On Wednesday after teaching the course, we went to “Earthquake Park”. There, we walked around and went on a part of the coastal trail running along the coastal waters adjacent to Anchorage. This park was created to be a memorial to the earthquake that ravaged Anchorage in the early 1960’s. Much of the area adjacent to the Anchorage harbor sloughed into the bay, creating mud flats along the bay that persist to this day. That night, we went to a restaurant called “Benihana’s” for dinner where we watched as a Japanese meal was prepared before us.
A trail at Earthquake Park
The bay at Earthquake Park
Me at Beluga Point on the way to Whittier
On Thursday, we had quite an adventure. After the course, I mentioned to Clark that we could try driving down to a town called Whittier, Alaska for the evening. So we hopped in the car and started driving down. We took several pictures from the way down in the car, there was quite a bit of great Alaska scenery on the way down…huge mountains adjacent to the bay and large glaciers coming off several of the mountains in some of the freshwater areas. The best way to get to Whittier from Anchorage is along a road called “Portage Glacier Road”. The drive along this road is awesome…there are many glaciers and I imagine much wildlife during many times of the year. Toward the end of this road, there is a one-lane tunnel that connects the road to Whittier. Cars from one side (the Portage Glacier side) are allowed through on the ½ hour and cars from the Whittier side are allowed through the tunnel on the hour. There are several pictures Clark took of the tunnel as we entered and drove through it. It was quite an interesting drive…there was a curb on each side of the one-lane road and a set of railroad tracks running the length of the tunnel. This is supposedly the longest tunnel in the United States…maybe the world. Driving through the tunnel is like driving through a mine shaft—it has stone walls that have been chipped away and is very narrow.
A Glacier on the way to Whittier
Scenery on the way to Whittier
Me at Portage Lake with Portage Glacier in the background
Portage Glacier
We arrived on the other side of the tunnel, which terminated at Whittier, at around 6:45 PM. Once there, we looked around for something to do. There was not a whole lot to do there. But we found a very rough and fairly treacherous path that led up to a lookout point above the town of Whittier. We took several pictures from this lookout and Clark took some pictures of the river on the way up. The town of Whittier is located in a little corner of the Prince William Sound, and the area was very beautiful, though Whittier itself did not seem like much of a town, an old World War II town that did not seem to have changed much since the war and hidden from normal civilization.
Entrance to the Whittier Tunnel, which began at Portage Lake and ended at the town of Whittier
On the way out of the Whittier tunnel
We hiked down from the lookout point, hopped in the car and tried to start it. Unfortunately, the car did not start. The key became stuck in the ignition and I couldn't get it out until reading the instruction manual that came with the car. Clark and I figured out how to remove the key and then we tried to insert the key ant start the car again. Some lights went on this time, but the car simply did not start. At this point, I was quite worried. There wasn’t much in this town and it was getting colder. Would we remain stranded here for the night, with no way out? After several more failed attempts to start the car, I decided to call the road assistance hotline on my rental packet to explain my situation and see if they could offer some kind of help. Of course, there were no places close by that could help us. The closest service station that could help us was probably located in Anchorage. The lady on the other end of the line was very kind as I explained my situation. She told me that it was likely that the battery had become discharged and we would need to figure out a way to recharge it to start the car. We were parked at a high-rise “condo” building that appeared decent from a long distance away, but as we got closer to the building, it seemed that this building may have been a remnant of the World War II era. We went around the outside of the building trying to find anyone who would have jumper cables and could help us. Nobody seemed to have them. The interesting thing about this building was that the entire town seemed to be contained in this building. We entered at the main floor and there was a store located on this floor of the building. A man was in this store watching “Bonanza” and the store was full of canned goods. The floor on this main level was uncarpeted and was all concrete. The man in the store told us that he did not have any jumper cables, but that maybe we could try the police to find jumper cables. We had seen the police officer earlier, but thought we would try the building before bothering the officer. The police office was also located on the first floor of this building in a small corner. We went to the office and knocked on the door, but nobody was there. We went around to many of the other shops in the building…a Laundromat, a styling salon, and a few other doors, but nobody answered their doors. We encountered a man who was going up an elevator. He gave us a broken battery-type charger which we were sure did not work. We placed the broken charger in a room and decided to leave the building, never really wanting to come back to the building and discouraged about what we should do. As we exited the building and walked back to our car, we saw the police officer driving along the road near our car…an answer to our prayers! We stopped the officer and asked if he had jumper cables. He did…he went to get them and came back with the cables in a couple of minutes! We opened the hood and he was able to successfully recharge the battery enough to jump the car! We were so excited and thanked the officer. At this point, it was about 8:20 PM. He said we had 5 minutes to get back through the tunnel before traffic is opened in the other direction. At this point, we just wanted to leave the town and never come back to a strange town like this one. Being there was like going back in time to a town that was a hidden World War II base (this town was a hidden military base during WWII and the tunnel access did not exist at the time) and there was certainly a strange feeling there…. We stepped on the gas, made it in the tunnel before it closed, and sped back through the tunnel, vowing never to return. It was one of the strangest and most interesting experiences of my life. I’m not sure why our battery became discharged there…maybe we left our lights on, but we were only gone from the car for about 20 or 30 minutes and it seems like the battery could not have discharged in this short time.
Me atop a lookout point in the town of Whittier, Alaska
Another view from the lookout point in WhittierThe next day (Friday), we did not have training. So we decided to drive and maybe hike around and look at some of the sites during our last day in Alaska. Clark had an interview with a person at Exxon Mobil in their office. After the interview, we drove down to a place called “Alaska Wild Berry Products” that contained what they claimed to be the largest chocolate fountain in the world. We then visited the Anchorage Alaska temple.
Me at “Alaska Wild Berry Products” next to the world's largest chocolate waterfall
The front of “Alaska Wild Berry Products”
The Anchorage Alaska LDS Temple
After the temple, we drove down the “Seward highway” which went by the turnoff to Whittier (where we went the day before) and parked at a place that seemed to be a good place to get out and hike. It was quite windy at the bottom of this trail, but we got out and started hiking. As we entered the trees, it was less windy since the trees broke the wind. We were hoping to see and take pictures of some moose. Clark and I saw some moose near the earthquake park, and I had seen a moose munching on a tree during my early morning run on Friday, but we had not taken any pictures of the moose. So we thought be getting off the beaten path that we would find some moose. We went hiking up the McHugh lake trail in the Chugach State Park. It was fairly steep, but had some awesome views of the “Turnagain Arm” along the Alaskan coast. There are some steep rising mountains off this arm and many glaciers and beautiful views. We hiked about a mile up this trail and decided to turn around since the entire trail was 7 miles with about a 3000 foot elevation gain. We had no water and no food, so we went back to the car, retrieved some water and food, and hiked on a trail that went down to a creek and along the side of the mountain. We then headed back to the car and drove down to the “Alyeska” ski resort past Girdwood, Alaska. We had lunch at a little diner in Girdwood and drove back to the hotel since I was getting very sleepy and we had a long plane flight ahead of us. We later woke up, went to dinner, checked out of the hotel, and caught our plane back to Seattle and Utah. Overall, we had a good and adventurous experience, though I would like to head up to Alaska and do some more exploring around someday. I suspect there is a whole lifetime of exploring to do there in Alaska, so the only real way I could see everything I wanted to see would be to move up there for a little while.
The forest floor along the McHugh Lake Trail
Trees along the McHugh Lake Trail
Views of the Turnagain Arm toward Portage Glacier and Seward along the McHugh Lake Trail
McHugh Creek
Me with the Turnagain Arm in the background
