I knew that the Arctic Valley Ski Lodge was at the end of Arctic Valley Road, so I was determined to find that. The road started off going through a golf course, which was somewhat unusual, at least from my perspective. I didn't bring my golf clubs up, but I think it would be rather fun to play a golf course up here. I know of two in Anchorage and they both looked fantastic. The road continued around a few bends and suddenly became gravel. Now, I have some trepidation about taking my car on gravel roads (which will become important later), mostly from a fear of some sort of breakdown upon hitting a bad rut or large stone or something. However, my tires are very good tires and the car is a good car, so we pressed on. Many other cars (some smaller than mine) passed us going the other way, so I knew it couldn't be too bad. The road started a series of switchbacks and headed up the side of the mountains along the "valley". At one point halfway up, the road swung around a wide curve and opened up to the west for a spectacular view of Anchorage from above.
I have seen many photos of Anchorage taken from the "usual" vantage points of the Glen Alps viewing platform (at the base of Flattop Mountain, where I first hiked) and Earthquake Park (which I will detail in a later post). I had never seen a photo taken from Arctic Valley Road. The photo does not do it justice--the city looks much further away in the photo than it actually seemed. The sweeping panorama also isn't captured. Where is Dad with his fancy camera lenses when I need him? Anyhow, we continued to follow the road until it came out at a trailhead next to the ski lodge.
The clouds were in (it was a marine layer day) and it was relatively cool. We were obviously above the treeline and the entire area had a barren appearance. This was combined with the ski lifts and lodge that were all closed for the season and sitting there, frozen in time, to create a very lonely landscape. We hiked around a little bit.
Up on the top of a nearby hill was what was apparently an abandoned Nike Missile Site from the Cold War. There were also a few phased array radars on a nearby hill. I thought it was kind of interesting, even if it was all abandoned. There were a few trails that claimed to head off to nearby peaks, but it was more hiking than we had planned for and so we headed back down. We stopped in Eagle River for dinner and, try as I might, still could not get a satisfactory photo that showed the niceness that I find in Eagle River...
So that was what was down Arctic Valley Road.
-----------------------------
Now, this Tuesday afternoon I decided to try and get an even rarer photo of Anchorage, this being a photograph from Point Mackenzie across the Cook Inlet from Anchorage. This is a VERY back-woods area with only one road heading out there. The point itself, while only a mile or so across the Cook Inlet from Anchorage, is some 35 miles south of Wasilla, the nearest town to the north and the city you have to go through to access the road to Point Mackenzie. There are future plans to build a bridge across the Knik Arm of the Cook Inlet here from downtown Anchorage to Point Mackenzie (which would shorten the driving time considerably) but this is considered by many people to be another Alaskan "Bridge to Nowhere". (The actual "Bridge to Nowhere" was to be located way down in southeast Alaska in the city of Ketchikan...).
I headed north and went to Wasilla instead of Palmer. I've touched briefly on Wasilla before when we went up to view Mount McKinley. Well known as the home of Sarah Palin and where she was once mayor, the city of Wasilla is far more de-centralized than Palmer. The entire city is "centered" on a several-mile-long stretch of the Parks Highway lined with stores, including many big box and mainstream stores and restaurants. I haven't really been able to find the residential area of Wasilla, but I know the city has nearly 10,000 residents, so they're there somewhere.
From Wasilla, I headed south on the Knik-Goose Bay Road, which heads down along the western coast of the inlet. It was a drive through forests and some boggy areas. It made sense...further west of there is the great delta of the Susitna River, which is just one huge swampy bog. This road went south for some 10 miles before there was a turnoff for the Mackenzie Point Road. This road was newly paved--in fact, there were signs indicating that the paving of it had just been completed last year. This made the drive very easy and pleasant.
There were many forests of what we learned on the way up were Black Spruce trees. I think that these are some of the ugliest trees in existence. They are skinny and scraggly and spindly and very darkly colored. They also have these balls of pine-like branches near the top that just look odd. I don't know...I find them sinister.
