Tok to Anchorage

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April 30 - Anchorage

The year was 2000. Scott, Doug Roberts and I were driving south toward Anchorage from Glenallen. Doug and I had both bought digital cameras in the preceding year, and luckily only one of them had been stolen three weeks earlier when our vehicle was broken into at the Crescent Lake trailhead. This southward drive was the final day of our first Alaska trip, a one month long adventure. I was driving and Doug was calling out requests to stop for photo ops. Every mile. What might have been a two-hour drive was stretching to the point of making me wonder about making our flight that evening to the lower 48. The scenery on this drive is so grand that it is difficult to just drive through and enjoy it. One has to stop and admire it, breathe it, photograph it, exclaim to companions about it.

Today we drove Tok to Anchorage. No vistas in Austria or Switzerland surpass its beauty. Of my half dozen previous trips to Alaska, none were at this time of year when all the landscape is completely snow covered. I will not be able to do justice to the grandeur, the majesty, the towering, quiet beauty of this landscape by trying to put it into words. I will say only this: before you shed these mortal coils, come here, see this.

A dozen caribou timed their crossing of the highway so we could stop and watch. Three or four had nice antlers, which surprised us. You may have read that caribou (also called reindeer in the domesticated variety) are the only members of the deer family in which both the male and female grow antlers. My understanding is that the antlers are shed each year and new ones grown. After seeing these today, I will have to research whether this is actually the case. The ones with antlers all seemed to pause at the edge of the road before venturing across. It really appeared that they were checking for traffic.

We are one day early for our apartment reservation at the Sourdough Lodge. Phone calls have gotten me only through to an answering service. So we selected a good spot and began setting up our tents in the Eagle River campground in Chugach State Forest. It is a little close to the highway, and a little close to what looks like a serious penal institution, but the campground itself is very nice, grand views, ample firewood, and practically empty. Tent set up and staked, my cell phone rang, the apartment manager calling to say come on in. We all were torn about enjoying a last night of camping versus getting settled in our Anchorage apartment. It was essentially a toss-up. We went into Anchorage, signed the papers for one month of lodging in a two-bedroom apartment, and moved in the cats and about half our stuff.

Denali (Mt. McKinley to the Eurocentrics who think American history did not begin until around 1492) is out today, and is visible from the apartment property. It is about 200 miles north, but on a clear day such as today, its 20,000 feet of towering granite, ice and snow appear almost close enough to touch. Denali means “the Great One” and in many ways is symbolic of so much that is Alaska. Huge, majestic, independent, timeless. Scott has a job offer in Cantwell, which is literally in the shadow of this highest of North American mountains.

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Photos

At Last ! !
No more driving.