So we awoke to a beautiful day in Anchorage! We made coffee, Whitney came out to talk with us, and we gave her some of our fancy (definitely not fancy!) camp coffee. 😆
It wasn’t long until we had our map out and we were trying to figure out which way we were headed from here…
Because we had so much less time until we had to be back to the real world due to the delay in our original trip, Laura and I had been debating on cutting out going down to Valdez. This left us with a large loop around central Alaska. With that being said, we could go either direction in that loop. So it was now a matter of what we wanted to experience earlier vs later. I was still leaning to going out towards Glennallen, and Laura was leaning towards going up to Fairbanks.
Whitney had been both ways, and she recommended the views towards Glennallen vs Fairbanks- so after thinking on it we decided that was the plan!
This would add another 179 miles to our trip; putting our shakedown total at 408.3 miles on arrival in Glennallen.
But first, I have a story to tell…
It’s quite a Whopper! In fact, this is the tale of ‘The Impossible Whopper’!
So remember David & Lyla Nelson? They bought the Wanderlust. They also started up that awesome bus on the spit, A Bus Named Sue. (I hope David doesn’t mind me snagging a pic off of his Facebook page…)
Anyway, David has cooked in the restaurant industry for a long time and among his experience he has worked at a vegan restaurant. Because we are vegan we end up chatting about it with him a lot, and one of the large debates is which vegan burger is best.
Laura and I were telling him about the Beyond burgers and how much we liked those, and he would always ask, “Are those the one’s that bleed a lot of red juice when you cook them?”
We would always kind of shrug and say I guess, because we hadn’t noticed that much red, but David would always advocate that there was a vegan burger he liked way more than that. So as vegan “meat” has been increasing in the stores, Laura and I have been trying to sample David’s holy burger patty meat. Our store ended up carrying the Awesome Burger, so we tried it. Though alright, it didn’t hold a candle up the Beyond in our opinion…
Later on I heard of Burger King carrying The Impossible Whopper. This is when I realized there was a 3rd main competitor in the vegan burger market. (I am sure there are many I’m not aware of)
Well, the last 2 times Laura and I had been to Anchorage we had been on a mini side-quest; to try The Impossible Whopper!
But… with the Covid-19 event Burger King had shut it’s stores down to drive-through only. We had tried to order through the app for curb-side pickup, but it would not allow it at any Anchorage locations.
Well… With Our Ohana being 11’7″ – the BK drive-throughs were a no go.
One day, when a worker came out of the restaurant on Dimond to give a drive through customer their food that was waiting in the parking lot, Laura asked them how we could place an order. The worker unprofessionally explained that they would ask and hurried inside, and also unprofessionally, never to return.
So we finally shrugged our shoulders and gave up on Burger King and their Impossible Whopper.
When Whitney heard our tale she would not have it, and vowed the next morning she would bring us this unattainable delectable! So after we had decided our route, she cruised over to the closest BK and scooped us up some Impossible Whoppers with no mayonnaise and no cheese.
Whitney- Thank You! Not only did we get to try the burgers finally- but I do not think I’ve had a burger for breakfast since High School! 😂🤣😂🤣
And David, if you’re reading this…
It was alright! Way better than that The Awesome Burger but still ain’t touchin’ the top on the sizzling tasty scale in comparison to our beloved, the Beyond Burger! 😆😜
Until the next great quest- vegan burger review complete!
And with that, we were outta there! We once again made plans with our friends to meet up on the other side of our intended loop- hopefully this time for real! So we left Anchorage headed North!
It was a beautiful sunny day for a drive, and on the highway towards Palmer we received lots of smiles, thumbs ups, and cars maneuvering around us to snap some pics. The Ohana definitely is great at making people smile, and that is a great thing to do in this world as of late!
It wasn’t long until we passed Eklutna Lake- and therefore had voyaged out further than the first shakedown!
And before we knew it we were past Palmer and headed into new territory for both of us!
Awhile later we entered Sutton, and I couldn’t help but turn around to check out this cool place.
This is the Sutton Alpine Historical Park. It was free to go walk around, and I am somewhat of a sucker for checking out old industrial machinery.
The park was beautifully maintained and set up with walking paths and sprawling lawns. It was a perfect place to slip off the shoes and let the toes meet grass for a little while.
The park told the history of the coal mine that was there, and it looked like it had a rough and tumble history plagued with misfortune that seemed to commonly befall earlier pioneers…
… Like explosions killing many from someone smoking a cigarette in the wrong place. 😳
The mine stayed open for a whopping 5 years only before it was shut down.
So it was a pleasant visit, with a beautiful play area for kids, lots of historic buildings spread out over the area, and one of these…
Laura and I walked up to it thinking it looked like the strangest little playground we had ever seen, and shortly realized it was outdoor exercise equipment! I had never seen anything like it- but what a neat idea!
It turns out it’s set up for travelers to get out of their vehicles, getting the blood pumping and body moving before getting back on the road.
