Last Day in Alaska

On Sunday, our second to last full day in Alaska, we made our final push to Anchorage.  After a really good night at the Caribou Cabins we hit the road heading southwest towards Anchorage.  Like just about every other day up here the drive was incredibly scenic yet desolate, at least until we got closer to Anchorage.  The first couple of hours were mostly overcast.  While the scenery was still really good we really just drove so we could make some time and get on to some of the other things we had planned for the day.

We stopped at what was really the first town, Glennallen, after 140 miles.  There was a gas station and visitors center along with some more signs of civilization that we hadn’t really seen in a few days.  The gas station was open, we did not fill up as we still were doing well with gas and the visitors center was closed for the season.  We did see a food truck parked over in the far end of the parking lot so we decided to pay it a visit.  As it turned out they had excellent Thai food.  We ordered a plate of Pad Thai which we ate on some nearby picnic tables while enjoying the excellent view from the gas station.

Where else can you get a view like this from the gas station?

We ventured on after our nice lunch down the Glenn Highway towards Matanuska Glacier.  Before we got there we passed through a mountain pass where the snow obviously gets pretty deep in the winter.  There were really tall poles along the sides of the road which we learned were guides for the snowplows in the winter.  We were surprised because these poles were easily higher than even the tallest vehicles we have ever seen.  We don’t think we would want to be here when they get all of that snow.  While there was no snow on the road yet the snow on the mountains seemed to come down to a lower elevation than it had just a week before, probably a good indication that winter was not too far off. We continued towards the glacier with amazing views around just about every single turn.

Snow plow guides

Our next stop was Matanuska Glacier.  This is one of the few glaciers that is easily accessible by just about anyone in Alaska.  You can get up close to many glaciers on boat rides or by landing on them with a plane but this one is relatively close to the city plus you can pretty easily walk out on to the glacier.  There was an admission fee to get close up but we didn’t mind paying for this once-in-a-lifetime experience.  We first spotted the glacier from a few miles away while we were driving on the main road.  As we got closer we realized we were going to have to turn off and drive towards the glacier.  We turned off of the main road and twisted our way down a narrow dirt road towards the bottom of the valley where we crossed the glacial fed river, then up to the glacier.  Walking on the glacier was really not much different than walking on hard packed snow.  The only real difference was that this snow was pretty dirty, at least up close.  You could sure see signs of global warming though as the edge of the glacier seemed to be melting relatively quickly.

After we left the glacier area we started hitting much more in terms of civilization, mostly it was traffic, we still did not hit a traffic light for another hour or so of driving.  We did notice a big change in scenery though as we got closer to Anchorage.  As we descended off of the mountain we started seeing color in the trees again.  The fall colors created a nice contrast against the snow covered mountains.

We made one final stop before we went back to our hotel in Anchorage: at an unusual cemetery.  The cemetery was located on the grounds of a Russian Orthodox Church.  The melding of the Orthodox Christianity and native practices resulted in the brightly colored spirit houses.  We were not certain if any dead were actually placed in these spirit houses or if they simply were built on top of the graves but they sure seemed pretty interesting.  Some were quite elaborate and it made for an interesting stop.

We then went back to our hotel and packed before our last full day in Alaska.  We initially planned on just kind of lounging around but we instead decided to pay a visit to the Alaska Zoo in Anchorage.  The zoo is by no means a large zoo but they do specialize in animals that are native to the state.  We figured that since we had not seen much in terms of wildlife on our trip that we would go to the zoo to see them.  Besides the cool animals like bears, moose and caribou that had eluded us on our trip, they had a handful of exotic animals that are obviously not native to Alaska as well.  We spent a few hours at the zoo before calling it a day and going back to the hotel for the final time.

Harbor Seal

River Otter

Female Polar Bear

Big feet on that girl!

Male Polar Bear

Snowy Owl

Musk Ox

Tibetan Yak

Alpaca

Bactrian camel

Caribou

Black Bear

Bald Eagle

Tiger eating hopefully not another zoo animal

Gray Wolf

Sheep 

Snow Leopard

Brown Bear.  This is what the bear spray had been for!

Fox

The one thing we decided upon leaving Alaska was that we could not wait to go back.  We have now experienced it in two seasons, summer and fall and we think next time we might head up there in the winter to get a real shot at seeing the Northern Lights.

Only in Alaska can you get a view like this from the Walmart parking lot