Reflections of My Travel

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When we woke up this morning, we decided to take a drive through the longest (2.5 miles) tunnel in North America over to Whittier. The tunnel was fairly impressive, it’s a one-way tunnel that switches directions every half hour and it also has a train track running through it (not sure how often that runs). It’s a fairly expensive tunnel ride, though – $12 for a car, $300 for a commercial truck/trailer. Which was really upsetting when we drove out the other side of it into Whittier and saw that there was NOTHING in Whittier. It was less than worthwhile. We thought about at least doing the hike over to Portage Glacier while we were there but my stupid knees were acting up pretty badly. So we turned around and waited in line to go back through the tunnel. It was really just an anti-climatic experience. Fortunately, on our northward trek back toward Anchorage, we decided to stop at Girdwood. This was a very cute little town. They have a ski resort there and during the summer, you can ride the lift up to the top of the mountain and eat lunch and hike with seven glaciers surrounding you. It was a wonderful experience that we both thoroughly enjoyed. When we left Girdwood, we headed straight back to Anchorage and started calling around to make hotel reservations for our last two nights. We figured since we would be going straight to work from the airport tuesday morning, and since we were heading home to a flooded house, we should rest up pretty good. We made our reservations, walked around the mall a bit, and then set up camp and went to bed.

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This morning, we woke up looking for a hike. We stopped at a Princess Lodge in Cooper Landing and took a short, mile loop-hike down to the river. It was beautiful clear turquoise. The hike was mostly shaded by trees and it was very quiet and relaxing. We stopped on a dock along the river and took a brief nap on the bench. It was very serene. When we got back up to the lodge, we asked the concierge about hiking and he told us about a 5 mile one-way trail to Juneau Falls. This got Randal all excited. I was a little hesitant about such a long hike in such heat, but we had taken several days off from hiking and I knew that Randal was getting stir crazy, so we went. The first two miles or so was walking on an old logging road with no shade. It got very hot, very quickly. Where the logging road ended, it came to a fork, which wasn’t on the little trail map (I use the term loosely) that the concierge had provided for us. Randal decided that we would go right because that path looked better traveled. I know we walked at least half a mile before deciding that was the wrong way. But it did happen to be where all the mosquitoes hung out because we picked them up there and they stayed right on us for the rest of the hike. We got back to the fork again and took the left path and walked another half-mile or so before we finally came across a trailhead marking (crude though it was – spray painted arrow on scrap wood) to let us know that this was, indeed, the correct trail. We walked and talked and talked and walked and talked some more (we were warned that the trail was heavily bear-populated). After the arrow, there were no other trail signs to let us know we were going the right way or what the distance was or anything. We started hearing noise, but couldn’t decipher whether it was water or wind. We stopped in one area, trying to listen hard enough to figure it out, and thought about just turning around to go back. It was a good thing we went on ahead. Not too terribly much longer we finally came on a true trail sign that told us to turn the corner and cross the bridge and we were there. Lucky for Randal, it really was a very beautiful, and quite large, waterfall. I’d say that it’s the biggest, nicest one that we’ve ever hiked to. We took pictures and sat and looked at it and snacked a little for probably a half hour. It was a good rest at the end of such a long hike. And, of course, every long hike has an equally long hike back (unless it’s a loop but we’re not talking loops here). So we walked and talked and talked and walked and talked some more all the way back. I can’t tell you how pleased I was to see the road at the end of the logging road that meant that our car was oh-so-close. I was very proud of the fact that I actually hiked 11+ miles. Luckily, it was the least steep trail that we had hiked in Alaska. I know I couldn’t have done 11 miles if it were much steeper. All in all it wasn’t too bad a hike, just hot, and a little frustrating that it was not a well marked trail. When we got back to the Princess, we had a good meal followed by a good 12 minute ($1.25) shower at the campground. We then decided to drive back to Portage to spend the night by our lake again.

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This morning, we slept in a little and then took some pictures of the cabin before checking out of it. We also stopped by the beach so that Randal could take some pictures of it for his grandmother before we left Homer. We turned off the Sterling Highway at Soldotna to visit Kenai. Turned out that there wasn’t much to do in Kenai so we decided to go to the movie theatre. It was like a nice little date. After the movie, we drove west to the end of the road, around Nikiski, where we got out and spent a little time on the beach of Cook Inlet, where we collected some very pretty rocks. We camped out along the Sterling Highway.