Thursday, June 8, 2006    We went over to the RV Park’s café for a breakfast of fresh fruit and sourdough pancakes.  They also had for an extra charge, bacon or reindeer sausage.  We decided to try the sausage.  It was okay…just sausage.  We took the computer and checked our emails.  Skip fixed the bike rack and then washed all the dust and dirt off the motorhome and the car.  The drive towards Anchorage was not as bad as some of the past days.  There were actually sections of the road where you got a false sense of security and WHAM  the heaves in the road were back.  We saw another caribou but still no picture.  We had to stop for road construction for about 15 minutes so I made up some tuna salad for lunch.  We came across the tourists from Holland.  They rented these little cars when they came over and are camping their way across Alaska.  The cars are so small and then they have all their camping gear stuffed inside.  At another road construction stop there was a trumpeteer swan in the lake.  Took some pictures with the 35mm so will have to wait until we go into Costco in Anchorage to get them developed.  The digital didn’t have the range to get the picture…unlike Ilona’s new camera!!  We saw Matanuska glacier and Skip took a couple pictures.  This is one of the glaciers you can actually drive up to and explore.  We drove to Palmer, Alaska and parked at the Elks lodge.  We paid $12 per night.  They have about 20 sites and the lodge is located on a lake.  Homes on the lake have a dock out to their airplanes.  We went into the lodge for a turkey dinner and sat with some of the local people.  They were full of suggestions of places we should see.  Skip was tired after all the work he did today and went to bed around 10.  I stayed up until 11:30.  It's hard to tell the time because at 11:30 it was still very light out.  Having daylight so late was a little hard to get use to but we have adjusted.  Palmer is about 40 miles from Anchorage.  Chuck is flying into Anchorage on the 16th so we will stay here until the 15th and explore the area.  After that we will venture to Anchorage.