We began by heading north on the Glenn Highway out of Anchorage like usual, only heading east through Palmer and staying on the Glenn Highway. When I drove in originally, I mentioned that the Matanuska Valley was extremely scenic, but had no pictures at the time to show of it. I took a few this time, but it was rather cloudy and the valley didn't have the magic spectacular-ness I remember from my first time there.
At the head of the valley is the Matanuska Glacier, one of the most accessible glaciers in Alaska. The state park service claims that there are only three glaciers accessible by road in Alaska-he Matanuska Glacier east of Palmer, the Worthington Glacier north of Valdez and the Exit Glacier north of Seward. We would get to see two of these today, starting with the Matanuska Glacier.
A lot of white water rafting trips start in the Matanuska River just below the end of the glacier. Apparently thousands of years ago the glacier used to extend all the way to Palmer, some 50 miles west of its current terminus, but over the years it has retreated. We didn't drive up to the glacier, but did stop at an overlook to take the photo above.The road then continued out into the widening Copper River basin, between the Chugach Mountains to the south, the Talkeetna Mountains to the north, the Alaska Range to the northeast and the Wrangell Mountains to the east. The valley really widens out as you approach the city of Glennallen, which is some 150 miles from Anchorage. The area is covered in black spruce forests and dotted with glacial lakes.
Normally, on a clear day, you can see the massive, snow-covered volcanoes of the Wrangell Mountains on the eastern horizon. Alas, major wildfires in the Alaskan interior made it so hazy that we couldn't see any of those mountains. We turned south on the Richardson Highway to Valdez at the city of Glennallen, which has nothing really in it except for a few gas stations and some administrative buildings. The first part of this drive south was spend trying to see any of the Wrangell Mountains. All we could see was the entrance sign for Wrangell-Saint Elias National Park, the largest national park in the country.
Wrangell-Saint Elias National Park is mostly a wilderness park, and it covers almost the entire southeastern corner of the main body of the state--all the way down to near Yakutat. Tomorrow the plan is to drive down one of the roads into the park, so I'll leave further descriptions until then.
As we headed south, Matt got really hungry and wanted to stop some place to eat. Of course, this being the middle of nowhere in Alaska, there literally are no services whatsoever for the next hundred miles or so. However, there was a sign for a loop road through the small village of Copper Center, and a sign advertised food, so I hoped to find a gas station with a Subway or something in it for him. The road looped around, past some houses and a few small stores, but no real food places. It was looking like Matt was out of luck. As the road swung back around, there was a junction in it where the main road continued on it to the right, but there was a side road with a green sign and an arrow pointing down it that said "Loop Road". I knew that we were on the "Copper Center Loop Road" so I assumed I was supposed to go that way, though my major instinct was to continue along the road I was going down. So I took the "Loop Road" and immediately thought it was going to just dead end somewhere and I had taken a wrong turn. Then, we came around a corner and saw this:A very random, well-kept "Roadhouse" motel/general store/restaurant with several people stopped there. I was immediately satisfied that this was a decent place and we went in and had lunch. I had a very good roast beef sandwich with potato salad on the side. Such a random place to stop...and to think I almost didn't take the "Loop Road". This Roadhouse seemed to attract more locals than tourists or travellers, which was also different from most of the Alaska places I had been to. We were amused to sit in their small dining area and overhear bits of conversation from the people in the kitchen or out in the lobby. Conversations like,
"Hey...do you know whose black dog that is?"
"What? No...I've never seen that dog before..."
"Well, he keeps trying to get in the back screen door."
"Do you have your paintball gun?"
"Sure do...but I don't...hey, wait a minute...didn't some lady say she had lost her dog earlier today?"
"Oh that's right...don't remember who, though. Go next door and ask Mrs. Winslow. She was in for breakfast this morning and might remember that."
"All right. I see her in her garden now..."
Seems like such a mundane conversation, but it only further emphasizes just how random stopping here was. We didn't know this place existed until we happened upon it, and the food was decent and we were entertained. Pleasant stop. They even had one of those old-fashioned type gas stations across the street that was actually a working gas station instead of a deserted, abandoned shell of a building.