Anyhow, after a while (some 21 miles) the road headed down the hill back to the Cook Inlet. Alas, the pavement finally ended and it became a very, very rutty gravel road. I didn't want to venture down the steep hill on the last bit of the road as it went down to the Cook Inlet since the road looked absolutely horrendous, so I stayed at the top of the hill and got my picture.
And there is a view of Anchorage that very few have seen. With the mountains behind it and from across the inlet. On the way back, I noted in my topographic atlas that there was a road headed off of the Mackenzie Point Road called Burma Road that looked like it headed up through the modestly-large city of Big Lake on its way to a point west of Wasilla on the Parks Highway. I had seen the turnoff for that and decided that this might be an interesting, alternate route back up. So, I took the turnoff.
A mile in the road became gravel. And narrowed considerably. But, according to my atlas the road went through, even becoming the main road in Big Lake, so I knew that it had to become paved again. The gravel wasn't that bad, either. It was very well-crushed and there were few ruts. I passed several cars going the opposite way, so I knew it had to go somewhere.
The road appeared to have originally been blazed by what I think is some big lawnmower for trees. There are all these old tree stumps and tree debris on both sides of the road in these wide swaths. Beyond these cleared-out swaths were thick, dark spruce forests. Several enterprising aspen or poplar trees had sprung up in these mowed-down strips, though, so I knew there had to have been a few years since this was carved.Every so often there were also cross "streets" that were other gravel paths off into the forest. Each intersection was very officially marked with street signs and a stop sign, which struck me as so odd--I really felt like I was in the middle of nowhere, but this was laid out like a normal, suburban subdivision before any houses had been put in. So strange.
There were a few houses along the way, including apparently one with some person who races sled dogs. I enjoyed the homemade "Sled Dog Crossing" sign at one point on the road.
This drive went on for 45 minutes down gravel roads. I was really starting to get worried--it didn't look that long in the atlas, but the gravel kept me to a speed of about 30 mph and the road was narrow and winding. Remember my hesitation about driving on gravel roads before? I NEVER would have wanted to do anything like this had I know. It felt like it took hours. And I just kept pushing on for some reason, even as doubts about the road going through where I thought it would really started coming to mind. I had no cell phone service, I took out the GPS but it refused to lock onto the satellites, so...I pressed on. Makes sense?
Finally the road became paved and I suddenly entered the "city" of Big Lake. So much happiness! I'm sure that was not the way most people were introduced to Big Lake. The "city" turned out to be a long stretch of houses and cabins along the shores of a very, very large lake. There didn't appear to be an organized downtown at all--just a bunch of resort-style houses. I was just glad to be on paved roads again.
That was the furthest into "back country" Alaska I have been. There were a lot of lots for sale on that gravel road as well, for some strange reason. At least, I saw a lot of realty signs. Apparently people want to develop it. It just felt way out in the middle of nowhere to me...I rejoined the Parks Highway west of Wasilla and then headed back towards Anchorage. The marine layer had moved in again, so a low stratus cloud deck had moved in. You can see the base of the cloud deck as compared to height of the mountains.
Looking back across the Cook Inlet (ironically, towards Point Mackenzie) from the Anchorage side, you can see in the distance this isolated mountain called Mount Susitna. The native (and common local) term for the mountain is the "Sleeping Lady" and you can kind of see her in this picture--the profile of the mountain really does kind of look like a sleeping lady.
Of course, my real surprise was when I got back to our apartment and went to park in my parking space. I almost turned in, but then I stopped short.
A moose! For those of you who have been asking if I had seen any wildlife, here you go. Right at my parking space. I parked further down in the lot and as I walked back by towards our apartment, I tried to get a better picture, but the moose was content to hide in the tree and keep munching away.
It was an older moose than the one that haunts the woods behind the forecast office. And this moose was certainly not aggrivated by people being around. Definitely not like the moose at the forecast office. The story of the forecast office moose is best told in person, though. Ask me about it some time and I will share. This moose appeared to be peaceful and content and that's the way we like them to be. But it's just a sample of the creatures that live in the dark forests right outside of my apartment up here. Pretty amazing.
I bet that moose looked a lot different up close than when you see them on T.V. (as in the opening credits of "Northern Exposure.") Hope the car's still in good condition.
ReplyDelete