Day 5 – June 3, 2009
So here I am sitting on my camping chair looking out over a huge vast valley directly at the Wrangell Range. There are about two clouds in a beautiful blue sky and the sun is shining onto clear, crisp mountain peaks. It is a view that could not possibly be believed unless one was to see it. Oh yeah, did I mention that this is where we are camping tonight.
So let me tell you all about how we got to this point today. We decided to have a little bit of a sleep in this morning since we have been going hard for four days. When we woke up the weather wasn’t fabulous. The sun was out but there was lots and lots of cloud cover. We thought that since we stayed at the Sourdough campground we better try the sourdough pancakes. All you can eat for $12. Anyway, the pancakes were fine, but I guess us Canadians are way too spoiled with our real Maple syrup. The syrup was like nothing we had ever tasted. I guess I would describe it like thick sugar with a hint of Tabasco. Yeah, so I guess we would pass on the breakfast next time, or bring our own syrup! So after breakfast we started to pack up the trailer and head out toward Valdez.
We didn’t get out too far out of Tok when we came around a corner and there was a huge moose standing beside the road. He was just hanging out enjoying some marshy plants alongside the road. We quickly started snapping pictures but he didn’t seem to mind one way or the other. We ended up staying there for about 10 minutes getting all the best shots. Finally we decided it was time to move on and leave him in peace.
We continued along the highway getting ready to start seeing the big mountains. We thought that we would be starting into the foothills and gradually get into the mountains, but we went over a hill, and BAM, there was one of the largest mountains that I had ever seen. Just a monster of a mountain; all ice covered and stretching to the sky. Every time that we went over a hill we thought, “Wow, this is the most spectacular view so we better take a picture.” Then we would go over another hill and that would be an even better view. It was hard to believe that it could just keep on getting better and better. The Wrangell range is absolutely huge and stretches on for miles and miles. There are many smaller mountains but we have seen about 4 monster mountains (in order): Sanford, Drum, Wrangell, and Blackburn. It was unfortunate that we could not have gotten better pictures of the range, but like I said, it was cloudy earlier on in the day. Sometimes it was difficult to tell (in the pictures) what was cloud and what was snow covered mountain. Like photographing a snow man in a snow storm! We were fortunate that with the naked eye we could easily see what was mountain and what was cloud. It was the most amazing view of my life and I would have loved to share it all with you people at home, but I guess it is just one of those things that you have to be there for.
After a whole afternoon of driving though incredible scenery we came to Glenallan. After doing some touring of the town and junky RV parks we decided to continue up to road in search for a better location and, boy did we find it. You come out of Glenallan and a sign directs you to check out the scenic view. We pulled into the turnoff and it was a scenic view indeed. A view of the big four with Sanford and Drum in the foreground and Mt Wrangell and Blackburn off to the right. Since it is completely legal to camp at pull off rest areas, we decided to call this place home for the night. It is just amazing. I am sitting here with this view and I start getting occupied with typing this diary and then I look up and each time I am just in absolute awe of these mountains. It is hard to judge the size of a mountain but when you look at these you just KNOW that they are huge. Alaska mountains!!