We went camping at Hope over Memorial Day weekend. I took Friday off and after dropping Auggie at the boarding kennel (he’s gotten too old and slow for four days of camping), we high-tailed it for the Porcupine Campground, hoping to get there in time to grab two campsites. The extra site was for some friends who would be coming down on Saturday morning. We got lucky and got the last two adjoining sites.

After setting up the two tents (our giant Coleman car camping tent and the spare backpacking place-holder tent in the other campsite) we hooked up Lola and Bolleke and walked into Hope to look around. It’s a nice little town that sprang up prior to the gold rush and hasn’t grown too much since then. (See the link above.) There are several buildings remaining from the last several decades, like the Seaview Cafe.

We walked for a couple of hours, eventually winding up back at camp around 2:00 or 3:00. We relaxed for a little while and then about 6:00 decided to go back into town to have dinner at one of the two restaurants in town; it was some of the best food I’ve had in Alaska.

After getting back to camp, we decided to walk the dogs around a little bit more and hit the sack. Despite being packed to the gills, the campground was pretty quiet.

Saturday morning our friends arrived and after bringing over the camp host to get rid of the midnight squatters that had shown up in the second campsite, we had a really nice time. We wound up with six dogs, a brand-shiny-new baby, two tents, four cars, and a free-standing awning between the two campsites.

We finally figured out how to tire out Bolleke: three solid days of hiking. To Lola’s credit, she never flagged either.

Hope Point Photos

The Dogs

I love having this many dogs around. Anchorage municipal code limits us to three, and really, that’s plenty for an urban house. But if we ever move to a rural location …