Alaska! Volume 1

In which we see a car fly

Hi friends,

It’s been a big week! We started off in Tok and headed west to hit the Richardson Highway in Delta Junction. The highway going south has some fantastic scenery.

The weather wasn’t super cooperative but by the time we got down to Glennallen the clouds had moved off and we were treated to a sunny evening. The site was next to a stream, so we had a beach fire! Which was great because we were getting bled dry with mosquitoes and the smoke helps keep them at bay.

The next day was July 4th. A friend (hi Stu) sent us a suggestion to check out: Glacier View’s 4th of July Car Launch. It’s exactly what it sounds like: they launch cars off the top of a cliff. A crowd gathers at the base of the cliff to watch. There’s a roped off area where the cars land; apparently they’ve never once in 13 years had an injury.

The cars are launched under their own power - I think they just lock them in first gear, jam a stick on the gas, and let them go. They even tried to smash two cars into each other midair. There was a flyover with the national anthem, American flag everything (and I mean everything), and an ample amount of various light beers. It was just about the craziest thing I’ve ever witnessed and 1000% better than a fireworks show.

In any case, we watched eight or nine cars get yeeted dangerously close to a crowd of people then headed back to camp. As usual, there were Views ™️.

The next day we found ourselves driving down to Valdez. (Pronounced “val-deez” by the locals.) More Views ™️, naturally.

We stayed in Valdez because they do kayak tours in Columbia Bay…we got to kayak right up to the face of the Columbia Glacier.

Kayaking out here was otherworldly. We paddled through completely still blue glacier water, around icebergs the size of cars, breathing the freshest cold air, hearing the thunderous sound as the glacier sheds itself into the sea. The tidewater face towers 200 feet overhead, dwarfing anything that dares come close. Our guide tells us the glacier has receded 15 miles in the last 40 years. The hills and beaches surrounding what is now Columbia Bay haven’t caught up. No grass, no trees, no wildlife…just stones crushed by millions of tons of ice for the last few millennia. The glacier is now known only by the 75 square mile hole it leaves behind.

It’s kind of sad, in a way, that something so magnificent is no more. Nature has an ebb and flow; I’m grateful to have experienced it so dramatically. I would have liked to have seen this place - to walk on ice instead of paddle on water - when the glacier was at its full strength. It’s demise is sad, but there’s good news: the glacier is still alive. It’s still breathing. It’s heart, deep within the Chugach Mountains, is still beating…maybe it’s just resting? Perhaps one day it will wake again.

See y’all out there.