Wide Spot on the Road

We left the Palmer Elks Club on Saturday morning, and after stopping to dump our waste water at a gas station in Palmer, we headed east toward Glennallen. Our route from here is Hwy 1 to Glennallen, then south on Hwy 4 to Valdez. I love it! All of the state highways we’ve been on are single digits. We have five days to get to Valdez, a distance of about 260 miles. No long days on this stretch!

After stopping at several roadside rests and scenic overlooks, we decided to spend the first night at an overlook with a great view of the Matanuska Glacier. It was 11 AM, but that didn’t matter. We had a large paved parking lot that was pretty level; restrooms, an informational kiosk and as I said, a great view of the glacier. For the first time in several days, the sun came out shortly after we arrived. Hooray!

The glacier is about 37 miles long. About 18,000 years ago, it reached to Palmer, about 60 miles away. The glacier’s average width is about two miles, but at the terminus, it’s about four miles wide. It has remained fairly stable for the past 400 years.

Once we’d settled in and had lunch, we drove another mile up the road to a side road that leads to the glacier, itself. We paid a fee to enter, but drove to within ¼ mile of the glacier. From there, we walked to the glacier, and then following a line of traffic cones, we walked onto the glacier for another ¼ mile or so. It was really spectacular! Parts are covered with earth and rocks, so it seems like you’re just walking on dirt, but then you realize that beneath a few inches of dirt is the ice, and it’s 10 to 15 feet thick. From there, we walked on the ice, itself. The surface was crunchy; it made lots of noise as we walked. It’d be hard to sneak up on someone or something with all the noise. There were little rivulets of water flowing down the cracks and crevasses; enough to form a river flowing from under the front edge of the glacier.

Sunday morning we packed up and headed out for our second strenuous day in a row. This time we traveled over 70 miles. Wow! We stopped to view Sheep Mountain which is a no-hunting area for Dall Sheep, which are numerous in the area. We saw several while we were stopped. Sheep Mountain is very colorful. It has gypsum and iron deposits, which cause the soil to appear as various shades of yellow and red. We stopped for lunch at the Mendeltna Creek Lodge, a historic lodge on the creek. We ate on the deck overlooking the creek and had a very nice meal.

We decided to spend Sunday night about 13 miles west of Glennallen at a beautiful campground with a creek winding by each campsite. Very nice, indeed. We had a couple of rain showers in the afternoon, but plenty of sun in between.

On Monday, we’re headed toward the Copper River Valley and the small community of Kenny Lake, where we’ll probably spend a couple of nights before continuing on to Valdez.