About Sun. Aug. 22, 2006--Day 13

I promised to write more about our drive through Alaska and catch you up on our activities. Hopefully you haven't given up on checking this blog. To arrive in town on Sunday evening and have three kids start school today in three different schools was all that I could handle. By 1 a.m. this morning, I hadn't updated the blog and was too tired to think. Everyone has been asleep in the house for over an hour tonight, but I promised myself I would blog before going to sleep.

Through 12 days of our journey, the weather was perfect. We could not have asked for bluer skies or nicer temperatures...including the 102-degrees in the Badlands because it fit the setting. Upon arriving in Alaska...our final destination...our end of the road...our long sought after place to hang our hats...it rained. To be more precise, my husband informed me that it has been like Noah's Ark and so far rained for 11 days and 11 nights with no let up in sight. We got up on Sunday morning in Tok, had breakfast at Fast Eddy's (which wasn't fast, in case you were wondering), and praised God for gas at $2.94/gallon. Then we hit the road to Anchorage...in the rain. The drive...in the rain...was gorgeous even though pretty much all of the hills and mountains were covered by clouds. In fact, sometimes the clouds were so low that as we drove through the hills, we actually drove into and through the clouds. Chris and Sullivan thought that was "really cool". There was one point in the first half of the drive, that had it not been for the rain, I would have gotten out and taken the most picturesque phot. Imagine being on one hillside and looking down into a flat valley. You aren't too far up the hill that the valley is far away. You are just up enough that you have a clear view of the valley for miles...you can count the trees and feel intimate with the scenery. There is a river, serene and welcoming, snaking tightly through the valley like a snake. It isn't rushing. It isn't too wide. Just perfect; trees line the edges and some places are open to the fields. The grass is a little bit brown but the evergreens make up for the lack of color. I can still picture that scene and wish I had stopped the car and taken the photo. I just figured that with the rain and low clouds, the lighting in the camera wouldn't do the scene justice. As we continued on, the hills became more rugged, the road wound into the mountains, and every now and then there would be a break in the weather and Chris or I would say..."Look. Look over there everyone." and there would be mountains beside us, in front of us, or near us with snow on the peaks already. I really hadn't expected to see that much snow already fallen in August...just on the tops...but really breathtaking. Chris then looked into the distance and said "Wow, is that a frozen lake up ahead?" There was a mountain in front of us but to the left of the road, and there was snow on top, followed by a green space, and then a solid white line like a belt around a woman's waist midway between the top and the bottom. It looked really bizarre, but as we drove closer we discovered that it wasn't a snow shelf or a river that had frozen early, but a glacier. A full blown, deep, and wide river of ice wrapping itself midway around this mountain. To be precise it is Matanuska Glacier which is a 27 mile long glacier. The picture attached is of the glacier when we got a whole lot closer to it. If you haven't ever seen an Alaskan Glacier, they are actually the bluest baby blue in color when you look in the crevaces. We all thought it was awesome. We still had a couple hours to go in the drive and the roads got twistier and narrower as we wound through the mountains and out the other side. We passed deep ravines, raging rivers, more beautiful valleys. We kept saying that if we thought the drive was this great, we probably would have had trouble keeping on the road if we had a clear day and could really see the countryside that surrounded us!! We arrived in Eagle River just before dinner time and rejoiced once again as gas prices were $2.89/gal. here. We topped off the gas tank so that we started and ended the drive on a full tank and finally drove to our house. Fortunately the kids love the home, even though they couldn't see the views for which we bought the home. They immediately made friends with kids in the neighborhood and wanted to go out and visit. Chris, Shaun, and I looked at one another...rejoiced in the fact that we had made it safely to Alaska and then rolled up our sleeves and got to work unpacking boxes. Rain and all, it was a good day.