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Published: March 11th 2018
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After my shift, I decided to try to go to Eagle River Nature Center, north of Anchorage. It looks like a great place for out door activities, and I've wanted to go there. My main hesitation was that the rental car I had was a Chevy Malibu; I didn't think about the roads when I rented the car. Major mistake! I am only one person, I just need an economy car to get around...NOPE!
Now may be the time to share some things I've observed about driving in Anchorage in the winter.....
• They really don't seem to plow much...the snow gets packed down and people drive on it. As it warms up, parts of the road clear, and parts don't.
• Though they don't use salt or chemical de-icer on the roads, driving (and sun) tends to break down the snow pack/ice in places. They don't have pot-holes like at home, but they have what I think of as "ice pot-holes." Where the ice and hard pack have broken down, you get major valleys/ruts between the icy patches, causing similar bouncing, but this is from ice down to bare pavement! (They put cinders or something down on sidewalk ice
to give you some "grip on the slip," but frankly that doesn't help a lot. People wear big boots with major gripper bottoms, and you're kind of on your own!
• The plowing that they do piles snow up at the curbs, of course...and it can be a challenge seeing into the road from a side street or driveway past a 5' pile of snow!
• You have to allow plenty of space when pulling out into traffic or turning at a light...Much of the road is packed snow, some of which had melted in place then refrozen, so snow-covered ice is common.
• When driving down a road, it's not uncommon to see the yellow dotted line down the middle of the only clear lane in the road!
So when I decided to drive to Eagle River, I hoped it would be fine. The turn-off from the highway to the Nature Center is about 30 minutes from my hotel; when I turned off the highway, it was 9 miles further. As I drove, I noted carefully the road conditions. It seemed typical of what I'd been driving on for a week in Anchorage - snow-covered, occasional ice, with clear pavement
in between. The difference on this road was that it was hilly with lots of curves. I had my GPS with me, and it was counting down the miles to the nature center. By the time I was 2 miles from the destination, the conditions were worse, and it was getting later in the day. I expected that if I spent a couple hours at the Nature Center, the roads could be worse when I left. And I was driving a Malibu, so not the greatest traction and weight distribution! Though I regretted it, I turned around and headed back to Anchorage, rather than ruin a good trip with a stupid mistake!
I stopped at a store on the way back, and low and behold, across the road was one of the snow dumping areas. I had heard at the start of my visit that when Anchorage does plow the roads, they haul the snow out to a "snow dump" (that's where they retrieved the snow for the Ceremonial Start and the Running of the Reindeer for the Fur Rondy). It was pretty amazing to see huge dump trucks hauling snow there, and front end-loaders clearing space for more dump trucks!
When I got back to the hotel, I called Heidi and we went to Spenard Roadhouse for dinner! We both ordered grilled cheese with bacon and apple slices...YUM!
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