Anchorage!!

We spent last night at the Skky hotel in Whitehorse, Yukon Territory which is around 800miles from Anchorage. The hotel is across the street from the airport, which was surprisingly bigger than the other airports we have seen. Toad River’s airport was a landing strip that followed the road on the other side of a ditch. The approach had you coming in between 2 mountains and I didn’t even recognize the run way until S pointed it out. So the fact that Whitehorse has an international airport was amazing. The airport was also clearly marked with this plane. However, I was a little surprised to find that it is for more than decoration. Any guesses on what it’s used for?? Ya’ll think about it and I’ll tell you next time.

The trip from Whitehorse to the Alaska border went very quickly. We had thought that it would take most of the day to get to Tok, Alaska. However, we crossed the border just after lunch and Tok was only an hour away. The road through Canada has been surprisingly smooth going. Major potholes and frost heaves had been repaired to the best of their ability.

However, at the Alaska border we got to experience two first. The first was SNOW!! It has not rained or snowed our entire trip. So we weren’t sure coming up to the International boundary if it was actually snowing or raining and if it would actually hit us. The international boundary divides Canada and Alaska. It started snowing just on the Alaska side of the boundary which made a very cold but beautiful Welcome into our new home state.

We have seen rain in the distance before but it has always stopped before we got to it. The snow didn’t. While it was only little flurries we got our first snowfall. This made the trip even better because everything had a light blanket of snow on it that made it look like a winter wonderland.

Our next experience was gravel and dirt roads. The roads were still being repaired just after the border so we had a little bit of gravel then dirt roads. The road is generally paved the whole way however, each year they repave or at least fix damage done the year before. This section they had started to repave and so had torn the road up however they hadn’t laid down the new pavement when we got to it. Even so it was still smoother than Arkansas paved roads!!!

After driving pass all the fresh snow S couldn’t stand it anymore, he had to get out and play for a minute. There had been snowmobile tracks all along the side of the road so we didn’t realize how deep it was until he stepped in up to his waist. I stood on the side and took pictures it was too cold for me to get wet.

Yes, he was just a little chilly when we got back in the truck. He did at least get that out of his system so he didn't want to stop anymore.

A couple hours outside of Anchorage I saw another first. It was my first Glacier, it looks like a frozen river. This one is rather small, so I'm told, I was expecting it to look bigger than a mountain. This one probably is actually bigger than the mountains around however it's flatter which makes it look smaller. It was amazing the destruction that a floating piece of ice can do. There were areas in the mountains that looked like they had been dynamited however the damage had been done by the glacier.

So we ended our trip through a winter wonderland at Anchorage last night. There isn't really much snow here compared to what was in the mountains. We are going to get a better look at the city today and run some errends. Hopefully the next couple of days will fly by and the girls will be here before we know it. Then starts our next leg of the trip to Homer and the ferry.