The restrooms were extremely well kept as well, in case any fellow travelers might ever need to know… 😉
After a wonderful respite from the road, we were riding back between the lines. Surrounded by beautiful (and new to us) mountains, sprawling rivers, and rolling hills covered in trees we continued our journey.
Eventually we were greeted by views of glaciers between the mountains; which totally made sense since this area turned out to coincidentally be called Glacier View.
As a perfect picture of the terminus of Matanuska Glacier came into view, we had to pull over to drink in the view.
It didn’t take us long to climb up on the roof deck, open up the sky bench seats, and soak in the sun and the breeze.
After enojying another pleasant stop along our way, we were loaded back in and into cruising mode.
On our way along we passed a business advertising Alaska’s fastest zip line. We’ve never done a zip line…
… when the world re-awakens after Covid-19 we might have to give it a try! Something for the bucket list. 😁
After a long time of steep hills and tight turns the mountains receded as we entered the flat lands around the area of Eureka.
We stopped at the gas station in the middle of nowhere of this area to fuel up. The area of Eureka was mainly open and slightly hilly terrain with sparse and fewer trees.
Where there wasn’t smaller trees or muskeg it opened up to small areas that had been worn down that reminded us of small gravel pits. Throughout the whole trip these areas were strewn with trucks and campers towing 4-wheeler trailers. So that is what we ascertained what the area of Eureka to Glennallen seemed to be; a 4-wheelers paradise.
It was a long and uneventful drive, and at this point Laura was getting antsy and ready to get out of drive mode. She was extremely excited to see what the Glennallen ahead was all about, and what it had to offer us as our destination of where we planned to stay at for the night. The road seemed to go on forever, with our destination somewhere towards the mountain ahead of us.
So e-v-e-n-t-u-a-l-l-y we arrived in Glennallen! And with that we can answer the big question from today’s post title: What’s going on in Glennallen?
The answer: Absolutely Nothing.
We actually couldn’t even tell if we had entered Glennallen until we hit the intersection and the gas station. But that’s all Glennallen is, a hub to re-fuel and move on to wherever your destination may be.
Laura was not a happy camper with this answer; and considered Glennallen to be the biggest let down ever. You see, Laura is a bit of a creature that enjoys a town’s presentation- and Glennallen had zero, so she was sorely let down. 😥
After we fueled up we decided there was nothing worth staying for; but we had made one big decision.
After the long and tiresome drive to this point; we were going to Valdez! If we had come this far, and may not come this way in particular again unless compelled to repeat such an exiting drive, we were going to see Valdez. Afterall, Valdez was the inspiration for this whole shakedown originally!
With that, decided to at least head the direction of Valdez to find a spot to camp. At the first spot we pulled over, I could tell Laura was grumpy. 😒
After a little bit of probing I discovered that she wished we had stopped and bought fireworks in Glennallen; which was one of the only exciting things we had seen there.
I hadn’t bought fireworks since I was a kid; seeing how fireworks are illegal down in Homer, so I was intrigued.
Needless to say- this was the scene less than 10 minutes later:
The fireworks were not too crazy expensive, and being way out of the loop on what consisted as good fireworks we purchased a multi-pack hoping something within it’s contents would scratch our itch for the lights of excitement and the smell of sulfur.
While there, we asked the salesman a good place to camp, and he recommended the Copper River. So we spent some time and drove down to the copper river.
It turned out the copper river was not a good place for us. It had 2 problems in our opinion as a good place for us to stay:
1) It was jam packed elbow to elbow with drunk tourists there to fish and not give a damn about social distancing.
2) It was all heavily pay to play camping.
So we were out! But the euphoria of buying fireworks was beginning to fail at keeping Laura a happy girl. and we needed to find somewhere to land! To get her out of the passenger seat, feed her, and settle in for the night. So I opted on a vacant location I had seen a while back in hopes it would not be pay to play as well.
It turned out it was not! It was a beautiful location, right on the river, well maintained, and completely vacant. It was an interesting spot- as though one point the state maintained paths to the river, but gave up on the river access portion, so decided it was not a high priority location anymore.
Anyway- it was perfect.
So we had landed. Get Laura out of the passenger seat: check!
Now we needed to feed Laura…
…check!
And with that we were able to settle in for the night. We walked over to a nice little fire pit overlooking the river, enjoyed a good drink, and turned on some happy tunes so we could…
…Light some fireworks! 🎆
Did we forget to mention that this particular day was the 4th Of July! 😜
It was around this time some genius wanted to hand launch a bottle rocket, and the result was a bunch of sparks all over said genius’s hand and a dud firework. 💥🤯
Even worse Laura was standing behind me, and the sparks left black all over her new and favorite white sweatshirt! So she went to the river to clean it…
… Sorry Honey… 😔
But we had fun!
Eventually, we picked up all our firework pieces and put them in the fire pit for the night, and turned in to our comfy bed. We were soothed to sleep by the calming sound of the river.
That night I awoke to the last of the black cat firecrackers going off. 🧨 Good thing we put them away properly in the fire pit!
Regardless, it didn’t take long for that river to put me right back to sleep… 💤
Geoff Murphy 8/21/2020