Afternoon Trip To Alaska

I picked up my car Friday from the repair place, but they hadn't quite figured out the problem, but it did need to be driven, so if I took it for the weekend and drove it, that would help them.  I'd taken it in Wednesday evening and they were supposed to fix it Thursday. The key issue was that the yellow trouble light was on.  But Thursday is when the truck hit the bridge near Eagle River and shut down the Glenn Highway.  And the mechanic assigned to my car was stuck in the giant traffic jam.  Or so they told me.  No problem, I don't use the car much anyway.

An old gag about Anchorage is that "it's alone about 20 minutes from Alaska."  So, since the car needed to be driven, I wanted to head down the Seward Highway, maybe even take a short hike if the snow and ice weren't too bad.

The trail turned out to be mostly ice at the steepest part - just past the bridge - and even though we had grippers and poles, we decided it wasn't worth it.  Our grippers work fine on flat ground, but not up a steep incline.  But here are some pictures.



Turnagain Arm from McHugh Creek.














Here's a closer picture of the ice floating on the tide.

Here's McHugh Creek from the bridge just before the icy incline.  



















And here are those icicles closer up.





















Another part of the creek.












And the moon was out too.



Oh yeah, the yellow trouble light went back on in the van.  Who knows when they're going to figure out what's setting it off.