Turn for home

Day 25 - Monday, August 17th

We left Seward in combinations of rain and sunshine on the Kenai Peninsula. The tide was out in the Turnagain Arm which meant the mudflats were even larger than when we came by the first time. Traffic wasn’t bad, so we made good time. We whipped right through Anchorage, almost before we knew it. Patti had been so tired that she slept through the whole morning drive and woke up feeling much better.

We had lunch at Mirror Lake just north of Anchorage. It had rained recently, but had cleared and the lake lived up to its name, at times the water was a like a mirror. We saw 7 floatplanes at the other end of the lake and imagined what it was like when several of them took off from this smooth lake. We had a visit from a family of ducks, the young ones almost ready for their Fall migration. Suddenly, one then a second loon appeared in the middle of the lake. We had expected to see many more, but those were our first loons so far. As we walked back to the car we discovered a number of beautiful mushrooms. With all the rain on this trip, we are finding many lovely mushrooms. It keeps us looking down for more.

After lunch we turned east on the Glen Highway towards Glennallen and looked at beautiful scenery. Even though we couldn’t see the Chugach Mountains because they were covered in clouds we were rewarded. As we approached Sheep Mountain, we looked even more carefully. There on a series of rocky ledges far above the road we could see six Dahl Sheep. Their white fur stood out against the darker rock. These included four ewes and two lambs. We watched them for a while before we had to move on.

We drove in and out of rain several times and continued with hopeful hearts that when we got to Glenallen, that we would be able to see the Wrangell Mountains in Wrangell-St. Elias National Park. For a moment we got a glimpse of them, then the clouds swept in and took them away from us. It was as if there were no mountains around! We did stop at the visitor’s center were we saw a beautiful movie about the wildness of this park that is as large as Connecticut or six times larger than Yellowstone! This is the park that is connected with Kluane National Park in Canada that we visited in Southern Yukon on the way up the Alaska Highway. We didn’t see the mountains from that side due to smoke. Sigh! Maybe next trip.

Without the mountains to be seen, we headed north and the scenery really got lovely when we drove through the eastern end of the Alaskan Range. The clouds and the mountains were spectacular, and we even had a rainbow.

We bedded down for the night at a roadside pulloff, just south of Tok, Alaska. We snuggled into our warm nest at the back of our mini-van. We made the decision as we were packing up in the morning to pack the tent down deep. No tenting this trip!