NORTH TO ALASKA 2025 - DAYS 54-56 - QUARTZ CREEK NATIONAL FOREST CAMPGROUND

I ended the last blog with our impromptu leaving Granite Creek and heading to the roadside viewpoint at the Canyon Creek Rest Area on the Sterling Highway. 

We were glad we vacated that site, due to the increasing water levels. It's best not to take chances. What a way to wreck a vacation by being flooded out? 

We headed on further west on the highway. Our goal was to find another quiet camping spot for a couple days. 

It seems like that's really our main goal of this entire trip. Finding nice quiet beautiful places in nature. Places we would not see back at home. Places we can relax and look out and enjoy and explore. We're not doing the tourist things. We're not doing the crowds. We're not doing the restaurants or the main attraction sights to see.

We looked up on the map and saw there was another National Forest Campground just up the way. It was called Quartz Creek, and located on the Kenai Lake. We look for the National Forest campgrounds because our Federal America the Beautiful Senior Access Pass gains us half price camping fees. This one is part of the Chugach National Forest.

We pulled in and took a right hand turn. Out of the entire loop there were two empty sites that were not reserved. Sites number 39 and 44. We grabbed 39 and we have a feeling it was the best site in the entire park! (The host later confirmed that was so). It was now considered first come first served for the next five nights. It was not reservable by anyone else unless we gave it up after 5 nights. We decided to try for three and then watch the weather and decide if we should stay another two.

We quickly filled out our envelope for 3 nights, for the bargain price of $11.50 a night. And this is what we got:

Yep, we are parked right next to this wonderful aquamarine/azure/cobalt blue glacial lake. The colors are like that from the silt and the minerals of the melting glaciers feeding into the lake.

The puffy clouds going overhead played shadows and bright sections over the mountainside across from us. Look at the rich gorgeous greens, in contrast to the deep hunter greens when there are clouds covering the sunshine. 

The water is reflecting back greens and blues and even a pinkish purple tinge. I look outside in any direction and the colors are different on the surface of the lake in each direction that I look.

It's like an artist's palette of different hues and colors. It kind of reminds me when I blend green, blue, and purple dye on wool fleece and let it spread and blend where it intersects with the next color. I think these are my new "favorite colors"?

Here is a link to the campsite itself: 

https://www.fs.usda.gov/r10/chugach/recreation/quartz-creek-campground

We were standing down along the shore of the lake, we noticed that there weren't any mosquitoes at all. That seemed really strange! It was absolutely gorgeous and the day was climbing up into the mid '70s.

Steve took out our reclining lawn chairs and we settled down to enjoy the afternoon, gazing out across the water.

He had along a pair of binoculars to examine things over on the other shore. Nicholas wasn't sure what he was looking at. But he was paying close attention to see where Steve was going or if it involved him going along on a "walk".

After a while, I went inside to get some supper going. Steve had asked for one of his beers and I handed it out through the slider on the screen door. A moment or two later, I looked out and thought "oh my, this looks almost like a beer commercial!!". So I snapped a shot and added a caption:

After dinner, we took a walk around the rest of the campground. The loop to the left was pretty buggy and we were slapping mosquitoes the whole way. It was amazing the loop to the right closer to the lake had less mosquitoes? 

We wandered along and I took a few photos as we went. I am just loving this purple lupine.

It's in full bloom right now. I love the cascading colors as it spreads up the stem from the leaves below. 

Every shade of purple and violet that you can think of?

We looked across the lake in the evening and saw a lone kayaker paddling his way across. It makes me miss our canoe. But we sure didn't want to haul one all of the way to Alaska. Lol. Maybe we can rent one somewhere?

The next morning, we woke up again to these marvelous hues and colors spread across the lake. The water was smooth like glass and just reflected everything from the hills above.  This is what it looked like when I pulled up the shade on the bedroom window.

The pinkish purples and the blues and the greens are just combined into a wonderful tapestry across the surface of the water.

We glanced at the weather forecast that afternoon about back home in Wisconsin. The Midwest, along with many other parts of the country, are really suffering from an awful heat wave, combined with high humidity to make an even more intolerable heat index.  Back home it was over a hundred! Where we are in Alaska, it was very comfortable 58 because it had clouded over a little bit.

