The Summer of Fabulous Vacations Continues - Alaska Part I - Anchorage
I flew to Anchorage with my Mom and Dad on a Saturday in August. We met up in the Atlanta airport and then took a non-stop deep vein thrombosis express all the way to Anchorage. My Uncle Rob met us at the airport. He drove us the long way home around Lake Hood, which is a gigantic floatplane airport. I unfortunately never went back to take photos; the light was amazing with the mountains with fresh snow on top reflected by the runway. When we got home Uncle Rob and Aunt Jackie cooked fresh salmon for us for dinner. My cousin Edwin dropped by for dinner but he was getting ready to head back to college so he was spending most of his time hanging out with his friends.
Sunday morning we got up early due to the time change and the light change. Alaska is amazingly light in the summer. I stayed in the basement of Rob and Jackie's house, which had windows facing Cook Inlet and Turnagain Arm. There was constantly light coming through the windows, but I still slept incredibly well. After we got up we made breakfast and packed lunches and snacks for a hike. Rob and Jackie had decided on Crow Pass, which is a hike starting at an old gold mine along Turnagain arm in the town of Girdwood outside of Anchorage. The full trail winds 26 miles around Anchorage and spits out on the northwest side, near Elmendorf air base. We only did the first 3 miles of the trail as an out-and-back for the day. The hike is one of the more scenic in the Anchorage area and therefore a good place for the first day. The trail winds above an abandoned gold mine
Gold Mining Equipment
and over glacier melt streams (where I proved how effective GoreTex really is! Buy it kids - it really works!) to Crow Pass, which is a scenic pass through the mountains which features a large snow bank (fun hiking!) and a glacial/alpine pond.
Alpine Lake from Glacier Melt
We turned around at an overlook for Raven glacier, which was my first glacier sighting of the trip. The hike down was less eventful - less nature viewing but also slower.
Mom and Dad coming up through a pass
Did you know that going uphill (stairs, whatever), your leg absorbs an impulse equal to 3 times your body weight, but going downhill it absorbs 7 times your body weight? The things I’ve learned because Dad is a doctor, they would shock you.
Monday we got up and drove up to Powerline Pass, an access road to the powerlines (duh) outside of Anchorage.
View Down Powerline Pass
It is incredibly close to where my uncle and aunt used to live and they used to hike there frequently. It is another popular place to hike as it is easily accessible by foot and on bike. And, as we learned, it offers excellent wildflower and wildlife viewing. After parking, we walked down the short access trail to the pass. There Uncle Rob pointed out different wildflowers that we saw along the way, such as the arctic dogwood.
Arctic Dogwood
As we were coming around the bend in the path to meet up with the pass and the access road, Uncle Rob suddenly threw up his hands, motioning us to stop. He turned around and indicated we should approach very slowly and quietly. A moose and her calf were munching where the path and the access road converged. We were able to edge around and I got some great photos - keep in mind, these photos are taken without the telephoto lens.
Moose and Calf
After passing at a safe and respectful distance, we continued walking and taking pictures of flowers. Then, Uncle Rob saw something moving next to a power pole. As we got closer, we walked off the path (walking off the path was legal at this point) and saw that it was two bull moose grazing in the field. Uncle Rob speculated that they were brothers as it is rare to see bull moose together during mating season.
Pair of Bull Moose
After snapping tons of photos, we continued our hike…only to see ANOTHER pair of moose - male and female this time. We weren’t certain if they were a mating pair or not as the female seemed perfectly content to ignore the male. We hiked and hiked and lo and behold, I spotted a lone bull moose up along a ridgeline. He was much smaller than the other bulls so we figured he didn’t have much chance in the mating game. After lunch, we turned around and walked back. There was much less animal wildlife this time, but we did see some cool flora. My personal favorite was the Chocolate Lily, featured here.
Chocolate Lily
However, as we were walking back to the parking lot, we had a final run-in with the original moose and her calf. The calf got curious and trotted over to investigate. Fortunately, it stayed between us and its offspring.
Moose trotting over to investigate
Tuesday we drove up to Hatcher Pass to see Independence Gold Mine.
Mountains near Hatcher Pass
The mine is near Hatcher Pass, in the Matanuska-Susitna Valley (aka the Mat-Su Valley). The Mat-Su valley is a very fertile area between Cook Inlet and the Alaska Range. As part of the New Deal, FDR relocated farming families from the upper Midwest to the Mat-Su valley. So, if you hear someone from Wasilla speaking with a very northern Great Plains accent, it makes sense! The mine itself is something of an entropy project, with lots of the old building slowly disintegrating.
Independence Mine
The area is now an Alaska state park so some of it has been restored. We were able to tour a few of the buildings, such as the mine foreman’s house and walk around the grounds. We had a picnic lunch in Rob’s car as it was very cold outside. We walked around the upper area of the mine and then wandered the area. There are still a few working gold mines there that are independently held.
Independent Mine
These mines mostly bring up gold that is held in the quartz veins. These quartz/gold combinations are then made into jewelry.
Selling quartz-line rock
Wednesday and Thursday we stayed in Anchorage. We had hoped to go out on my uncle’s boat, but the weather was not cooperative. Wednesday we walked part of the Tony Knowles Coastal Trail which winds around Turnagain Arm to Cook Inlet. It overlooks Earthquake Park, which is commemorates the Turnagain Heights neighborhood that fell into the inlet during the Good Friday earthquake of 1964. We also had a delicious lunch on Wednesday at the Snow City café. I had a reindeer reuben, which was made with reindeer sausage. It was much milder and much less gamey than I had anticipated. Thursday we prepped for the next week. We took a massive trip to Costco which I did not commemorate with pictures. We did see some tourists taking pictures of each other outside the Costco. My job was to purchase food for our camping trip to Denali and Mom and Dad were stocking up for a week in Homer. Thursday night I met Joe at the airport and we picked up the rental car and then met Amanda and Jim.
Next stop: Denali!