After finishing lunch, we followed the "Loop Road" around, which rejoined with the "Copper Center Loop Road" and then headed back to the Richardson Highway. We continued south Valdez and entered the Chugach Mountains. Now, the far western edge of the Chugach Mountains is in Anchorage, so this is a very "familiar" range to us. This was the eastern part of the mountains, though, and I thought this part was a bit more scenic.
Many mountainous vistas.
Ironically, the Trans-Alaska Pipeline actually parallels the highway all the way into Valdez. However, it's almost entirely buried at this point, since they don't have to worry about melting permafrost this far south. After driving up for a ways, we came to a turnoff for the Worthington Glacier. We thought this was worth the stop and we turned off.
Though it's not the most spectacular glacier, it still is rather impressive. They have several short, paved trails leading to viewing platforms near the glacier's base. From there, several small footpaths are visible in the glacial till surrounding the glacier that head up to and along the glacier. Loose rocks made these trails a bit interesting to follow, but we decided to head up a short ways down one of the paths we could see to get a closer view.
You hear a lot about glacial moraines, particularly if you live in southeastern Wisconsin. For instance, Kettle Moraine State Park is full of hills that are the moraines left by the glaciers after the last ice age. Moraines are just hills of soil and gravel that build up on the edges of glaciers and then are left as the glacier retreated. The glaciers that covered Wisconsin were much, much more massive than our little Worthington Glacier here. However, the mechanics are the same, and there were several small moraine hills around the base of the glacier.
There were also a lot of streams all filled with meltwater rushing down around the glacier.
After a bit of exploring, we continued heading south on the Richardson Highway toward Valdez. We started climbing to Thompson Pass, the highest summit on the highway as it goes through the Chugach Range. While only half as high in altitude as the Atigun Pass through the Brooks Range up north, it's still a decently tall pass at over 2,000 feet. This location is also one of the snowiest places in the United States during the winter.
The pipeline also crosses this pass (though it is underground). From here, it's all downhill to the ocean, so the oil in the pipe is just carried by gravity all the way to the end of the pipeline at the port of Valdez. We, however, decended a series of wide switchbacks along the road decending the other side of the pass. It was enough of an incline that I didn't have to use the accelerator on my car for a full five miles on the other side. You can see these odd, bent poles on both sides of the road. These are to guide snowplows that have to try and keep this road clear in the winter. The cross parts come all the way over the stripes on the edges of the roads so the snowplow drivers don't get too close to the edges.
At the base of the decent, we entered a river canyon called Keystone Canyon.
It reminded me a whole lot of the Big Thompson River Canyon in Colorado, the one that famously flooded in the 1970s. It was just the road and this raging river with steep canyon walls on either side.
The canyon only lasted a few miles, but it was fun to drive in and there were several waterfalls coming down the canyon walls. However, the road soon began winding down towards Valdez. A few miles further and we could see the massive Alyeska Pipeline facility that marked then end of the Trans-Alaska Pipeline. We couldn't get up there because there were security gates. However, you can see all the big storage tanks where they store the oil until tanker ships can come and pick it up.
Of course, many people remember the Exxon-Valdez Oil Spill in 1989. Yes--the Valdez part of that ship's name comes from this port city--Valdez. The actual oil spill itself occured just a little ways from Valdez out in Prince William Sound. The area is as cleaned up as it can be now, but I'm told that for years you could still find oil slicks out on the sound from that disaster. Many of the beaches near here still have darker veins of sand where there's still oil mixed in that had washed ashore. Just some background there. This visit out here also means that I've been to both the beginning and the end of the Trans-Alaska Pipeline. It seems so familiar now...
We entered the city of Valdez and it was...a lot smaller than I had expected. It has a population of over 3,000 and is slightly larger than Seward. However, it's clear that this is a fishing and oil industry town and not as much of a tourist town. They had one street by their harbour with some touristy shops and tour places. More on that tomorrow, though. We ate dinner at a nearby restaurant that advertised the "best New York-style pizza in town". I don't think there was much competition, but the pizza was decent. We got to our Best Western hotel on the waterfront and are going to bed early for our trip back into the Wrangell-Saint Elias National Park tomorrow.
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