Woke up to a slightly overcast sky, it had been raining hard. The ground was mushy. We both ate, packed up our gear and tents, and headed downroad. We had a long day ahead of us – it would have been a longer day if we had spent the night at Walker Fork campground.

We spent one two many days on the Dempster. It was a long, long day on the road. I attempted to make it less long by focusing on the cloud formations – to Tetling Junction, patches of blue interspersed by clouds, then a very thick cloud cover, much like a heavy gray quilt.

The drive just got longer as we cruised along, first on the Top of the World Highway, then the Taylor Highway, then on Route 4 going to Valdez, then on the Glennallen Highway. I finally ran out of questions to ask Becky, who never had very many questions for me anyway.

I talked to Pete when I was in Tok – he said everything was okay, which I was relieved to hear. Then he said that it had been raining for four days. Given that it was not raining where we were, I presumed that it would not be raining at home. Becky wisely said that we’d get a better sense of what our weather was like when we got to Eureka, on the Glenn Highway. We drove right into the storm – the rain was coming down hard and the sky was a uniform gray.

We stopped at Sheep Mountain where we ordered bakery items. The woman behind the front counter spent considerable time extolling the qualities of the bakery goods before us, and then, without my asking said that the chocolate chip cookies were very good. I told her I just needed to know what the items were, not their finer points. When we got back in the car, I told Becky that this woman either had drunk a lot of coffee or was self-training to be a waitress.

It was very hard to get Becky to laugh. I never did. The best I could do was get her to agree with me about things.

I had read in the Alaska Daily News that there were flood warnings in effect for our area. And so, I was not surprised to see the mighty Matanuska River running hard and muddy. Could overflow its banks if the rain (which was now coming down in buckets) didn’t cease.

Stopped in Sutton to drop off Becky’s gear and then headed home. I couldn’t help but think that if I lived in a more rural area, it would have required a major adjustment. It took some, but not a lot. The first thing that I noticed was that in my absence Pete had ordered a load of gravel from Wheel Dog trucking and spread it with the tractor in the horse pen.

We spent the evening at the Alaska State Fair putting books in the newspaper boxes. We wandered around a little bit, then on the way home we stocked the Buggie Park Little Library.

Tomorrow I will spend the day with my animals. Hunting season. There are at least a dozen vehicles at the trail head. This is because they closed down the one at the Murphy Road turnoff.

Next: 235. 8/27/23: Tonight