Day 13 -- Leaving Valdez

July 1, 2014

      Catrina was exhausted, after a night of preserving fish, with little to no rest. She struggled to stay awake, as there were still packed jars that needed sealed.

There was a great debate on whether we should attempt to fish the low tide again that morning, but as Catrina struggled to finish the canning process it was decided that we could simply not process any more.  We debated whether to stay one more night, but it was decided that we would drive to Homer before our Denali tour on the third of July.   

Yet, due to the canning process, we were not able to make it out of the campground by our ten o’clock check out time.  The campground was generous enough not to charge us extra, and we used the extra time to wash the fish smell off our dirty laundry in their clean facility. We paused to browse their gift shop and picked up a post card memento.  

The day was a miserable wet day. The misty rain covered the valley. We were not able to have the canning done, camp packed, laundry done, showers taken, before three o'clock rolled around on the clock.  We filled up for 4.71/gallon in Valdez and headed on down the road. 

At 3:45, we spotted a moose in the mist, but unable to snap a picture. 

At the junction of Highway 4 and 1, sits the bump in the road known as Glenallen.  We filled up here at 4.58/gallon.

  As we passed through the misty mountains, and the rain spotted our windshields, miles away from civilized restrooms, we suddenly found ourselves with the need for a pit stop. We thought we were following the road signs toward an outhouse, but instead found ourselves on an urgent quest down a gravel road that can only be ingrained in our memories as that dumb gravel road. 

       The narrow gravel road, named Alascom Road, wound back into the brush and eventually 3.3 miles back to a microwave tower.  There were no turnouts for large vehicles and the smaller turnouts were campsites, some taken with tents, but seemingly unattended.  We attempted to turn around in the muddy gravel.  Here, there were two accesses to North and South Knob Lake, stocked with rainbow trout, but we had no desire for adventures in the brush, or did we?  And, as we were eyeing the nearest shrubs, we saw the first of human life, as we were faced head on with a pick-up truck.  They were friendly enough to roll down the window and give us reliable directions to the nearest restroom back on Glenn Highway.

      It was just a short distance, to the real pit stop.  The walls were filled with graffiti, and there seemed to be no door between you and the outside, but, it was an appreciated stop.  

      

      We stopped again for a brief moment at the Caribou Creek Bridge and at the Recreation Area.   There are, at least, twenty-six creeks known as Caribou Creek throughout Alaska, but this particular one from a glacier in the Talkeetna Mountain southeast to the Matanuska River.  It was raining pretty hard at this point in the trip and the creek looked swollen with the muddy erosion-filled rain water. 

      The rain made what should have been incredible views disappear into nothingness.  The road should have had beautiful vistas, but were instead tedious after the long sleepless fully lit nights. 

     We stopped to take in the sight of Matanuska glacier.  
















The glacier heads twenty seven miles into the Chugach mountains.  The average glacier's width is two miles, but at it's terminus is four miles wide.  











      Over 18,000 years ago, the glacier reached all the way to the Palmer area.  However, it has remained fairly stable the last 400 years.  Even from the distance presented at the overlook, and the wet weather, the impressive blue crevices left us staring in amazement.  

      We were on the road again, pausing for a briefly to gaze across Lake Weiner, reflecting the hazy gray sky.

      We pulled into a parking spot to spot wildflowers and stretch our legs briefly. 


































































      We snapped a picture as we passed HAARP -- High Frequency Auroral Research Program. Started back in 1990 and jointly managed by the U.S. Navy and Air Force, they study the physical and electrical properties of the Earth's ionosphere, and its effect on navigational and communications equipment. The various equipment sticking out the top of this strange looking building include an HF transmitter and antenna array, and UHF ionospheric radar. 

    Next, due to the time of the day, we were much too late to tour the musk ox farm, but we traveled down the road in hopes to glimpse a musk-ox.  Since the debacle in the Yukon, we were not going to be able to see the attic circle, this would be our only chance to catch a glimpse of the rare beast.  

