All Aboard to Anchorage

Current temperature in Fairbanks: -2 F

“Don't settle down and sit in one place. Move around, be nomadic, make each day a new horizon. You are still going to live a long time, Ron, and it would be a shame if you did not take the opportunity to revolutionize your life and move into an entirely new realm of experience.” ~ Chris McCandless

      Well, it hasn’t been long since my last post, but I have so much to share. I have been to Anchorage on two separate occasions. The first trip was a short day trip for the Governor’s cup. I don’t know if Anchorage can really be considered a ‘day trip’ or ‘short’ when it takes six hours to get there taking the most direct route. The road to Anchorage is long, but absolutely beautiful. When leaving Fairbanks, you drive along the ridge of the mountains outside of Fairbanks and can overlook the entire Denali mountain range. Once you come down off the ridge it is nothing but flat straight road lined by nothing but pine trees for over two hours. Phone service is lost for at least an hour at time, and when signal does come back, it is a sign you are approaching one of only ten towns in the 357 miles stretch between Fairbanks and Anchorage. The vastness of Alaska cannot be fathomed until you drive through it firsthand. Winding through the mountains of Denali was amazing; they look so majestic covered in snow jutting up high above the trees. 

      There is a tourist town located in Denali referred to by everyone I have talked to as Princess Cruise Town. In the summer months it is apparently a port for cruise ships and is bustling with tourists. But in March the town is a ghost town. Not one person can be found and all the buildings are closed until the tourists return. When driving through Denali something that made me chuckle was a caribou crossing sign. You know you are pretty far north when you have to worry about herds of caribou crossing your path. Caribou aren’t the only wildlife you have to worry about crossing your path, once you are south of Denali moose are a very real danger. At one point on the road to Anchorage is a sign that keeps track of the number of moose hit each year, last time I saw the sign, 189 moose have already been hit. Moose are practically pests south of Denali, you are almost guaranteed to see one, we saw eight moose just on our trip to Anchorage and back to give you an idea of how many there are here. They are also very different than moose in New Hampshire, they are freaking massive.
      I was so excited to finally go to Anchorage but I have to say, Anchorage is surprisingly underwhelming. It isn’t very pretty but I don’t really know what I was expecting, it is after all a city. It reminded me a lot of downtown Manchester back home, lots of the buildings are small and shabby looking, and every few minutes drunk natives would be seen stumbling down the sidewalk at four in the afternoon. The only thing that adds a touch of beauty almost as a reminder that you are still in one of the least explored areas on earth is the mountains that stretch up even higher than the buildings, wrapping around the whole city except for where the ocean is. I don’t mean to make Anchorage sound like a dump, there are definitely some nice parts of it, but especially this time of year with all the slush and melting snow, it just looks grimy. One thing I realized upon reaching Anchorage is that the temperature was 40 F, in other words, the first time I had felt temperatures above freezing since leaving home. 
      The Governor’s Cup is a two game tournament between UAA and UAF. Not to brag, but UAF usually wins it. When we got to the game, we put on our war paint and went inside. We had to flaunt our colors being so far from home. 

       There were easily five times for UAF fans there than UAA fans and we were also much more rowdy. The glass would shake from the constant pounding of the students and many of them almost got kicked out before the game even started. There wasn’t much security could do because it wasn’t entirely the fans’ fault. Thompson, the senior goalie for the Nanooks was on the bench right on the other side of the glass and every now and then he would beat the glass at the students and the students would do it back. The game started with a bang, UAF scored in the first nine second. Later on one of the UAF players rammed a UAA player through one of the panes of glass and a referee was pummeled by four players at once. The game was good but not incredibly close, UAF won 3-1 and took home the cup undefeated. This was the 20th and last Governor’s cup. We had plans to stay overnight in Anchorage with some friends, but none of us were tired and it was supposed to snow in the morning so we decided to head home the same night. We got home at 4am.

