Anita's Notebook

We go wherever the road takes us and set up camp at the end of each day no matter where it’s at.

Our only guide was an Alaska Atlas, which lists some campgrounds here and there. Any campgrounds or interesting places not marked on the map we just drew in ourselves for future reference :).

A small backpacking tent was our home for this vacation. It was the first year we had that tent and we were testing it out to make sure there’d be no unpleasant surprises on hike-in camping trips.
 

The tent has a low profile to withstand the sometimes really severe rain and wind in the mountains. It worked great and was super warm.
 

Using such a small tent meant that we left our boots outside unless we were sleeping.

We like to cook our food over a camp fire but sometimes it’s just easier to get water boiled on a backpacking stove. We used the MSR Superfly Stove (great name :D) with a couple cheap cannisters bought from Fred Meyer. Here I’m cooking some boil-in-bag rice.
 

Making nomad gumbo, it doesn’t photograph well but it’s realy good. If I remember right the ingredients are: cheese hot dogs, onions, teriyaki sauce, butter…maybe some garlic salt…then you put it over rice or something…I don’t know go ask Jennifer lol.

The clouds and mountain peaks were practically eye level at this campsite.
 

There was an apocalyptic rain storm the night before and we appreciated the opportunity to dry out clothes and stuff out in the sun the next morning!
 

Jennifer off to pick some mountain blueberries or cranberries. Or both if I was lucky. She usually picks a bunch at once, soaks them in ice cold water for a while, and then puts them in a tin to snack for us to snack on while driving.

The Alaska Pipeline following next to some low lying mountains and snaking it’s way across the state.
 

A bridge across the Denali Highway with some mountains in the background.
 

There’s a pot of gold somewhere over there.

Digging through some stuff at a rest stop.

We saw all kinds of signage during our trip. This one announced that you were at Maclaren Summit, the highest point in the area and unofficial target range lol.
 

Just so you know where the trail is. No way in hell was I taking that trail…I could see an large swarm of hungry mosquitoes eyeballing me just around the bend lol.
 

A ways down the road we saw this sign next to a rocky tunnel, it said:

Old Railroad Tunnel

“The Iron Trail” by Rex Beach describes these events and this area.

This tunnel was hand cut into the solid rock of Keystone Canyon and all that is left of the railroad era when mine companies fought to take advantage of the short route from the coast to the copper country. However a feud interrupted progress. A gun battle was fought and the tunnel was never finished.

We wanted to go into the tunnel but it was already really dark out at that point so we thought better of going into a spooky old tunnel that was pitch black inside :D.

That day it felt like you could jump up and touch a cloud or two.
 

The rest stop had a garden with a little sign:

‘Veggies donated to the Food Pantry. Please do not pick.’

We’re all on the honor system here :)

Waiting to go into the tunnel through the mountain to Whittier. The tunnel traffic (trains and cars) only went one direction at a time due to it’s claustrophobic proportions.

The town of Whittier was set up by the US Army because of it’s strategic location…and weather. Apparently the skies there are consistently overcast and that protected the military instillation from being bombed back in the day. It’s an amazing town and I’m totally fascinated with the place. A little blurb in this blog post is not enough to tell it’s story properly so I’ll probably be blogging more about it soon.
 

A poster in the Whittier museum. He is deciding whether it would be better to build or kill at that particular moment.

One of Alaska’s many receding glaciers.
 

Sun going down, guess it’s time to camp for the night!
 

Zzzzzzz…