Alaska to SLC with a stop in Glacier National Park

Kicking off my first real post here I have pictures from the drive down from Alaska to Salt Lake City. I stopped and spent a day in Glacier National Park and took a bunch of pictures there. Also the start of the album has some pictures from Otto Lake and the Healy area.

The drive had a little bit of everything, started out in a full on snowstorm from Fairbanks to Tok. Snow covered roads, cars in the ditch. I was glad to be in a subaru with snow tires. After about 4 hours the skies cleared out and stayed that way for the rest of the trip. Beautiful fall weather slowly turning into late summer. It is cool to see the season change from late fall to late summer being mirrored by the loss in daylight as you head south.

The only tense moments of the trip was after foolishly thinking it would be fairly straightforward to get from Alberta's Capital City to its Second largest city. That is most definitely not the case. Edmonton is a city without signs. My theory is that no one ever goes there, so everyone there already knows the way to go. In short I drove past three different "Welcome to Edmonton" signs before finally leaving that craphole of a city. If Fairbanks and Salt Lake City lived together in a trailer park and had a baby, it would be Edmonton.

At night, with a nearly empty fuel tank, no compass, and armed only with a crappy Walmart north america road atlas, I pulled off the greatest navigating feat in my short life and finally found my way out of the city. (whitemud road to Calgary trail, if you ever find yourself in Edmonton.)

I made good time through Canada and could have made the drive in 4 full days. Instead I decided to take it slow and spend a day in Glacier National Park. Unfortunately the going to the sun road was closed at the summit, so I drove up, checked out the view, and headed back down. Spent the afternoon hiking on a few trails around the St Mary River before heading south on US Route 89. The most fun road I have ever driven on. About the first 30 miles are tight curves and hills. Slowly the road turns into an F1 Track, banked curves and slow rolling hills. There are no intersections, no trees, and you can always see at least a mile or two ahead. In short, I was able to hit 105mph in the 4 cylinder subaru..

I had to spend the last night of the trip sleeping next to the loud ass reefers of semi trucks and under the bright lights of a Flying J truck stop. Instead of just driving straight to SLC, I pulled into a hot springs in the little town of Lava, ID. Relaxed, I cruised into the City of Salt and immediately got myself a california burrito, and enjoyed the warm weather.

All of the pictures have captions and make sure to watch the slideshow in full screen mode to see them in the best resolution.

2009-09-28 denali to SLC