NORTH TO ALASKA 2025 - DAYS 59-62 - SKILAK LAKE

We drove on north out of Homer and headed up the Sterling Highway. The traffic was getting more and more abundant with the holiday week coming up. We knew that we needed to get the heck out of the busy areas and go find a nice quiet campground somewhere for a few days.  At least to get through the 4th of July craziness.

We took the West Entrance to Skilak Lake Road, and first ran across the Lower Skilak Lake Campground. We were really lucky that we did. Because there was one empty campsite! This place is FREE!!! It doesn't even say that you have to leave after 14 days either. It is managed by the Kenai National Wildlife Refuge:

https://www.alaska.org/detail/lower-skilak-lake-campground

We found this last campsite where we could slightly see the lake through the bushes. But we didn't care. It was a free campsite and it was quiet and in the woods. AND it was on a Friday night.  To get ANY open campsite is a great thing.  The bonus that it was FREE made it even better. That sounded good to us.

If we sat over by the picnic table, we could see the lake through the trees. We were just happy to stretch out and relax and take it easy for the evening. After all of the busy noise of the night before in Homer, that meant we didn't get very good sleep. We were looking forward to a nice quiet sleep in the woods.

Ahhhh this was so very nice. We ate a little dinner, curled up with some shows on Roku, and went to bed early! 

I'm glad to say that we got a very nice peaceful sleep, and slept in till almost 9:00 a.m.!!!

Now this morning is where things got interesting... Steve had walked down to the pit toilets and noticed somebody had just vacated the most absolute perfect best site in the entire campground!!!

He rushed back to tell me that I needed to go save it, while he was going to pull in the slides and get the gear ready to drive the motorhome over there. I was still in my jammies! 

I tossed on a pair of jeans and my moccasins, grabbed the bear spray, and hoofed it on down across the campground to the other site. I had Nick in tow on the leash, so he was out of Steve's way while getting the rig ready to move.

I stood right there on the new site and made sure nobody else was going to come and take it!!! 

Standing guard with my dog and my bear spray

and defending my territory....lol.

Steve was very quick and efficient in putting the motorhome into "road-worthiness". We got all settled into our campsite. It was PERFECT! 

The site was absolutely wonderful. Being parked parallel to the road meant the whole side of our rig could face out over the lake. Can you imagine having this type of view out of every window? Each time we opened the door, this is what we could see. Our own little private beach.

The front of the motorhome was tucked up tight to a really pretty clump of wild roses.  We could smell them each time we opened the door. Once it was warm enough we had all of the windows open. It smelled great!

We were surrounded by clumps of lovely birch trees. I absolutely love birch. It was so picturesque against the fresh green leaves.

All of the shrubbery underneath were comprised of these beautiful wild roses. Their delicate pink blossoms were filling the air with such a gorgeous perfume.  Having rainef the day before, everything was so fresh and it made the rose aroma even stronger.

Even standing at the sink, doing something as simple as dishes, was enjoyable. Looking out of the windows, eyes playing across the lake. The scene changed constantly depending on which way the sun was shining against the mountains on the other side of the lake.

A pair of loons floated by, calling out there greetings to us. That is such a soothing sound. We have loons in Wisconsin. We can hear them anytime we head up north to camp at any of the National Forest campgrounds. Hearing them now in Alaska just brought on a little wave of nostalgia and homesickness on. Thinking about camping in the North Woods of Wisconsin.

I took out my camera and snapped a few photos here and there. It was such a beautiful place. I want to drink it all in, and then remember it through photos in the years to come. I can look back at old videos or photos and remember these days.

We took a little walk around, and it was even more special because it was our anniversary. Yes, we have been married now for 28 years. We also dated for 2 years before we got married so really it's closer to 30 years for us.  If we make it another 30 years, that means we'll be in our 90s. Two old people looking back on their videos and photos of trips that they have taken long ago. That's why I do all this. So we can remember it all again in our old age...

My scare this past spring with a mini-stroke and discovering 2 small aneurisms sure makes us appreciate this trip even more. 

As we walked around the campground, this is something that I've never seen before. Keep in mind, this area suffered horrible losses from wildfires. So this was a "bucket tree" project to allow people to borrow large 5 gallon buckets to keep right by their campfire, scooping up a bucket full of lake water. Hopefully it can help prevent any crazy wildfires that get started by human accident. When you are done camping, they ask that you use the bucket to put out your fire, and hang it back up on the tree again.

The tags read that this was a special project by the local girl scouts. Also they have financial supporters and backers that helped with the materials. What a great project, and very beneficial in an area that suffered such losses.

