Gakona to Anchorage, Journey’s End

Sunday, July 1

At breakfast in our hosts’ log home’s great room, there was lots to look at.  Picture windows overlooked the Copper River and the log walls were decorated with trophies of Alaskan wildlife of every description. It was like being in a taxidermist’s gallery!

The day was cool and cloudy as we set out for Anchorage on the Glenn Highway.  It was evident that we were traveling through beautiful country, and the cloud cover did not make for drop-dead views, but the day had its notable moments, nonetheless.  At a rest stop, we encountered a couple from Wasilla who were out hunting fossils and gold in the area. As has been common on this trip, the conversation was about where we’d been, where we’re from, etc. When Tom said he was from Scottsdale, they said that they had a daughter who’d recently bought a house there – Sarah Palin!!   All in our party were relieved that no inappropriate remarks had been made when they’d said they were from Wasilla!  For the rest of the day, right up until dinner at the airport tonight, one or another of us would just chuckle and say, “Sarah Palin’s parents!”, and we’d all laugh.

We made an interesting stop in Palmer, about thirty miles north of Anchorage.  The Palmer Colony was begun during the New Deal as an attempt to resettle destitute farmers from the northern Midwestern states on homesteads in what was hoped would be Alaska’s most fertile agricultural area.  There was a fascinating small museum dedicated to the establishment of the colony and many of the original buildings remain in the town.  The outlying farms look as if they could be in Upstate New York or the Midwest and the area did, indeed, prove to be an agricultural powerhouse.  The enormous vegetables (127-pound cabbages, etc.) that win prizes at the state fair and show up in news photos each year come from this part of the state.

From Palmer, we dropped our bags at the Anchorage airport, returned our rental car without questions and spent some time in a pub downtown, and then headed to the airport for dinner and our (very) red-eye flights to New York and Portland.  Jim and Donna have been great partners on this adventure and we all agree that this unforgettable month has flown by all too quickly.

Sunset from our cabin near Denali National Park on Saturday Morning at 12:30AM

The Denali Highway

Saturday, June 30

The “bible” of Alaska’s (few) roads is Milepost, an annual, phone-book sized description of every mile of every major (and semi-major) road in the state; we’ve used it throughout our travels this month.  Today’s drive, on the Denali Highway from Cantwell to Paxson (population 16!), was covered in minute detail, with many of the views along the way described as “huge.”  And so they were.

 We spent five and a half hours driving the 130 miles of the unpaved highway, and it wasn’t only road conditions that made our progress so slow. Reputedly one of Alaskans’ favorite roads, the scenery is spectacular.  (It just occurred to me that I should go back through this trip’s posts to see how many times that last phrase has been repeated.) Most of the day was bright and clear and the views of the peaks of the Alaska Range, glaciers, lakes, meadows were poster-perfect.  There was a photo op around every bend and we tried not to miss a single one. 

By the time we reached Paxson, the skies had darkened and we had a little rain; we’ve gotten used to rain moving in and moving on in pretty short order in many of the places we’ve traveled on this trip. We continued on to Gakona, more an intersection than a town, where we have great log cabin rooms facing the Copper River. 

(From Tom. One of the requirements of car rental in Alaska is that you agree not to drive on any unpaved roads. That is nearly impossible unless you spend all your time in Anchorage since getting to most interesting places usually involves an unpaved road.  Having driven 130 miles on unpaved road today, Jim and I spent a few minutes at our new digs running our hands over the car and rinsing off the dirt that had accumulated. As we started the task someone walked by and said, "Looks like you were on a gravel road". Hope we pass inspection tomorrow. )

This is our last night in Alaska, and we’re all delighted with what we’ve seen and happy with how smoothly our travel partnership has gone. With late-night flights tomorrow, we’ll have all day to drive back to Anchorage and revel in what Milepost assures us will be yet another route full of that spectacular scenery we’ve found at every turn this month.