Had a normal breakfast then processed images for the blog. Worked up the blog entry. Prepped the RV to move. We went inside to say good bye to RA and Tootie (their golden retriever). She asked if we'd be needing our tent on the next leg of our journey — we had forgotten all about it. We wouldn't need it, so we left it D&RA's basement. We left at 11:55 with me in the RV and J following in the Jeep. We stopped just down the road to hook up the Jeep to tow, then left for real at 12:05.

We headed south on the Parks Highway.

We stopped at the FedEx station in Eagle River so I could drop off a shipment. Then we went to the Carrs in town to get a few gallons of gas in the RV to hold us over until we reached Anchorage.

We stopped at the Gold Rush Liquor store in southern Anchorage so I could get some Aalborg Akvavit because I had almost finished up the Linie Aquavit and Asbach Uralt. J had called the store on our way down, and they said the distributor for Asbach Uralt in Alaska has stopped selling it — no wonder I haven't been able to find any up here. Aalborg Akvavit is the akvavit that my Unky Joom had introduced me to. (You may read more about akvavit on August 15, 2009 and more about my Unky Joom on August 7, 2009.) J's daughter E called on our way in, so J talked with her while I was shopping.

We walked to the nearby Borders to pick up a Sibley Guide to Birds so we would have a copy in both the RV and the Jeep. I talked w/E as J talked with the salesperson. They didn't have a copy held for us behind the desk like they said they would, so we had to go pick one up off the shelf. We left at 2:20.

We went to the Carrs grocery store down the road to fill up the RV using a Safeway discount from E. The 10-cent discount was only valid for the first 30 gallons (114L) of gas, so I had to use a second transaction with our regular 3-cent discount to finish filling up the tank. We left at 2:38 and headed south on the Seward Highway.

We stopped at Potter Marsh, which is part of the Anchorage Coastal Wildlife Refuge and right next to the Seward Highway, to photograph a pair of tundra swans. We pulled into a turnout south of the swans, and there were some American wigeons there, so we photographed them first (left). I was startled by the 10 frames per second of the Canon EOS 1D Mk III after having 5 frames per second with the 1Ds Mk III in Denali. By the time we were walking up to where the swans were, other people had stopped to photograph the swans, and they had moved quite far from the road. We waited, and they came a little closer. We kept waiting, and the guy who found the red fox at Polychrome Overlook in Denali National Park arrived to photograph the swans. (You can read more about the fox at Polychrome Overlook on September 26, 2009.) We left at 4:10 and continued heading south on the Seward Highway.
We stopped at a pullout by the Kenai River to photograph a brown bear down in the river. The pullout was about 1200 ft (366m) beyond the bear, so I told J to go photograph it while I unhooked the Jeep so we could park the RV and Jeep without blocking people who were already parked there. By the time I was done, J had walked back because the bear had disappeared. We took a short trail through the woods to the river by the pullout to look for bears. We waited for a while and didn't see any bears. We were about to leave when some fishermen returning to their vehicles said a bear was approaching from downstream. We went back out to look for it, and sure enough, a bear was approaching right along the bank where we were. Unfortunately, some fishermen in a raft on the far bank started yelling "bear," and the bear moved away from the bank into the dense vegetation. We looked for it, then headed back to the parking lot. The fishermen said we had just missed it — it had crossed our path just a few seconds before we did. We started walking along the road heading upstream to see if we could get ahead of the bear. We did, but when it got close to us it crossed the road and we ended up following it again. :( It crossed the road and headed down the bank to the river where we were finally able to get in position to photograph the bear as it turned a corner to give us some decent looks (left).

We left that bear and discovered another bear on the far bank sleeping. It was a bit too far away to photograph, but we watched it for a while. It sat up and munched on a nearby bush, then came down to the water to do some fishing by hiding behind a downed tree trunk by the water. It didn't catch anyting, and then moved away into the brush. We went back to the RV and left around 7:50 with me in the RV and J following in the Jeep.

We stopped at the Russian River Campground, and discovered that it was full. :( J left in the Jeep to investigate some options.

We ended up at the Cooper Creek Campground, South, part of the Chugach National Forest, and took Site 6. It didn't take much to get us level.

We had dinner of leftover RA's sausage meatloaf and J's tossed salad from last night. I also had the last two slices of the Pizza Hut pepperoni pizza.

I downloaded the images I took today, then did a quick edit in iView.