Back to Anchorage for Five Things

Alaska Travelog #6
Anchorage - Sat, 15 Jun 2024, 4pm

After hiking Barbara Falls and Thunderbird Falls this morning we turned the car around and headed back south— getting back on track with our original plan for the day of driving to Seward, some 125 miles from Anchorage, and stop for a few hikes along the way— except that we were 30 miles on the opposite of Anchorage. And when we got back to Anchorage we deemed it time to stop for lunch... and shopping. With the ridiculously long days up here, who cares if we get in to Seward at 10pm? It'll still be daytime!

Here are Five Things:

• Back in Anchorage our first order of business was getting lunch. It was already 2:30pm, and we were hungry. We considered whether to simply nosh on protein bars and save time not stopping at a restaurant but again, night comes so late, why rush?


• We chose to eat at a Golden Corral. It's a very Americana buffet restaurant, two things that we rarely eat. But we figured that other choices in Alaska may not be much better. I mean, lots of Mexican restaurants popped up when we did a search... but given that, here, "South of the border" is 1,500 miles of Canada, is Mexican food really that good? Plus, the last time we ate at a Golden Corral was 5 years ago (IIRC) so it was a bit novel for us.


• We made a quick stop at REI, the outdoor sporting goods store. That new pair of hiking boots I've mentioned in my past few blogs haven't been fitting quite right. I wanted to see if a pair one size smaller would fit better and, if so, exchange them. Unfortunately the otherwise well-stocked REI store in Anchorage didn't have the model of boot I bought. I think it's being phased out... which is a shame, because I've now bought this boot at least 4 times because I like it so much.


• Hawk wanted to stop by a lapidary shop for some gem hunting. Ordinarily we'd postpone this to the end of the trip and do it only if time permits but here, again, daytime lasts forever so why not do it while the store's open.


• While Hawk was in the store I got Apple CarPlay working in our rental car. I mention that because it had been vexing us all morning that we could not get the car's infotainment system to connect our phones. It kept giving us the error message, "Maximum of 6 phones connected, please delete one first." Even after we deleted all the old connection profiles, it kept giving us that error. I searched online for help and found plenty of Reddit posts describing the same problem. The solutions offered ranged from as simple as "Delete the profiles," (Did it several times) to "Turn the car off and back on again," (Did that several times also) to, "I had to take mine to the dealer to fix it." 🙄 But one seemingly weird tip that actually worked was, "Turn the car off, open the driver's door for at least 10 seconds, then close it and start the car again." Holy moly, the secret door trick worked! Now we have Apple Maps nav for the rest of our trip. 🤣

Now it's time to get going with the other half of our day. There's only 7½ hours of daylight left!

Hiking Virgin Falls

Alaska Travelog #7
Girdwood - Sat, 15 Jun 2024, 6:30pm

We paused on our road trip from Anchorage to Seward this afternoon to hike at Virgin Falls. Unlike the few stops we'd already made since leaving Anchorage at 4pm, this one was fully planned. ...Not that the others were unplanned. They were matters of, "We've got plenty of daylight, so we'll stop at roadside vistas as we go." I'll write about those in a blog when we finish this drive. For now it's just Virgin Fals, in the ski town of Girdwood.

Like Barbara Falls we hiked this morning, this trail wasn't well marked. I mean, the drive to the trail wasn't well marked. There were no brown traffic signs, nor even any green signs— heck, not even hand-written signs— directing visitors to the trailhead. There was just the end of a winding gravel road that threaded past wealthy people's ski homes with one small trailhead sign and lots of "NO PARKING" signs. Presumably the wealthy ski home owners don't want the riffraff here. Still, that one trailhead sign was one trailhead sign more than Barbara Falls. 😅



From the parking area a surprisingly short trail leads steeply uphill to and overlook above Virgin Falls. A foot trail also leads down to a spot near the creek. We lingered here several minutes before continuing on.

But Wait, There's More

When I wrote that this trail was surprisingly short, I meant that literally. The trail description on AllTrails.com— without which it would've been hard to find this hike, considering the seemingly deliberate lack of signage— says it's 0.5 miles roundtrip and 180' of ascent. Except the quick trail didn't feel like 0.25 miles of hiking, and it definitely didn't feel like we ascended 180'.

I consulted the AllTrails app on my phone to figure out how far we'd gone.... According it it we were less than halfway there, whatever "there" is.

The trail continued higher above these falls, so we continued higher.

It's not clear what the trail is supposed to go to. The falls we'd already seen are what almost everybody posts pictures on AllTrails about. Further up there are recent deadfalls on the trail, and at some point the trail becomes fairly indistinct. The trail seems to turn sharply to the side and climb straight up the side of the mountain, away from the creek. That seemed like the wrong way to get to higher up falls on the creek, if there even are higher falls, so we turned back.



On the way back down we spotted some falls higher up the creek than Virgin Falls. Call these... Upper Virgin Falls. Or maybe Middle Virgin Falls, if there's actually something higher up that we were supposed to see. These aren't at the "end" of the trail, so possibly there's something higher up we couldn't find. Or maybe natural changes like landslides and deadfalls have changed it. Either way, we enjoy these falls and the relative solitude we enjoyed at them. Most people turn around at the lower falls.

Watch on YouTube

Here's a short video (above) of the upper falls. Enjoy the sights— and especially the sounds— of being alone with nature.

From Anchorage to Seward

Alaska Travelog #8
Seward - Sat, 15 Jun 2024, 10:30pm

This afternoon we completed the drive we initially thought we'd do this morning, the trek from Anchorage to Seward. We changed plans this morning when we (belatedly) looked up hikes to do along the way and found two interesting looking hikes in the opposite direction of "on the way". Barbara Falls was definitely worth it, Thunderbird Falls was kind of meh. Then we stopped back in Anchorage for lunch and shopping before beginning our originally planned drive.

The drive from Anchorage to Seward isn't a big deal. I mean, the driving isn't a big deal. It's 125 miles on highways, about 130 with the side trip we made to hike Virgin Falls. With the driving earlier in the day it added up to a bit over 200 miles— still not a big deal for me. What makes it a bigger deal is how scenic it is. It's snow-capped mountains the whole way.

We made a few other stops along the way before Virgin Falls. There are no shortage of amazing looking vista points along the road down to there from Anchorage. As we didn't want to get in to Seward too late we limited ourselves to just four vista points, including one with a really short hike at Bird Point. We mentally bookmarked a few roadside falls to see on the way back through here on Wednesday.

We got to our hotel in Seward around 8:20pm. The room is... easily the worst hotel room I've stayed in in at least 10 years. More about that in some other blog. After checking in we drove out to Safeway for some grocery shopping then I picked up a takeout pizza for dinner.



After dinner back at the room, of 3/4 the pizza augmented by a few cans of the beer I bought at the grocery store, I wandered out on our deck to appreciate the view. It was just after 10pm. That's right— that sunset photo looking across Resurrection Bay in Seward was taken after 10pm. Sunset doesn't come until 11:25pm tonight. ...And that's earlier than Anchorage's 11:40pm sunset!