First camping trip: Portage Valley

So Jeff and I had a few days off together so we decided to take the trailer out and give it a trial run and see what all we needed to fix or buy for more camping trips to come. I have heard so much about people camping in Portage, just 50 min from Anchorage, so we decided to head out early Friday morning. I knew the weather was going to be cooler and some rain, but it's ok... Jeff's saying is "If you wait for the weather to clear up in Alaska before you do something, you'll never end up doing anything." It is so true. You can't let anything stop you here. It has been 3 weeks of beautiful sunny warm skies here and of course the weekend we have off, it rains. So we get to Portage, drive around looking at a few camp sites and settled on Black Bear Campground. (Which has definately earned it's name). We set up camp and then our friends Kari and Ryan arrive and set up their motorhome. Before long, we were off exploring. We drove up the canyon only 2 miles or so to check our Portage Glacier and Portage Lake, it was beautiful. Then we headed back to town for firewood... duh a must for camping and neither party brought any. So then the fun began... fire, tin-foil dinner, smores, games, laughs, walks with the dogs.... all in TONS of rain!!!!
So quick story, now that it's summer here, it never gets dark. So it was around 11 pm after a few rounds of intense, bickering card games that we decided to take the dogs for a walk, the rain had subsided for just a wee moment. We started walking along a wood bridge that then ended with a paved trailer. the whole time I'm searching the brush and just being nervous as HECK about bears.... and guess what, all but 10 min from camp, Ryan stops us in our tracks and points to a baby black bear coming down from a tree not 40 feet in front of us. Well we all know that when baby bears are around, so are their mommas. the bear stopped, stared at us then ran off the opposite direction. And that's when we turned back... whew, luckily we didn't see momma bear but you can't mess around in Alaska... hence the reason we are off to buy me a gun in the near future :) We enjoyed the rest of the 30 min walk without any other encounters. (Of course, left the camera and bear mase at camp)
I love the beauty of Alaska. Here is pics of Portage Lake and the Glacier.




We had a very cozy camp site and the dogs sure loved being outside. It wasn't even terribly cold just very very wet and super windy, but that's why we enjoyed chilling in our trailer with the heat on :)





Here we are getting the Tin foil/Hobo dinners ready. We started them on the fire but the fire wasn't holding strong in the rain so we ended up finishing them on the grill, and enjoyed our smores off the stove :) Still camping, still fun.






Thanks Kari and Ryan for tagging along and making memories with us. Jeff and I are so excited to go again, we headed off to Walmart the second we got home and bought everything we would ever need to go camping again, and it will always stay in the trailer, so we can just up and leave anytime we want. Looking at our schedules, we plan on going again this next week and the week after, hopefully we will get our tags and come home with a black bear too!!! :)