Date: 13 June 2001 (Wednesday)

Start: Tok RV Village, Tok AK

End: Grandview RV Park & Café MP109.7 Glenn Hwy (219 miles)

It was 52f and totally cloudy when we arose.

We did breakfast in the little house and then fueled and headed south on the Tok Cutoff (Alaska Hwy 1, aka the Glenn Hwy). The first 50 miles were not bad but the sprinkles came. The next 70 miles were worse with light rain. There were a lot of frost heaves, potholes, and other pavement breaks. The 14 miles from the junction at Gakona Jct to Glenallen (on the Richardson Highway to where the Glenn Hwy splits from it again) were among the most frustrating miles so far.

In this 14 miles the culverts are being replaced. The culverts are about 200 yards apart. The method of replacement is to rip out the old one and put in the new one, then throw small rocks in on top of it. These rocks settle, making for a six inch deep trough three feet long. So you have your choice of beating yourself and your rig to death, or slowing every 200 yards to about 15mph to cross the trough. It’s absolutely miserable.

The light rain was coming from low clouds that continued to 20 miles or so past Glenallen. We missed a lot of the scenery of the north end of the St Elias/Wrangell park. We had just about given up on staying near the Matanuska Glacier in favor of running through to Anchorage when the low clouds disappeared leaving higher clouds but better visibility. We could see the mountains around us including (as we came to the campground) the Chugach chain of mountains east of Anchorage, now west of us.

So we pulled in to the campground (Grandview) and checked in. The café part of the place looked awfully good, so we did lunch inside (sandwiches and latte’).

The mountain to the north of the campground is Sheep Mountain. When we took out the binoculars, it was no effort to find five Dall sheep grazing across the face of the steep hill.

Then we unhooked from the trailer and went exploring.

We went west a ways, looking at the glacier to our left and taking pictures of it. Then we came around a corner and found a moose grazing at the roadside. First Dolores got video tape of it from about 25 yards, then I took a 35mm shot of it as we passed it. If that picture comes out, it will be very nice. (Ed. Note: as you can see, it did. That was one hungry moose.)

To get to the face of the Matanuska Glacier, one turns off the road onto a narrow gravel road that winds down a cliff face to the bottom of a valley, then crosses the rushing river on an arch bridge. Then you come to the gift shop, where you pay the access fee (private operation). Then you drive two more miles over a slight ridge into the next valley to the parking lot (a flat spot with a great view of the glacier).

At that lot, you can see the trailhead to the glacier. We did the trail and got to the end of the trail toward the glacier. Actually, the end of the trail is on the glacier. We got our shoes muddy traipsing through the coarse sand, gravel, rocks and mud on this trail. This mess is actually the mountain as ground up by the ice and carried down by the glacier. We call it "moraine" when we find it alone.

So we stood on the gravelly glacier, which has a million little melt streams a few inches wide all over it, growing wider as they merge going down the glacier. Dolores didn’t want to go further, so I went alone out onto the ice that was cleaner (behind the moraine) for some pictures.

The book says that ice forming on top of the glacier today will melt off the bottom of the glacier 250 years from now. It moves a foot a day and is called a valley glacier; i.e., it moves into a valley and melts there as opposed to the glacier type that calves into the water below it.

There had been a group of teenagers on the glacier with us. As we were leaving, we saw it was a Bible camp group and that one of the vans they were travelling in had come from Hudsonville, Michigan. I asked the leader (Art Richardson) if he knew where Holland (where I was born – 15 miles away) is and he replied that he’s studying at Western Michigan Seminary there. We chatted and wished them well as we left.

We returned to the little house in the parking lot campground in the big mountains. Dolores kept looking for sheep and found at least eight more with the binoculars (they’re at least a thousand feet above us). I typed these notes. We’ll have our spaghetti dinner and zinfandel soon, then read and/or listen to the single radio station available here.

Tomorrow we go into the biggest city in Alaska, Anchorage.