      The road was overgrown with Cow Parsnip, with the tall white blooms blocking the fields, but through the broad leaves we could spot a tall fence.  We peered through the seconds of clearings attempting to catch a glimpse of the elusive musk-ox.  We got to the gates of the farm and had to turn around, but we still kept searching the meadows for the musk-ox.  And finally we caught sight of a few, a great distance away, on the other side of the fence.  

     Musk-ox are raised in this farm for their fine undercoat, called qiviut.  Native Alaskans collect the hair by combing these animals in the spring.  They, then, use the hair to weave into garments to supplement their subsistence lifestyle.

     We stopped to gaze across the Matanuska River, with King Mountain, looming in the distance.

And as the night twilight rolled in, we rolled into Anchorage. 

       Anchorage is the largest city in Alaska, and located on the upper shores of Cook Inlet. From here, we would be driving the coastline into Homer.  







      We made a stop at Wal-mart, buying some sliced bread, a couple extra pillows, and a jug of lemonade.  It is always strange to take a trip, many miles away, only to wonder into Wal-mart, and only observe subtle changes.  







      Before we left town, we drove downtown, observing the city, the architecture and the landscaping.  We drove past a couple of their downtown parks, and all the way down to the Inlet, where through a chain link fence, and across the railroad tracks, were views of Cook Inlet, and we could almost make out the forms of mountains in the distance. 


     We stopped and filled up for 4.06/gallon.

     We continued out of town, on the Seward Highway.  passing an inflated indoor golfing range, that caught our attention. 

      The road wound down to the edge of the inlet, situated between the inlet and the edge of the Chugach mountains.  The Alaskan Railroad was all that divided us and the water.

      We drove by an area filled with rock climbers, some halfway up the the ledge.

      We stopped at McHugh Creek Recreation Area.  A very beautifully landscaped picnic area around a waterfall into a blue-green pool of water. 

      We drove past Baluga Point. Balugas are spotted sometimes here, easy to identify as the white whales.  But, as hard as we looked, we didn't spot any.  The tide wasn't right  for spotting them anyway, as they follow the schools of salmon and hooligan.

      Not far, we spotted the first of a herd of goats or dall sheep climbing the bluffs.  

They skipped along the cliffs, never stumbling.  The kids even pranced up and down the steep bluff, playing much more gracefully than either Jason or I could do.

      We stopped again at Bird Point Recreation Center, looking across the mudflats and into the distant water, in hopes of seeing the elusive beluga.  










       The genetically distinct belugas of the Cook Inlet remain distanced from the other four populations of beluga whales found in Alaska.  In the 1990s, half of the population disappeared and the Marine Mammal Protection Act declared them 'depleted'.  They have a very low birth rate, one pregnancy every two to three years, making it until an estimated 2025 for their population to recover to about sixty percent of their optimum levels.

      The original town of Girdwood stood, here, at the junction of the Alyska Highway. This particular area of Turnigan Arm sunk in the Good Friday earthquake of 1964.  As a result, many spruce trees' roots were exposed to saltwater, killing the trees.  Additionally, the town of Girdwood was moved 2.1 miles up the service road. 

      We filled up at the Girdwood Junction as we passed for 4.38/gallon. 

      We crossed the Twentymile River Bridge, as twilight was falling into a darker nightfall. The darker misty skies prevented us from the views of the Twentymile Glacier, where the river flows from.  

      We turned off the road at the Kenai Peninsula Visitor Information Center, a building resembling an old-fashioned train station, and offered trips on the Alaska Railroad.  We hoped to find a parking lot to bed down in, but decided their lights were too bright. 

      We went a little further and found another parking lot a little way further, just outside the abandoned town of Portage.  Deteriorating buildings and a rusting pick-up truck are all that remain of the little town of Portage.  After the earthquake, when the land started sinking, fifty to one hundred residents were displaced after the land sank six to twelve feet, causing the tide to flood the area.   

      However, in our little parking lot, we were snug as a bug in a rug, grabbing a small bite to eat, and getting some much needed rest.