Mitch has crappy spelling.
Yes Mitch... Your spelling is atrocious. Anyway, we had a great time yesterday we drove to this town where everyone lives in the same building. Yep. Crazy stuff. Oh! Right, I wrote all about the trip there (it's not quite done, but I'll slowly update it while I'm here) and so I'm going to post that in the "extended entry" section (the link at the bottom of the entry). The award ceremony for my Dad (not just my Dad, like 50 people also recieved awards) was today and they showed a really funny picture of Dad (he looked like a Mexican refugee or something haha!). It turned out his award was just because he was a member of the Alaska Bar association for 25 years (impressive, but not quite what I thought he was getting). And so anyway, the important part of this blog entry is in the extended entry section, CHECK IT OUT!
Trip Through Alaska
We started out in the morning, the day was cloudy and it had been raining. We all got into the golden rental Pontiac Grand am. There was an envelope stuck in the windshield wiper that was a warning to Dad not to park below the 6th floor.
“Garbage,” Dad said, as he crumpled the letter up and chucked it onto the dashboard. The car lurched out of the parking lot, making odd noises and screeching as we slowed to pass the cashier. We passed out of the garage and through the city. Dad turned to Grandma and said:
“So, Grandma, do you think you can afford to drop off your prescription now and get it when we come back?”
“What? I didn’t bring my prescription. I didn’t think we were going to get it now.”
“Well I only came this way to drop off your prescription.” Grandma handed me a map and asked how we could get from Minnesota Ave. to New Seward highway. I gave several options and we began to pass out of the thick urban region of Anchorage. On our right more and more of an area called the flats became visible.
The flats are a strange area of deep brown sand with small canyons and lakes carved by a receding tide. The flats are normally covered by water, but every 6 hours, the tide flings back, digging the small canyons and channels that make the landscape interesting. The flats surround a brown-blue inlet, which, on the other side, was a city which was abandoned after an earthquake based tidal wave crashed through the city. On the left, I could see construction crews and train tracks below a high, cloud covered mountain horizon. Slowly, the mountains came closer and closer to the road, until there was a sheer wall ending at the road. The cliff wasn’t natural though, you could see small lines which were actually drilled holes that dynamite was dropped into before the cliff face was blown off. The rock face was varied in color; there was a deep gray-brown color and a lighter tan-sandy color. Unfortunately, the wall was so close to the road that looking at it made me dizzy, so instead, I looked out onto the flats and the inlet that was surrounded by them. The mountains on the other side of the lake were white at the top and melted together with the low cloud cover. Below, you could see long rivers of snow where avalanches had torn through the mountainside. The pine green color of the trees was patched with white where snow, left from the long winters, was still sticking.
As the drive continued, Dad told me to look out for Dahl sheep. The sheep were not too high up at this time in the year because buds and grass hadn’t grown high up on the mountain so they had to come down low to eat. Almost as soon as Dad had finished telling me to watch out for them, we spotted one on a little cut out on the left of the road. It was a lonely looking fellow, alone on a cliff side, munching away at a small plant. But, because of our speed, almost as soon as we saw him, he flashed by us. A sign zoomed by on the right, warning us with big black letters: WATCH FOR FALLING ROCKS. We then passed by an open gate that said: Road Closed Due To Avalanche. The mountains backed away from the road a bit, and we could see the trails of old avalanches. Several of the avalanche trails deposited right next to the road in twenty foot high heaps. Pieces of wood and clumps of dirt littered the top of the melting heaps, giving it a dirty, tired look. Eventually, we passed a sign that said END AVALANCHE AREA, and we began to see a little more civilization. We could see in the distance a ski resort and we passed a small sign that told us that we were passing a town called Girdwood. Finally, we passed onto a curve in the road. The scenery on the roadsides changed to a much grimmer scene.
The trees on the side were dead or dying, Dad said it was because the tidal wave that came through in 1964 gave salt water to the trees and killed them off. We passed by a river and spotted a moose. We passed another big curve in the road and we could see a tunnel ahead. A big blue sign on the right of the tunnel warned us to keep our headlights on. The tunnel was saturated a bright yellow from the lights on the tunnel sides, but we kept our headlights on anyway. Once we were out of the rather short tunnel, we saw a sign that said Toll Booth ahead.
“I didn’t know there was a toll here!” Dad exclaimed, “Did you?”
“No, I didn’t know either Walter,” Grandma said. We passed another sign saying to slow to pay toll as the road widened into a huge lot which was obviously designed to hold a huge number of cars but it was very empty now. A big truck blocked four of the lanes, and another smaller pickup truck blocked another two lanes further up. We read the sign and we were indignant at the price of twelve dollars. As we pulled up to the toll booth, we saw two people sitting in the booth.
“Hey there! How’re ya?” asked the woman in the booth. The other man in the booth glanced at us before returning to reading his newspaper.
“Just fine thanks,” said Dad, “So, how much is it to pass through here?”
“Twelve dollars.”
“Yeesh… I’m thinking about not going, how bout you guys.”
“Well I think we should go. It looks like fun.” Grandma said.
“Meh, I dunno…” I said, “Sure, seems like fun.”
Posted by Kickmyassman at April 30, 2004 09:27 PM