I started up shooting straight up towards Palmer on the Glenn Highway, but I took this exit for the Old Glenn Highway, which is the last exit before Palmer-Wasilla. This Old Glenn Highway loop (according to my Milepost driving guide book) is a "16 mile scenic back route into Palmer that takes you through the heart of the old Matanuska Valley agricultural area."
Upon turning down it, I though...ok, this could be scenic. I wouldn' t call it agricultural, but it is scenic.... The road wound around through those forests for many miles. After a few miles into it, I noticed this bright yellow motorcycle coming up fast behind me. Very fast. There was an oncoming truck but the motorcycle still pulled out into the passing lane and zipped around me, barely avoiding getting hit by the truck which had slammed on its breaks (as had I...). I have never seen a motorcycle move so fast... Anyhow, the road continued to wind through the forests before coming out on a bridge over the Knik River.
I liked this bridge far better than the one on the interstate-quality Glenn Highway that goes over the Knik River. Mount Matanuska, a prominent point at this end of the Chugach Range, sits on the horizon there. At this point, as my radio was still tuned to Anchorage stations, they began the traffic report, concluding with..."...and traffic is still somewhat slow through the S-curves on the Glenn Highway north of town. We are also getting reports that the Palmer police are currently engaged in a high-speed pursuit with a moorcyclist...so be cautious if you're driving in Palmer at this time...". That HAD to be the motorcycle that had just passed me. So the law finally caught up with him...
Anyhow, I arrived in the city of Palmer again. Palmer is a nice little town, fewer big-box stores than Wasilla and more of a small-town kind of a place, even though their populations are about equal. It has been told that when the Matanuska Valley agricultural area was first settled, the center of which is the Palmer-Wasilla area, the original settlers were people from the northern parts of Minnesota, Wisconsin and the upper peninsula of Michigan. And, you know...driving through downtown Palmer feels a lot like driving through one of those small Wisconsin towns you'll drive through anywhere in the state--it's kind of difficult to describe, but it's that kind of town. Just with mountains in the background. Anyhow, the agricultural region there is known for its lettuce, cabbage, pumpkins, potatoes and corn. Because of the very long daylight hours, often the vegeables will grow to unusually large sizes. I've been told that at the Alaska State Fair in the fall (which is also held in Palmer), there are often world-record setting heads of lettuce, cabbage and pumpkins for their shear size. Unfortunately I won't be around to see that, but it's interesting to learn what other effects all of this daylight has on things.Next I continued down the main Glenn Highway out of Palmer, going past the Old Glenn Highway exit I had previously taken and now taking the next exit, one for "Thunderbird Falls". Outside of the shared name with Lake Thunderbird east of Norman, Oklahoma, the thought of a waterfall intrigued me. So I took the exit and parked at the parking area for the falls. I recently puchased an Alaska State Parks parking pass for $40 so I no longer have to pay the $5 fee every time I park at a trailhead or any parking area in Chugach (or any) state park. There was a 3/4 mile long trail advertised to go and see the falls, so I took my camera and went in search of it.
This trail has the most mosquitoes I have yet to encounter in Alaska. I haven't had any problems with mosquitoes in the city, nor on any of my other hikes. Perhaps it has something to do with the urban effects or the elevation. Whatever the reason, there were now mosquitoes. I passed many people on the trail, ranging from groups of teenagers to parents with small children. It was a popular hike, apparently, despite the mosquitoes. The trail climbs for the first half mile until you are on top of the gorge overlooking whatever creek this is (Thunderbird Creek, maybe?)
The trail continued for what felt like a lot more than 3/4 mile. The last part of it, though, was on a wooden boardwalk of sorts, finally ending at a big platform where you could see the falls...
And that little area in the middle was all that you could see. You couldn't see the base of the falls, you couldn't really even see the top of the falls--all you could see was a little swath of the water falling down. While pleasant, I had been expecting something more, so I was slightly disappointed. Nevertheless, it was a good hike--got me out of the car for a bit, at least. I walked back rather quickly, taking advantage of the downhill incline and trying to stay ahead of the mosquitoes.
After getting back on the Glenn Highway, the next exit as I headed towards Anchorage was for Mirror Lake. This exit took me onto a parallelling section of the Old Glenn Highway which ended at another fee parking area for Mirror Lake. I didn't stop here, but, since it was a rather warm day, there were many people on the shores of the lake and other people swimming. It looked like a very pleasant, clear lake at the base of the Chugach with many houses and cabins along the shores. A nice spot to go on a hot day.