Another program that we've seen more and more at campgrounds are these honor system life vest programs. It's called "Kids Don't Float". Select a vest of the appropriate size for your child to use while you are at the lake. When you are done, return it to the hanging rack underneath the sign. Although the life jackets are labeled with the program's name on them, I see a few without labels. I think that's from people donating them when their own children grow out of them. Great idea!

We spent three lovely days on this campsite. Totally soaking up the peace and quiet. We had soft gentle mornings with coffee and donuts...

And a certain little doggy begging for a bite!

We didn't do a lot during the 3 days, except relax and unwind. It was so nice to just take it easy. Nick enjoyed sprawling across our laps and looking out over the water with us. Every now and then a duck or a loon would catch his interest. But then they would swim away, and he would go back to dozing in the sunshine.

AHHHHHHH

Times like this are precious.

Serenity.

As time marches on, and the calendar days go by, we needed to take a close look at our traveling.  It was now after the 30th of June. We were two months into our 4-month travel plan.  We have seen all the highlights that we wanted to see in Alaska.

It was time to "Turnaround" and spend the next 60 days heading back in a southerly and easterly direction.

Leaving Skilak Lake, we would be now passing back through Anchorage and heading east. It was time.

We are thinking of going home in alternate route than the way we came. There will only be two small sections of road that we have to overlap that we traveled on the way up. The rest of the way will be different routes and different sites. We will be taking the Cassier Highway down the more Western flank of the Canadian Rockies. From there we will hit the United States and work our way across the northernmost states. Hopefully recreating the route on US2 that we had to abandon last year due to the heavy wildfires. 

The dark blue line is the route that we traveled so far and the light turquoise line will be the proposed route home: 

Here's a link to the YouTube that also goes along with today's blog: 

129 miles traveled today 

5,103 miles traveled so far

NORTH TO ALASKA 2025 DAY 58 HOMER SPIT

We decided to head on down to Homer, Alaska. Yep, do that "tourist thing" by going all the way out on the Spit into the ocean, as far as we could go.

But first, we opted to pull into Deep Creek Rec Area to check it out, along the waters of the Cook Inlet. This is a heavily used fishing harbor where they pull the boats in and out with huge tractors with big balloon tires.

Down on one end as we were looping through the parking lot, we happened upon an eagle. It was sitting there on the log, making a funny screech sound. It was a different garbally sound than what we hear from most eagles in the past.

We aren't sure if it was a female calling out to her mate, or to her babies nearby. Maybe she was trying to distract us from a nest?

We stayed far enough away and used the long lens on my camera to capture photos. Then I happened to notice in the background there were a whole bunch of eagles lined up on the logs in the background!

They're all hanging out there in the same area. I'm not exactly sure why. Nobody was up and flying around or looking for the scraps from the fisherman? They were all just hanging out in that swampy area at the end of the parking lot. Very interesting.

We kept on driving down the Sterling Highway, going through small towns of Ninilchek and Anchor Point until we were reached Homer. 

The piece of land that extends way out from the end of Homer is called the Homer Spit. It's quite a tourist area. We normally don't do "touristy things"... but here we go.

I guess it was kind of a one-time-thing to say "Yep, we've been there". So we did it. See? We've been there!

And here's the proof, 

Our motorhome

 parked in front of the sign.

If you've been reading this blog for any length of time, you know we usually seek out the out-of-the-way, rustic, quiet country type campgrounds in natural surroundings. 

But every once in awhile, for our tourist status sake, will do something like this...

Here we are, the middle of Homer. We are at one of the Municipal Campgrounds owned by the city. This one is called Fishing Hole, the other one is called Mariner.  It's $30 just to park in their lot. If you want to use their dump station or potable water, that costs you even more on your way in or out of the campsites. There are no hookups at the sites themselves. 

We were lucky to pull up in one that faces right out over Katchemak Bay. What a beautiful view!

We had some really nice neighbors to one side, and the other side was an open area for people to walk down to access the beach. Right in front of us we had a picnic table and a fire ring. What more did we need?

We watched the tide go out and we soaked in the seaside views up and down the shoreline. It was really pretty and we were kind of glad that we did do a city campground to experience this location.

As the tide went out, we went down and walked along the shoreline. We actually found a jellyfish! I guess it's very common that they wash up on the shore here on Katchemak Bay. You don't dare touch them or try to fling them back out into the water. You can get stung! Plus, I looked it up and it said they rarely live after they've been out of water for any length of time. So throwing them back in, really doesn't save them.

