It’s 54 degrees out which isn’t too bad with no wind.

We got gas this morning.  It was $2.94.  Later today it was reduced to $2.89.  What the hell.

We got our mail here today.  If you are having your mail forwarded you might want to consider Tok, AK.

Right next door is

It’s a neat little gift shop with some interesting “stuff” outside.Carol said this is my next vehicle!  Either the sled or jeep, either one!

Then we went to Mukluk Land at Mark’s suggestion.  He was right on.

Talk about portable john…and yes it has been used…..%$&*#@(.

Here I’m trying to pet a mosquito.

We went to dinner with Briggs & Anne at Fast Eddy’s.  Yes, I had the mushrooms.  I actually could not eat them all and took 1/3 of the plate home.  Here we are setting out and fixing the world problems.  We would have invited them in the camper but they would have to stand.  Hey, it’s a CAMPER!

Oh yea, I forgot to mention I think that the worst road traveled a lot in Alaska is from the Alaska border headed towards TOK.  It’s a trip in itself.

Retirement is figuring what not to do.

See ya when we see ya…

Tok Alaska Sunday June 4

This blog was not uploaded from 21 May until now.  Eventually I will put a blog in for each one of those eventful days and there were some.  For now I will start with today and continue on from here.

Don’t know why the different blog look.

At the Alaska Custom station

Then the sign…….It’s our third Alaska sign in the last few weeks.

This is the international boundary…….

A swan was right across the road from the Alaskan sign

Arrived today here in Tok.  They really spent some money on this sign.

Tok is 400 miles from Whitehorse.  We took one night/two days to get here.  No hurry what so ever.  We stayed at “those little places” that offered 15 amp service for $12-15 Canadian.  No water/dump.  Each one had it’s own character for sure.  In the lower 48 most people pass these places up.  They do up here too!  But we are in a camper and want to experience camping at the grass root entry level and are.  It’s really a new adventure.

Once we got set up we made immediate paw tracks to Fast Eddy’s across the street. 

Man O man love those deep fried mushrooms!

We went back to our site/camper and got all settled in. 

Later Briggs and Anne Whitefield came over and invited us to Fast Eddy’s for dinner.  We just finished our left overs from a long time ago (?).  We declined and we arranged for tomorrow night.

Since the wind was very strong we stayed inside and watched a movie then regular TV.  We get ABC out of Anchorage via our TV antennae.  That shouldn’t happen but oh well, we got it.

Retirement – heard it was great

See ya when we see ya…