Home is where you park yourself

For those of you concerned enough to ask about the health of our Northern District salmon stocks — and I hope there are thousands of you — I understand a meeting is set up with the commissioner of Fish and Game and other higher level management types at the Willow Creek Resort at noon, Aug. 29.

For further information, the resort’s phone number is 495-7980. The resort is located just off the Parks Highway at Willow Creek. Come and ask some questions.

My wife and I took our RV to Susitna Landing earlier this week to fish for silvers. Ordinarily we would tow my riverboat, but the Kashwitna River is about 18 inches lower than normal right now. My big, heavy ThunderJet drags bottom unless it’s up on-step when in shallow water, so we left the boat home and fished from shore.

We caught some fish, but that’s not where I want to go here. We’re already painfully aware of the poor coho returns this year. Instead, I want to discuss some of the differences we’ve noted in RV facilities around the state. This season, we spent some time in Ninilchik for a halibut charter and in Seward for some silver fishing. In both cases, we parked the RV in a reserved slot at a designated RV park.

The Ninilchik RV park was our first experience with close-quarters camping. Each designated parking site had a waist-high row of bushes on either side, but wasn’t much wider than maybe 12 feet. There were hook-ups for electrical and city water, and some of the sites had sewer hook-ups as well. The park had a dump station for RV sites without sewer hook-up. There was a separate shower-laundry-restroom building for patrons’ use. There was a communal barbeque and eating area, and one big fire pit for evening visiting. The site seemed designed to encourage social interaction between users.

We had towed a small utility trailer to serve as our gear and supplies “trunk,” but we couldn’t park it at our site. It was located a few hundred feet away in a “trailer parking only” location. This made restocking the refrigerator with water and soda a bigger job.

We both wanted the electrical hook-up, but the water and sewer were more than we needed, especially since the RV was also our commuter vehicle — we didn’t need to be hooking up and breaking down three utilities every time we needed to leave the site.

The Seward RV park was similar except there was nothing between individual sites for privacy. They had all the same amenities in a separate building, with a recreation room located upstairs. Each site had its own fire pit and picnic table. All sites had electrical and water and several had sewer hook-up along with wireless Internet and cable. The entire parking area was gravel — the only grass was around the outside facility boundaries.

I mention these things because we have spent most of our RV camping time at Susitna Landing. They have three separate loops for RV use, two with fire pits and picnic tables and one with the table, fire pit and an electrical hook-up at each site. City water and sewer are not available. One of the non-electrical areas is located near the Kashwitna River and provides access to all the sights and sounds associated with an Alaska river. These sites also provide easy access to one’s boat anchored in the lagoon.

The other nonelectrical site loop is located back in the mixed species woods. If you’re looking for privacy, this is about as good as it gets in a public camping area. The third is located in between the two, but has electrical hook-ups. We usually stay in that loop. It is only a few minutes walk from the river, but is off the beaten path of site activity. The facility has portable toilets scattered around the loops and a main vault toilet building next to the shower building near the center of the facility.

While Susitna Landing does not have laundry facilities, there are services available locally. The site was originally developed as a boating angler access site with primitive camping facilities. Our favorite spot has no other campsites within view on the same side of the road and only a few sites across the road. We really enjoy the spacious privacy these “primitive” sites provide compared to the sardine-can approach other sites employ.

Howard Delo is a retired fisheries biologist with the Alaska Department of Fish and Game. You can leave him a message by emailing sports@frontiersman.com.