We left it alone.

We made doubly sure that Nick left it alone too. We saw some others here and there as we walked around. It was kind of nice to see the shoreline slowly seep away as the tide went out.

Steve grabbed the binoculars and was checking out the ships out in the harbor. We went on the Marine Traffic website:

https://www.marinetraffic.com/en/ais/home/centerx:-151.0/centery:59.8/zoom:7

and checked out what ships were there, what they were hauling, where they were going and where they were from. It's very interesting!

Our views right out of the front windshield were absolutely beautiful. It was kind of a nice chance to see something a little different.

I zoomed in on that ship just to see what it was carrying. It looks like great big huge propane tanks or they are tanker trailers to pull behind semi trucks? They look to be about the same size as the ConX boxes up above them.  The Mariner website really didn't detail the cargo on this particular one.

What we noticed about being on the Homer Spit was that although you were down at sea level, in every direction you look there were mountains everywhere. It was really amazing to see everything ringed by mountains but yet you were down level with the ocean.

What's even more amazing is this is getting towards the end of June.  There's still snow everywhere on the tops of these mountains!! I guess in my mind, the snow mostly melted in the summers. Maybe it takes another month or so? It sure was beautiful and added amazing contrast of the trees just below the snow line.

We watched some heavy clouds roll on in. I thought we were going to be due for a thunderstorm. But I guess not, the weather really changes quickly and moves along fast. I am sure that the downdrafts and the updrafts from the mountains have a lot to do with controlling the weather patterns. You'll see clouds ahead of you, then in a few moments later, you will see blue sky. It's very interesting. It must make it very difficult for the weatherman to predict anything!!

Like I said, the cloud formations change quickly. Soon all those heavy angry clouds rolled away and now we could see the soft streaks of clouds and the blue sky. It was clear over to the volcanoes up the other side of the Cook Inlet. 

We had some pretty noisy people move in next to us, across the opening out to the beach. They weren't too close, but they were close enough to hear the country music they were cranking out of their pickup truck--- with all of the doors open and all of the windows down! 

Then the grandma came over to use our picnic table with her grandson to paint rocks. There weren't any picnic tables over by them. I offered to them that they were more than welcome to take the table back to their own site. It was right out in the front of our motorhome. They said they didn't want to move the table, and they would use it right there??? We could hear every word they were saying through the vents on the front dash of our motorhome. They were only a matter of two or three feet away. That wasn't comfortable. So we took the dog, locked the doors, and went for a walk instead for the evening. 

Later on, they closed two of the doors of the truck blasting out the music...  but not the windows. It muffled the country music some. About an hour later they started up the truck and moved it to the other side of their camper. Thank goodness! It made it quieter for us. 

I wish people would understand that maybe people surrounding them might not have the same taste in music. We certainly didn't. I think if you can hear the music beyond your campsite, it's too loud. 

During the night, quite a few people fired up their generators. Then if their generator was running, their voices had to be louder to get over the sound of the running generator! 

So it was not that relaxing of a night for us. We heard a lot of noise of vehicles coming and going. A lot of generators. Car alarms. Door slamming. And people just having a good time. 

I guess that's why we enjoy our remote quiet natural campsites in the woods?

In the morning we woke up to see the tide was out and the area was exposed again in front of our campsite.

It sure had a form of rugged natural beauty, and we enjoyed seeing the secret underside of the ocean floor that only the fish usually get to see...

It didn't look like it was going to be a very sunny day. We had a few rain splatters here and there while we made breakfast. I think that was about it for our "tourist thing" for staying at the municipal campground. Time to start packing up.

We looked around, and most of the RVs had already left. The night before, this entire parking lot was packed solid with RVs of one sort or another.

We drove through the rough and bumpy lot as the city workers were there cleaning up the messes from the night before. All too soon, each little slot will now be filled up by a new tourist! 

We got road-worthy, and exited the campground. Of course we had not yet driven to the very tippy top end of the Homer Spit. So we had to do that now, didn't we? We didn't come all this way to not reach the tip.

This next section of Homer is all commercial, touristy, shops and restaurants and bars. There really wasn't anything we wanted to stop and look at, but we drove down among them just to reach the end of the Spit.

Many of the shops are built up high on stilts to withstand the onslaught of storms and high waves that sometimes can attack the area.

A lot of fishing tours and charter boats leave from this area, as well as commercial fisherman bringing in their catch to the local processing plants. It is known as the Halibut Capital of the World.

Some of these buildings are original structures, but others have been rebuilt time and again, after storms have wiped them out.

