"Northern Lights" - Alaska
	Day 3:  Friday, July 19, 2002

Once again, a certain someone didn't actually get up until 8:30am or so, meaning, we didn't get on the road until 9am... again.  I think we're going to have to engage in a re-education session for how these trips are to occur before the next one, because like the first two, the next one is going to have a lot more driving in it.  This cake walk trip of just a couple of hundred miles per day is making the boy soft.  Who are we kidding... softer.  He's already bordering on plush even before we started this trip.

I had to give props to the hotel we were at last night - nice artwork.  Affordable (by Alaska standards), and nice art work to boot.

So, maybe 12 miles down the road, we encounter the North Pole (or rather, North Pole, Alaska).  I'm sure they get tons of misdirected mail during the holidays, and to support that theory, they have quite a sizeable post office considering the town's population is what you'd call small.  If you're having any problems finding the tourist attractions, you can follow the clever street signs, or better yet, look for the 30-foot replica of St. Nick.  The best find, though, is what Santa does the rest of the year in terms of a "real" job.

That said and done, we moved forward.  We bumped into all sorts of nice things to look at, but I'm slowly discovering the camera is a poor substitute for being there... it's as though the third dimension is lost, which helps to really appreciate how big everything really is.  Here, the valley looks somewhat tiny, yet, it's probably 100 miles or more to those mountains.  Same here, actually.

Around 10:50am, we rolled into Delta Junction... the magical place where the Alaska Highway ends it's 1,400+ mile run into Alaska, and where Highways 2 and 4 converge, conveniently, at the visitors' center.  If nothing else, it's a great place to learn about the increases in the various Alaskan pipelines, from the original one (circa 1943) at 3-inches in diameter to the current one of 48-inches in diameter.  I also saw this sign there, but am not quite sure to make of it, thus, I opted to just be on my way.

Just some clouds and trees.  Until we found a spot to visit the famed Alyeska Pipeline.  They even put in informational signs to teach you about how it is buried under the road, and when and why's its above ground.  They even give you a brief history of it all.  And here is where it pops out from under the road back to the surface.  Those funny, silver heat-vent looking things are heat vents, by the way - here's why.  But what I really, REALLY want to know is, how did they know my intentions?

Despite my pleas to the contrary, Bullwinkle didn't want to stick around for another, better photo.  We stopped at one of the many creeks just to get a shot of the snow and glacier melt.  Here at Castner Creek, you can begin to get a sense of just how much melting is going on (along with a guest appearance of the pipeline).  Unlike most places where it's very quiet when we stopped, the sound of the water was nothing short of impressive.  (Here's the other side, and where the water may be coming from.)  Of interest, this river, stream, whatever you'd like to call it is just one of dozens we passed... there was one at least every quarter mile, and in some places, every tenth of a mile.  Yessiree, a fast-running stream every 500 feet or so, all feeding into one monster river downstream a bit.

We kept seeing the signs advising of entering and leaving avalanche areas.  As we came around the corner of one, though, it was actually clear why this area would be susceptible -- there's nothing to stop snow on this hillside, as you'd note.  And because the boy likes pictures of hills and valleys (despite the peril to myself from mosquitoes), he made me take yet another picture of this sort of thing.

Around 2pm, we came to Glennallen, a quaint little town of 500 people that seem to be willing to step outside the boundaries of "normal" business practices, and do what they feel like doing. 

On the travel itinerary, we continued to Valdez, where we planned to lodge for the night.  (In a last-minute change, the boy thought it would be cool to take the ferry from Valdez to Seward, which is slated to be the stopping place for tomorrow night.)  So off we went.  We did stop to look at one of the streams, and were impressed with the light blue clarity of the water.  And you guessed it, another picture of an Alaskan valley.

We stopped at the Worthington Glacier State Recreation Site, and looked at -- you guessed it -- the glacier.  We also stopped at the Bridal Veil, a stream of glacial runoff that had a decent stopping area and enough water to look like something other than a leaky faucet.

At 4:23pm, we set foot into Valdez.  Despite 4,100 people, we only found one market, two gas stations (neither one a Chevron, darn it), and two motels, neither of which appeared to be overly appealing.  After a brief stint in the local market for snacks (oh yeah, they also didn't have any food establishments beyond the greasy-spoon types of places, again, as near as we could tell after 20 minutes of driving around).  We did find, though, that the junior high and high school were next to each other, and that it's standard for nearly every home to have a snowmobile, snow blower, or tractor in the front yard.

The fire trucks were also quaint.  The police vehicles, though, were what you'd call "modern."

But the clincher, of course, was the ferry schedule.  The next trip to Seward from here would be on July 25th.  We'll be back home by then.  Add to it the fee for the ferry -- for our car, it would have been $72; the passenger fee for an adult is $65.  It wasn't clear if the car fee covered passengers of the car, of if it was separate, bringing the possible total toll to $137 -- either way, not going to happen. 

After a last peek at (this part) of the Valdez harbor, we opted to leave the waterfront.  If nothing else, I'll give Valdez this - they're at least sensitive to the mobility of their ducks and ducklings.  On the way out, the picture that was supposed to be the refinery didn't work out, but it's still nice to look at, I guess.  We passed through Thompson Pass again, and why that's significant... I'm not sure.  But we stopped anyway.

So, we left and choose to return to Glennallen and see what happens.  Two hours later, we're back in Glennallen.  We ended up stopping at the New Caribou Hotel.  (Don't bother looking for a website, I'm sure you won't find one.)  We had the option of the apartments, suites, regular room (share a bathroom with your neighbor), or the bungalow (share a bathroom with everyone). 

The cheap twit elected for that.  (Granted, the regular room was $120 a night, and this was $49, but still.)  When the clerk asked if we'd like to see it first, I said yes, the boy said no.  Given I'm not holding any of the [credit] cards, she listened to him.  So we check in, and bounce over to room 312 (as seen here and here).  There's 28 rooms in two modular buildings set end-to-end.  No cable TV, internet connections, or individually-controlled thermostats. Well, at least the clerk was very chatty, and commented, once she looked at tubby's driver's license, she likes the bead look better, it's more "rustic", and helps him to look like a local.  (She was less receptive, however, when I pointed out he only has a goatee... the beard is just because he's too lazy to shave but once a week.)

And no decent phone lines for dialing out.  Thus, odds are really good you won't see this until Saturday (Day 4) or beyond... the boy's computer has been unable to use their custom-dial-up application to connect, despite having tried for over an hour.  Nice to know there are so many backup numbers built in... just too bad none of them work from Alaska.  (He even tried direct-dialing, but the server there disconnected him pretty consistently after only 30 seconds... weird, huh.)