Windshield Time
Today is the longest driving day of our entire trip. Our mission is to spend the next two days driving
the 360 miles from Fairbanks to Valdez in order to catch the Saturday morning ferry
back to Whittier and the Kenai Peninsula. We are doing most of the trip today going the
240 miles to Glenallen on the south bound Richardson Highway.
The breakfast staff has not improved their performance over
yesterday but would we complain? Never!
The coffee is burned and mostly empty (that sort of goes together) but we have
more in our room and we get enough to eat. We’re packed and ready to leave at the crack
of 10:00 which leaves us plenty of time for our four-hour drive.
We make a quick stop in North Pole to mail the boys a
postcard. Santa has left that household,
but it’s still fun. As they say, once
you stop believing in Santa you get socks for Christmas. This two-day drive is all about the scenery. We will start looking at the Alaska Range
ahead of us and later in the trip, shift to the Wrangell-St. Elias Range. We are surrounded by raging glacial rivers
and in and out of boreal forests and shaky black spruce permafrost. The next stop is Delta Junction, the meeting
of the Richardson Highway and the 1422 mile Alaska Highway that starts way down
in British Columbia. John gets a chicken
club sandwich at the local IGA store in town and Mary brought leftovers from
last night’s dinner. We’ll find a scenic
place for a picnic further down the road. We drive 100 feet on the Alaska highway so we
can say we drove to the end of it.
For the first time on the trip Mary is behind the
wheel. John gets to gawk at all the scenery
and is surprised that this is what Alaska looks like instead of the butt end of
a Winnebago. He points to a scenic
turnoff and tells Mary that we should check it out and as we pull in Mary says,
“we might even see a moose,” as she points to the moose about 30 feet away from
us. The moose chomping on the shrubbery is
our cue to dig out our fancy lunch to enjoy with our chili cheese Fritos and
bottles water.
The Richardson Highway parallels the Trans-Alaska pipeline
all the way to Valdez. It pops in and
out of the scenery, sometimes gone for many miles before it appears again. It will also switch sides of the road depending
on the topography and where the water is flowing. It seems unobtrusive to us but we can’t speak
for the caribou. We are also joined by
the Gulkana River. This is one of the
major tributaries of the Copper River, the 10th longest river in the
U.S. The Copper is known for its great
salmon that will venture as much as 300 miles upstream to spawn. The word is that the sockeye take on the
Copper is down this year and the pinks won’t be running for another month. We still haven’t seen a salmon that wasn’t on
a plate.
John takes over the driving again as we finish our drive
into Glennallen. Our lodging for tonight
is the Glennallen Rustic B&B Resort.
That is a lot of words to make sure you know what you are getting into.
The place is an old house that the owners (Cynthia and Eric) converted into a
B&B with 6 rooms and are still continuing the process as they are building
another structure deeper into the property. We get the “Fancy” room which has the plastic chandelier
and the clawfoot tub. No TV and sketchy
Wi-Fi but friendly hosts make up for a lot of sins.
We take a drive through town and then out to Simpson
Overlook for a great view of the Copper River Valley and on to the mountains
beyond. This is gorgeous country and the
isolation makes it
This trip is all about the scenery so even if we spend it in
the car we are still accomplishing our number one goal. Off to bed.
Today’s Observation:
When you look down a rural Alaskan driveway there is always a pick-up
truck and either a bobcat or backhoe. There is also probably a 40-year-old plane at
the airport.
Uh oh. Better get used to road food...The Glacier Brewhouse had a fire June 29 and had to evacuate. Hope it's still standing when you get back to Anchorage. April and I have been to the Copper River with my parents and dipnetted 90 sockeyes in one night (Alaskan residents are allowed 30 per net). We cleaned them by the swollen Copper River in Chitna until 1 a.m., with the sun shining high in the sky. - Marc
ReplyDeleteThe sockeyes were slim this year and the silvers aren't due for another couple weeks. Bummer. We got our two passes at the Glacier Brewhouse so can't feel all that bad.
Delete"cooked a cat" Dana found that offensive, I found bad Mexican food offensive. How can you screw up a Chimmy? Next time Rubios. Bummer about the Glacier Brewhouse. Keep it on the road. Jose
ReplyDeleteI should have said the cat was much better. There was an old white Alaskan in the kitchen who couldn't spell Mexico -- I think that's why they called it Latin.
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