We were going to park the RV in some of the public parking access areas, like these two RVs did. Then we could get out and walk around. But the rain started drizzling and we figured we'd do best by just driving around, doing our geegawking out of the windshield instead.

This is the famous Salty Dog saloon. I guess everybody puts their dollar bills up on the ceiling with thumbtacks. It was 11:00 in the morning so we didn't think it would be open yet. Sure enough, we drove past when the door was open and people were in there already drinking. 

But we had some miles to drive today, so we didn't want to start out the day with alcohol. Especially at 11:00 in the morning?

We drove on past the Homer Ferry Terminal. We had originally thought about taking the ferry from Whittier over to Homer. That would have been quite an interesting trip but a bit too long for leaving Nicholas all alone in the motorhome down below deck. But it was nice to see where the ferry lands at the end of the spit.

And yes, we drove to the very end of 

The Homer Spit!

The sign said so!

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

Now it was time to head back north, get off the Spit, through the rest of Homer, and back up the Kenai Peninsula.

Next we are headed to Skilak Lake. 

89 miles traveled today 

4,974 miles traveled so far

NORTH TO ALASKA 2025 BUDGET RECAP FOR JUNE

We have now been on the road for 61 days.  It is time to talk about the past 30 days of BUDGET!

Our last budget post for the first 31 days can be read here: 

https://kareninthewoods-kareninthewoods.blogspot.com/2025/06/north-to-alaska-2025-31-days-one-month.html

We get a lot of questions about what it costs to travel or what type of prices are we paying for things. Some people want to know how much things specifically cost in Alaska. Some people must imagine that we are mega-rich and can afford to just go willy-nilly all over the place. That isn't so. We stick to a pretty tight budget. So here are our numbers for the past 30 days...

FUEL 

$800 budget per month

$376.74 actually spent this month

$1,494.73 spent so far.

For fuel we are wayyyy under budget this month.  We had budgeted $4,000 for our total trip. Because we've done so much traveling in the first month, we expected to go over budget for the first 30 days. And we did.  But now for the month of June, we were way under that amount as we just traveled around within the state of Alaska and not such long distances.

We are averaging 14.7 miles per gallon with the diesel engine in our motorhome. 

Any time we pull up to a fuel station that's under $5 a gallon, we feel we're doing okay under budget. 

CAMPGROUNDS

$750 budget per month

$534 actually spent this month

$1,205 spent so far

We have done a variety of camping over the last 30 days. Some of the nights were free at campsites that do not collect a fee. 

We used our Federal America the Beautiful Senior Access Pass at many of the Chugach National Forest Campgrounds--- which gave us half-price camping. Many times we were only paying $9 to $11 per campsite.

Most of our camping is boondocking or rustic type camping without any hookups. We have solar, plus our Bluetti power station to supplement the coach batteries, and holding tanks for fresh and waste water.

Our entire campground budget over the trip is at $3,000 which comes out to approximately $25 a day. So anytime we find a place to camp under $25, or free, it helps our budget when we decide to splurge a little bit more on an expensive place.

GROCERIES 

$400 a month budget

$489.76 actually spent this month

$713.76 spent so far

Groceries is kind of a tough one because we literally cleared out our pantry and freezer and fridge before we left home. So for the first month we did use a lot of groceries that we had brought along with us. The only things we were picking up were fresh produce, milk, eggs, bread etc.

This month, we have picked up some meat items at a few places here and there. Especially when we splurged on the fresh salmon and halibut in Valdez! 

But again, it's hard to budget the food because right now at this given point I probably have 15 or 16 meals worth of meat in the freezer leading us into the third month. So it's kind of an ambiguous number. If we were at home we would be spending and shopping approximately the same way too. When you see a sale you stock up. You don't necessarily use it in that particular month. But with the extra baskets up overhead in our bunk holding additional dry goods and canned goods, we don't need to purchase all that much at the stores. 

The grocery store prices really didn't shock us on the types of things we buy. A few of the smaller mom and pop shops are higher in prices, but they have to because it cost them so much to have items transported to their shop. But all in all, it really isn't bad. We are still under budget for the first 2 months.

PROPANE

$118.93 actually spent this month

$128 spent last month

$246.93 spent so far

We really didn't budget for propane because we weren't sure of our actual usage. The biggest drain on the propane of course is the propane furnace. During the month of May we used the furnace more. Now during the month of June we used it less.  July and August it will probably be minimal. The propane is also used for our refrigerator, water heater, and our cooking stove and oven in the motorhome.  And for running the generator as needed. 