When the weather gets that hot in Wisconsin, it's very common for the concrete sections of the highway to explode! It has to do with expansion and contraction in the rapid heating of the cold concrete. The North and Southbound lanes right by the exit to Oconto both blew up during that afternoon heat. I know there was some video clip making the rounds on YouTube and the news of some other road blowing up somewhere else like it was a really strange phenomenon. But it's pretty common up in our area of Wisconsin.

This pic was on our local Oconto Facebook Group.

We spent a delightful evening watching this pair with their three little adorable babies. They are called the common merganser bird, and we really enjoyed watching the little ones follow around the parents. There's some video footage of them on the YouTube link down below at the end of this blog.

https://www.allaboutbirds.org/guide/Common_Merganser/id

Gosh, I am really really loving my camera that Steve bought me for my birthday. It was all in prep for this trip! 

We didn't even have to go anywhere. We could just sit there in our chairs and the birds floated up to us.

Next up in front of our chairs was a very interesting black and white bird. He and his lovely mate are called Greater Scaups.  

https://www.allaboutbirds.org/guide/Greater_Scaup/id

They entertained us by swimming back and forth and back and forth right in front of our lawn chairs. I had a hard time holding the camera to follow him. So I learned to just hold the camera in one spot and let him swim back and forth in front of it. 

She was resting for a while, with her head twisted up over her back, and then she came over and swam back and forth too. She almost looked fluffy and fuzzy up close.

Look at the detail I could bring in on this guy! He kept swimming straight towards us like he wanted to check us out, to see if either of us were going to maybe give him something to eat?

I can think of nothing more delightful than sitting back in our chairs, and watching wildlife play out right in front of us.  Nick was relaxed at our feet and not even concerned about the birds swimming back and forth.  It was so totally peaceful.

Again, you will have to look at the video on the link below to see how these silly birds were entertaining us two old farts. 

By our third night, things had clouded over and we could hear some rain on the rooftop. It was very gentle and soothing and we fell asleep to the sounds of the rain. In the morning, sadly, we pulled up the window shade and this is what we saw: clouds, fog, and more rain.

That made our decision not to renew our site for the next two days. The weather report said rain, rain, rain.

We loaded up and left our site to the next lucky occupant. The host even stopped by and inquired whether or not we were leaving that day, because he was sure somebody else would come and snap it up as soon as we vacated it. It would still remain a "first come - first serve" site until the next reservation started on the third day from now.

We stopped over to the dump station near the entrance to the park. It was unusual, but they required a separate payment to utilize the freshwater and dump station, even if you were already camping in the park. It was not included in the camping fee. Oh well, the camping fee was so low at $9.50 a night we didn't mind.  An additional $10 wouldn't hurt, and the convenience sure was nice to have it available right at the exit to the park.

While someone else was ahead of us at the dump station, Steve was using the potable water to fill our freshwater holding tank. We always use a filter for anything that goes into our tank, even if it's municipal water like this.  

Then inside, we use a Life Straw pitcher for anything we drink, cook with, or make coffee with. Also we use the Life Straw pitcher for Nicholas's water bowl.

https://a.co/d/bfNvtwE

This thing removes 99.99% of Bacteria, Parasites, Microplastics, Lead, Mercury, PFAS and a Variety of Chemicals and all the other crap that's in the water. The best part is the picture is glass and does not give you a "plastic taste" and is BPA free.  We change the small filters every 2 months, and the large one every 6 months.  We like this so much, we even use it at home. And we are not spending tons of excess money buying bottled water, nor cluttering up the landfills with our water bottles.  (Non-sponsored, just really love this product!)

After we were done with our dump station procedure, we headed on up the road 3 miles on the Sterling Highway. We were going to Wildman's!

It's an all-in-one store with a deli, grocery store, coffee shop, gift shop, propane fill, liquor store, plus a mini laundromat and showers!

The only thing they don't sell is gas or diesel!

As I came up the steps, a couple free-range chickens came out to check me out. Boy oh boy, what is this with birds this week? 

We tossed in our three loads into the washing machines, picked up a few things that we needed in the store, had our propane tank filled, and browsed through the giftware.

What a cute little laundry area? There were three working washing machines and one large one that was being repaired that was out of order. There were four dryers and each one was $2.50 for wash or dry. I hate laundromats, but this was cute and tiny and we got everything done in no time flat. $15 later and we had all clean clothes and both sets of sheets to put away.

Now it was time to head on down the road, and see where it was going to take us. 

On to the next adventure!

Here is the YouTube video that goes along with today's blog post: 

91 miles traveled today

4,825 miles traveled so far