Alaska | Anchorage | Fox Island

It's nice carrying a full kitchen through Alaska - the spectacular seafood becomes sublime when it's that-day fresh. And on day three, we reach Clam Gulch, where fresh during the spring and summer months means straight from the mud to your pot. We pull into the gulch, about an hour north of Homer, and park at the end of a long line of campers - digging clams at low tide here is a pastime that stretches all the way to Anchorage.

Renting shovels and buckets from a shack doing business as Angie's Clam Cleaning, we join the ant line down the bluff to the mud flats. On the beach, we surreptitiously follow a group of veteran diggers in hip boots as they scour the soupy sand for the pocks that mark a clam's tiny exhale. Following their lead, we dig furiously under those bubbles, dropping to our knees and scooping with our hands to catch the fragile, darting shellfish before they burrow out of reach. We're black with mud, our sandals are routinely sucked from our feet, and we let a disgraceful number of clams escape. But our bucket fills and the girls are in filthy ecstasy. Later, as we pull the Tioga onto the highway toward Seward, the air is rich with the scent of sautéing clams and the precious shower is layered with silt.

ENDLESS TWILIGHT
The RV has become my friend. I fill its tanks with water and dump its waste with the confidence of an AARP road warrior. At night, I line the windows with foil to thwart the midnight sun and we sleep in dark comfort. We've perfected the art of washing up in the small sink and of stowing the reliable goods before we move. It feels like home. But we love it all the more for having the chance to lock it up for two days, climb aboard a launch, and head out to Fox Island for a night of being pampered in semi-luxury at a wilderness lodge.