We started off with a full tank of propane so it's kind of hard to figure what we've actually paid in the first 2 months. Our motorhome has a large propane tank built in (13 gal / 55 lb) so it's not like we are refilling little barbecue tanks like some travel trailers or pickup campers use. 

Refilling propane at small fuel stations out in the middle of nowhere is going to be a higher price per liquid gallon then filling in a larger city at a bulk supplier. So again, this price is really going to vary depending on where we are when we need to be refilled.  You can't really shop around per price. You refill when you need it when it's available. We have paid between $2.50 and $4.15 a liquid gallon.

LAUNDROMAT

$60 budgeted

$28 actually spent this month

$67 spent so far

We have done laundry two times in the last 4 weeks. We really hate going to city/public laundromats. Mostly the ones we used are just the coin ops located at some of the campgrounds we have stopped at. We started out with $100 in rolled coins and we will see what we have at the end of the trip.

DUMP STATIONS

Nothing budgeted. 

$40 spent this month so far

For the first 30 days, we didn't pay any dump station fees anywhere that we were at. We were often at campgrounds with hookups due to the extremely cold weather. And they offered free dump and potable water as we entered or left the campsites. 

But now for this month, we've been staying at more rustic campgrounds and mostly in the National Forest. They don't include dump stations very often. 

So we did have to seek out dump stations in other places. This month we twice paid a $10 fee, once a $15 fee, and a $5 fee to take on fresh potable water.

ROADSIDE INSURANCE

Our American Family automobile policy for the motorhome has excellent roadside assistance and windshield glass breakage. In the past years with our other motorhome, we have had to make claims and never had a problem. We know it's great coverage. And we do carry it year-round so it really didn't add to our trip. We made sure in advance that we had out of the country coverage from our agent already included in our policy, and a special insurance card was mailed to us prior to leaving to show we do have coverage in Canada in case of an accident or a claim.

We did have a chip in the windshield earlier in the month, and it was repaired free of charge for us at Safelite in Wasilla. It was covered by our American Family Insurance.

But we did also purchase an additional policy from CoachNet. It is good for one year. It cost $249. Not only is it roadside assistance, which covers us also for tire changing, fuel replacement if we run out, locksmith, and of course towing. But in addition to that it also includes a medivac policy that if you are hospitalized and wish to return home they will transport you and your partner as well as have someone return your RV back to your home. So we felt it was good to pick this up as an additional coverage, just in case.

INTERNET/CELL PHONE

We really didn't have this in the budget because we already pay it whether we are home or on the road. Our cell phone plans are $25 for Steve's Visible phone, which gets boosted up to $40 when we leave the country per month. 

My cell phone is covered under our children's network as a family plan, So there is no additional cost there whether I am traveling or at home.

Our internet is through Starlink, which runs $165 a month. We have the Gen 3 unit which we keep on a post at home. When we leave to travel we telescope the post down and remove the unit. We take it along in the motorhome where it resides up in our skylight. It functions while we are enroute moving down the road. If we are parked under trees, we can take it out and set it on a long cord in an open area.  Either way, we pay for our internet if we were home or on the road so it's part of our regular household budget. Not really part of our special traveling budget. But it's how we handle internet when we are traveling.

TOLLS/TRAVEL

$13 for the toll to go through the Whittier tunnel.

$187 last month for ferry from Skagway to Haines.

So that rounds out for an even $200!

MISCELLANEOUS

$123.95

We purchased a new water filter for adding fresh water to the motorhome. That was approximately $20. We also purchased a little step ladder so it was easier to reach our Starlink up in the skylight. I picked up some cotton jammies I found on sale, most often you only find polyester in the stores. It was so nice to find some cotton ones for summer sleeping.

At about every 2500 miles of travel Steve needs to add a 2.5 gallon jug of DEF fluid to the engine. This is supplementing the diesel emissions with exhaust requirements for our Mercedes engine. He bought a jug at $18.38.

We expect we will probably be buying two or three more jugs of this while we are traveling for remaining months. 

BACK HOME EXPENSES

Of course our household budget still has the same costs back at home. We are paying the security camera costs, the electric bill, the water bill, and house insurance and taxes. Those are not included in our traveling budget because we would be paying them anyhow.

So here is the grand total of what we spent over the last 30 days:

$1,875.83

divided by 30 days 

comes out to $62.53 per day

Last month was higher at:

$2,386.85

$4262.68

Spent so far for 61 days

for the memories, 

that is 

PRICELESS!

Here's the video link that goes along with today's blog: 

Thank you for following along!