My next trip to Anchorage was for much longer, it was for this past week for spring break. I stayed with my friend Lance and his family that live right in Anchorage. We got into Anchorage a little after midnight on Friday night. It was too dark to see the outline of the mountains surrounding Anchorage, but I noticed a star made of lights high up on the side of one of them. When bringing my roommate Katia home the next morning we saw two bald eagles in a tree just off the road. Those were the only two I saw while I was there, but apparently they are quite abundant. Katia lives in a town about half an hour north of Anchorage called Chugiak. We went to the mall a few times during break and I was expecting something like the mall of New Hampshire the way it was described to me but it was massive, it was at least five floors and seemed to go on forever. We also watched a lot of movies over break, and I found it quite funny that Alaska still has Blockbuster stores. I can’t even remember the last time I rented a movie from Blockbuster or even saw a Blockbuster store back home. 

        One day Lance took me to Hilltop which is a place part way up the mountain which overlooks all of Anchorage. It was so beautiful to see mountains everywhere right on the ocean. There were also a few mountains visible far out at sea which are active volcanoes. 

      It was so clear you could even see Mount McKinley almost perfectly, which over 200 miles north of Anchorage. Even from 200 miles away its immensity is obvious. For those of you that don’t know, McKinley is the third tallest mountain in the world and the tallest mountain in the world from base to summit. We were incredibly lucky to have been able to see McKinley so clearly, it is only visible from Anchorage a few days out of the year.

      While driving around one day, we saw a mother moose and her calf stuck on opposite sides of a fence. There are long stretches of fence with intermittent gates to help keep moose off the highway as much as possible but to still allow them a place to pass however the calf couldn’t figure out how to get through the gate. It was a little sad to see them struggling but I am sure they figured it out. 

      On Saturday I finally got to go skiing for the first and probably last time this season, but boy, was it a good one. The ride to Alyeska is absolutely gorgeous. On one side of the road is mountains, the other side is a small stretch of ocean with more mountains on the other side. The road weaves back and forth along the frozen ocean nestled against the base of the mountains.

      When you first enter the stretch of road that winds along the ocean, which is also the most dangerous road in Alaska, there is an area called Beluga Point which got its name because it is an excellent place to see beluga whales in the summer. Soon Alyeska came into view, and I have to say looking up at the slopes while driving in I was a little intimidated by it. It turned out to be an excellent day of skiing though. Perfectly clear skies allowed for breathtaking views and pictures from the summit. From the summit, all the skiing was treeless groomers or areas of powder. There was lots of bowl skiing and a wonderful place to traverse to. 

      All good things come to an end however, and it was soon time to head back to Fairbanks. As if a six hour drive isn’t long enough, we decided to take the ‘scenic route’ back to Fairbanks. This route takes about eight hours. It may have been a long trip, but it was one of the most beautiful drives I have ever been on, I almost wish it was longer. The road less travelled by is much smaller and much more windy than the main road, making it a lot more fun to drive. Once you are outside of Anchorage you rapidly begin to enter a mountain range that goes on forever. The mountains are enormous and jagged Stretching high up in the sky and for over an hour you just wind in and out up and down through the mountain range. 

      There is even a large glacier in the valley of some mountains. 

The mountains were beautiful and seemed like they would go on forever, but eventually the terrain flattened into the familiar endless pine trees. Soon after these pine trees became the new norm on this drive, a giant mountain became visible out the windshield, the arrow straight road seeming to lead directly to it. This mountain is called Blackbird Mountain and is visible on the drive into the town of Glenallen. This unusual mountain stands alone in the endless plains of trees. 

Again the road steered away from the mountains back to the endless pine trees winding slowly higher and higher. You may think I exaggerate just how endless the pine trees are here, but I am really not. You could drive for hours and the trees will still stand guard along the side of the barren road. They stretch as far as the eye can see. 

       The slow climb eventually led to an area called Summit Lake. It is a lake in the valley of mountains, 4,000 ft above sea level. The trans-Alaska pipeline is also visible for most of the drive from Summit Lake to Fairbanks. The trans-Alaska pipeline is really nothing spectacular to set eyes upon, but the fact that it is an endless pipe that spans the entirety of Alaska and took 7 years to plan and 3 years to install, is pretty impressive. Summit Lake is a beautiful area; it honestly feels like the top of the world. The mountains are covered in flawless, windblown snow, reaching high above the lake. Small bush like trees stand along the edge of the frozen lake looking like little people. The snow machine tracks make the surface of the lake and the plains at the base of the mountains look like a giant’s doodle.

Eventually we headed back into the bowl of Fairbanks, past The Knotty Shop and through North Pole. After traveling 435 miles, we finally arrived back to campus.