Alaska Day 22, Another Day, Another Glacier

Day 22

 Saturday June 23

     I tell ya , I couldn’t resist one last visit to the Valdez waterfront…

    And one more visit to Glacier View Park, where the car’s thermometer was reading forty-three degrees. 

      Always something you want to see up ahead...

      The drive up from Valdez to Glennalen is a little over two hours, not counting stops for photography and road construction.  Though this one had me stopped right across from that abandoned convenience store with the cheap gas.

     Outside the town of Eureka, there are a serious of scenic overlooks of the town’s namesake, the Eureka Glacier…

     Further up the road is the Matanuska Glacier.  The state has a small park down the road a few miles with a trail that leads to an overlook.  Or, you can drive down a two mile dirt road, cross a seemingly questionable bridge, pay your fee and drive down another mile of semi-graded dirt road and walk down to the glacier.

     Just like at the Root Glacier, you can’t rent crampons.  They do guided tours and there seemed to be quite a lot of them.  I simply chose to walk out as far as you can go without a guide. Unlike Root Glacier, you’re mostly on the moraine and thus there is plenty of gravel, most of it semi-embedded in the ice.   It made for pretty good footing if you watched your step.    

     These are scattered around the glacier.  The rock acts as insulation and the ice melts around the base.

     Seen on the drive west…

     Driving along, another moose and calf calmly crossed the road up ahead.  I grabbed the camera and tried to get a shot, but wasn't fast enough.  

     Eventually, I pulled into Wasilla and the Alaska’s Select Inn.  It’s a smaller place, but the owners obviously take good care of it.  As an added bonus, they have a guest laundry.  Yes, that’s how I spent my late afternoon and early evening.  But let’s be honest, on a month long trip, you do eventually start running out of important things.

     In another edition of First World Problems,  Only one washing machine was working.  When it finished it’s cycle, I started pulling out the laundry to stick it into the dryer.  It was sopping wet.  I wound up wringing out as much moisture as possible, and it still took three cycles to get dry. Ugh.

     By the time the laundry was finished, it was a little late for me to eat.  But, I still drove down to Last Frontier Brewery for a cold Black Diamond Dark Lager before calling it a day.

     I saw this on a pawn shop in downtown Wasilla…

Coming Up,

Climbing the Butte...the hard way