The next exits on the way down were for Peters Creek. From the Glenn Highway, this looks like a run-down Chevron gas station with a small restaurant next to it and a few roads going back into the woods. I followed the main road back into the woods--and found myself in a very pleasant, suburban neighborhood. Large lawns, nice-looking houses, kids riding bikes down the streets--this looked like a very pleasant place to live. I didn't get very many photos of it that really show it, but...I was just not expecting such a sprawling suburban area randomly out here. Bordered by the Glenn Highway and the Chugach Mountains on the east and Cook Inlet on the west, this entire hillside was one big subdivision.
There was a fun playground and baseball field next to the local elementary school back there as well. I thought about how similar it was to the playgrounds we see in Roscoe or in Norman, but this one had a big mountain behind it. Or, if you were to look the other way, there were kids playing baseball with the sparkling waters of the Cook Inlet down the hill behind them. A very normal subdivision in an unusually scenic location.
Next were the exits for Eagle River, the largest northern suburb of Anchorage. At over 20,000 people, it's fairly populous, at least by Alaskan standards. I really liked the city of Eagle River. The main Glenn Highway goes west of town and you really can't see the town from the highway...just a bunch of trees with occasional glimpses of buildings behind. I took the Old Glenn Highway through town, which ends up being more or less the main street. It has a very nice central business district with a good blend (at least to my tastes) of all of the modern stores and fast food restuarants with local stores mixed in. The surrounding hillsides and foothills of the Chugach are covered in subdivisions and houses going up. There are also plenty of nice subdivisions just off the Old Glenn Highway. Eagle River sits at the mouth of the Eagle River Valley heading back into the Chugagh Range. There is a road, Eagle River Road (yes, they weren't very creative with their names and named EVERYTHING "Eagle River") which parallels the Eagle River way back into the valley to a nature center deep inside the Chugach Range.
Driving down the Eagle River Road was another fantastically scenic drive. You stay above the river on the hillside most of the time but sometimes the road dives down to be next to the river for a while. The valley is broad and tree-filled with the steep slopes of the Chugach rising on both sides. The steep slopes at times make for some very dramatic driving.
The road then ends at the nature center and trailhead. It's another parking fee area, but I didn't stop here either. I plan to go back soon and hike some of their trails, though. Off in the distance is the easy-to-guess Eagle Mountain and apparently out of sight but near its base is the Eagle Glacier, which is the source of the Eagle River.
Driving back is just as scenic as driving out. The hillsides are just covered with dense trees and it looks like this rolling carpet of green-ness. Very beautiful. With all of this greenery, it actually looks somewhat tropical at times. Joe even mentioned on the drive in that it almost felt like were were driving through Costa Rica or something at times because of all the greenery on the lower slopes on the mountains and in the valleys.
The road then, of course, pulls back out into Eagle River. The Eagle River Road is about 15 miles long so it takes around 45 minutes to drive out and back on it. In theory, in this photo you're looking out over the city of Eagle River, but you can't really see it. Also, by this point it was almost 9 PM...and still plenty of light out, with the sun still plenty high in the sky. Such is life here. The city of Eagle River is far more scenic than any of the photos I had of it. Which is a shame because I really liked the way the city looked at the base of the mountains and the entrance of the valley. If I had to live in Alaska, I think I would want to live in Eagle River.
There was one more exit on the Glenn Highway for Arctic Valley Road, but that was so close to Anchorage that I figured I could save that for another day. And thus ended my little foray into the northern suburbs of Anchorage along the Glenn Highway.In other small news, last night some of us went out to a bar in downtown Anchorage called Humpy's with three guys we had met who just climbed Mount McKinley. One was from Britain, another from Australia, and the last from New York and New Jersey. That was a fun evening, between hearing their stories of mountain climbing and accidentally dropping their bags and watching them go whizzing away down the slope and off a cliff...to hearing about all of the places they had been to, like flying into the capital city of Chad in Africa and them having to divert all of the city's electricity for five minutes just to power the runway lights...to my trying to explain to them just what is radar meteorology and how a radar works... It was a good evening. I learned that there's a whole lot of the world that I haven't seen and a lot of places that I still would like to go to. All from a bar in downtown Anchorage.
Now that things have somewhat settled in here, I've been able to make arrangements for some more out-there excursions in the weeks to come. Look for reports coming from Fairbanks, Juneau, Homer, Seward, and Valdez in the weeks to come as I begin exploring some further-away bits of Alaska. Should be lots of fun.
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