The ride south from Delta turns right away into a Sitka Spruce forest - a short thin spruce that seems to be susceptable to disease as every so often whole stands of it is black and the branches drooped straight down and the tops curling over. But where they are healthy it's a pleasant drive. None of the trees up here get too tall, but the grasses and bushes are all really green and there are little ponds and lakes all over. Once on Hwy 4 heading towards Valdez (we're only going as far as Glenallen) the road gets hillier and greener. We are approaching the eastern band of the Alaksa Mountains and we cut through them along the Tanana River into the Copper River Valley, a drive that is breathtaking with its snow-capped mountains and rivers on both sides of us.

 
Canden is asking me to stop every mile or so to collect and press flowers along the way. No problem as thats about how often I stop for a picture anyway - we took tons of pictures but only put a few of them in here. (I am stocked with 8MB Memory cards for the digital camera, downloading them all to the computer each night.) I am totally surprised at the lack of traffic. At one point we were stopped in the middle of the Richardson Highway, the main loop highway on the east side of the state, for 20 minutes without a single car passing us - and this was at about 10am! The roads are not in great shape either - lots of frost heaves and broken pavement, but whaddahell, this is a rental van...the wheel alignment is their problem!

With a short bladder-control stop at Glenallen, we turn west towards Palmer on the Glen Highway, drive another 70 miles and turn into the Majestic Valley Lodge (pics 24-31) near the Matanuska Glacier. We got a nice little cabin overlooking the Alaksa Range (I am sitting at the table looking out the window at a huge thunderstorm in the mountains right now as I type this...Kim and the kids are napping together in the queen-size bed...somebody's snoring! Next stop is in about a half hour, as we go further down the highway for lunch and a hike on the glacier....see ya then.

 
Half way to the glacier we stop at Sheep Mountain Lodge for a late lunch...(Pics 12-16)...I can't decide if this is a better place or not - both are really nice, but this place has a full restaurant and bar. Our place has breakfast only right now - they are still finishing up the building of this lodge as the pictures show - but they are both fabulous locations overlooking the Chugach mountains to the front of us and Sheep Mountain behind us (with about 10 Dall Sheep ewes and lambs on the cliffs behind us!)

Lunch consisted of a Kodiak-Brown Nut Brown Ale, (or two or three), reindeer sausage and saurkraut hoagie and an apple pie a la mode...burp! 10 miles further down the road, we turn off the highwy to the Glacier Access Road for the Matanuska Glacier, one of the few Valley Glaciers in this part of Alaska...24 miles long, 2 miles wide and hundreds of feet thick, moving at about a foot per year. Its also one of the few you can drive to and hike onto without taking a sightseeing flight and landing on one...they do that at a couple other glaciers. Even still, there are very few people here.

 
The hike was a bit strange, hiking over thick deposits of silt and gravel for a half mile, then rock and gravel encrusted ice, dark grey in color for about 1/2 mile and then up onto the blue-white ice (blue because of the intense density of the ice compacted over the millenia absorbs all colors of the spectrum but blue)... the ice itself is encrusted with gravel in enough places to find good footing until you get to the main ice flow, then it is all ice and slippery. We saw several people head out to the glacier but turn back before they ever got there because of the trecherous climb. Fortunately we did find a young couple out there to take our picture. Definately a recommended trek. I pulled out a Romeo y Julietta from it's glass tube, straight from Cuba, (rolled on the thighs of virgins I'm told!) and celebrated our adventure.

 
Behind us, over Sheep Mountain, we noticed a squall line coming across the near slopes and valley, approaching the Glacier. Nearly the entire trek back was in a light rain, never got soaked, but we all got a cold wet. The Mini-van was a comforting sight.

 
Back at our Lodge, 8pm and it looks like 2 in the afternoon! I stroll around taking pictures of the place. Our little cabin, seen behind our rented van isn't as nice as the main lodge, but the back porch of the lodge makes for a comfortable spot to finish my cuban in peace while the girls go back for ice cream and apple pie at a little RV park 5 miles down the road.

 
Tomorrow, we're off back through Anchorage - a steady just over the speed limit all the way through - and start exploring the Kenai Penninsula for 7 days - sure hope the Internet connections are more reliable down there!  

 

 
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