Got Snow!

Yes it has snowed in Alaska. On Sept 21 overnite it snowed in the higher elevations, 2000 ft & up. Now all the mountains surrounding Anchorage have snow on the tops and will probably not melt again until May. It apparently snowed flurried at the airport too. But our temperatures at night are still hovering slightly above 32. We've had rain most of this week. Just thought you might be curious. I'm still editing pictures from the last two trips.

Life around Anchorage

Well everyday is something else. Some days we see the mountains that are standing out from the sky, other days they blend into them. And then we have days where they are virtually unseen because of clouds covering them up. Today we walked in the mall like we do most every Monday. I don't know if this is a fad there or not but the guys here wear circles in their earlobs that they keep enlarging. The hole gets repeatedly bigger. I saw one guy that looked like he had a hole the size of a silver silverdollar. Tatatoos are plentiful. One guy I work with has red lips on his neck and several girls I've seen have colorful tatatoos up and down their arms and neck. The other thing we see a lot is multi colored hair, one color on top and another on the bottom, black with blond or red with brown and blue sometimes and this summer a lot of the daughters that were teens of friends here had purple streaks in their hair. Guess each generation has to have their own rite of passage.

The flower baskets are almost all gone. There's snow on some of the peaks and the temperature is starting to drop. We are having rain this week but there is a difference in the temps we can tell. They have what they call a termination time. It means the change of season. Usually a cold wind comes and blows away all the leaves and brings the first snow fall. Then winter begins. We are glad that we took our laborday trip. Parts of where we traveled just two weeks ago have had some snow. We still try to get a tennis match in when we can. It's dark by 8:30pm now and still dark when we get up a 6:45. We don't need the blackout drapes anymore but plan to still use them for extra warmth....

Labor Day weekend 09

We started early when there wasn't any traffic on the road to speak of. Our goal was to mosey up the road and by nightfall be in Fairbanks. Night fall being around 10 pm. The mountains were starting to be lit by sunbeams rising from the tops of the mountains spreading out over the tundra as it was beginning to turn colors of gold and red. Although we had headed north many times it's always more beautiful than the last time. We stopped in Wasilla to look one more time at the Campers. We concluded that they hadn't lowered their prices and their stock was getting very low. So on we went up the Parks Highway.

We had been told to take the side trip of Petersville road and we would see some beautiful views of Mt McKinley. So we did and yes we took more pictures. The road up toward Mt McKinley is just one photo op after another.. When we got to within 40 miles the view started to be blocked by the other mountains. We noticed that the colors were changing more up this way than around Anchorage. We passed through Cantwell and got to the Nenana Canyon which is the entrance to the Denali National Park. It was a flurry of vacationers. But on we went stopping occasionally for more pictures looking back at Mt McKinley. The terrain was much different up this side of of the park. It got flatter and the trees were shorter. We passed through the very small towns of Healy, Ferry, Anderson, Nenana and Ester. Then we were in Fairbanks. The area around it was low and marshy.

Fairbanks is a city of 31,000 and 358 miles from Anchorage. It's also the official end of the Alaska Highway which connects Alaska with the lower 48 through Canada. It's mostly a town of supply and service for the interior and Artic industrial activities. With several military bases in the area. The elevation here is 434 ft. Average Jan temperature is 18 degrees to -22 degrees. The lowest Dec temp was -66 back in 1961 but we noticed that last year it got to -70 in February. But the summers are much warmer even more than Anchorage. The average temps are 62-99 degrees. It was in the low 80's while we were there. Fairbanks is surrounded on the north, east and west by low rolling hills of birch and white spruce which reminded us of the Blue ridge parkway. And to the south is the Alaska Range where there is a wide spance of Glaciers. The Steese and Elliott highways lead north to the White Mountains.

We traveled around the city for a while and then down to the North Pole, not much but commercial, and then to a gold mine that we had planned to see but were told it had merged with the El Dorado so we missed the lunch and gold panning. Guess it wasn't our day to strike it rich. There are Hot Springs but they were also farther out than we had planned to go. We went back to rest at the hotel and got up late to drive north in hopes of seeing the northern lights. Again no such luck. We took the Steese and Elliott highways north for about 40 miles. Our trip started late in the day so we decided not to go all the way to the Artic Circle but we reached the halfway point from Fairbanks before we turned around. The trees were golden with reds mixed in. It was definitely fall up here. I think we must have hit the right week for this trip. The road was like a roller coaster and at times bumpy and we met several big trucks coming back we supposed from the North Slope.

We left Fairbanks early the next morning and headed south on the Richardson highway. It was a pleasant drive down to Delta Junction where the road (RT2)takes off to TOK on its way into Canada and Alaska Highway. We took several distant pictures knowing we would soon be in those very mountains. We continued on (Rt4) the Richardson hwy. All down through here we saw the Trans Alaska Pipline. Sometimes it was in the distance and other times it was almost alongside the road. In the areas where the Carabo and the Moose roam they built it high enough to allow the animals to pass under. We went through some the most beautiful mountains. Rainbow Ridge had varicolored talus slopes, while Glaciers and lakes were everywhere. We could see Mt Hays. The Gulkana Glacier is 8000 foot icefall peak feeds streams the drain into Prince William Sound and the Yukon River.

At Paxson a road goes across to Denali Park 134 miles. The road is closed during the winter and only opens in June. We traveled the 18 miles down to Glenallen where we planned to spend the night. There is another road that goes east and north back to TOK. We stayed at a campground about 16 miles west on the Glenn highway from Glenallen. It was a quiet place where we were able to walk around and stretch our legs before we called it a night. Again we had made up the jeep but this time we made more padding for the bed. The campground was cut out from the pines and in a small valley back off the main road. A stream was at the back of our site that we could hear flowing all night long. And no we didn't fear it rising. There was a clearing so we set the alarm for 3:30 am, so if the northern lights were out we wanted to see them. Again no such luck.

We slept in a little and got on our way about 8am. The last time we were on this road it was winter, so again it was nice to see what was under all that snow. The valley which was made up of stubby evergreen trees went on for another 50 miles. Then we started seeing the Matanuska Glacier. Our last trip here we couldn't see where the snow stopped and the glacier began. I'll try to put some comparison pictures into the blog for you to see the difference. After we stopped and took lots of pictures of this we headed back to Anchorage. We got home early so we had a nice relaxing day. We got most of the laundry done so we started our week refreshed and ready to go.

We took 495 pictures on this trip, I'm going to be a while editing them. They told John we are here til the first of April. So again we'll keep the blog going. We have more hikes and places we have yet to see...