{"id":6632,"date":"2019-07-27T18:00:02","date_gmt":"2019-07-28T01:00:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/cowlesmountain.com\/Travels\/?p=6632"},"modified":"2019-07-31T19:16:42","modified_gmt":"2019-08-01T02:16:42","slug":"driving-over-to-tolsona","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cowlesmountain.com\/Travels\/2019\/07\/27\/driving-over-to-tolsona\/","title":{"rendered":"Driving over to Tolsona"},"content":{"rendered":"

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We left Wasilla and headed out the Glenn Highway toward Glennallen, AK.\u00a0\u00a0 Along the way we encountered the Matanuska Glacier just south of the highway.\u00a0 The pictures don’t really do it justice, it was huge and right next to\u00a0 the highway, curving its way back up the mountains.\u00a0 The town, if you could call it that, was aptly named Glacier View.\u00a0\u00a0 Apparently it’s the largest glacier in the US that is accessible by car.<\/p>\n

In a little while we were at our spot for the night, the Roadhouse Lodge & RV.\u00a0\u00a0 Upon first sight it was a bit sparse, but the owner greeted me in the parking lot and took me to our campsite.\u00a0\u00a0 That was service I hadn’t experienced before.<\/p>\n

After we set up, I went in to pay for the night.\u00a0\u00a0 We had 50 amp service, water and sewer.\u00a0\u00a0 That was what I wanted so we could be fully ready for a week of drycamping on Isabel Pass.<\/p>\n

The owner, Karen, said she would be telling the history of the place around 6pm tonight, so we went back for a bowl of chili and the story that evening.<\/p>\n

We met her husband, Andy, that evening, and talk about a workaholic, he never really stopped working the whole time we were there.\u00a0\u00a0 I saw him dig a long trench and lay electrical cabling for 5 new sites he was creating over by the creek.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 In the morning he was putting siding up on a new addition to the back of the roadhouse for a large kitchen and liquor store.\u00a0\u00a0 We heard he had moved the existing building over to the other side of the grounds and would use that for something later.\u00a0 It sounded like it needed a lot of work so he found it would be quicker to move it and build a new structure.<\/p>\n

He mentioned that the kitchen should be open when we come back here on our way to Valdez in a couple of weeks.\u00a0\u00a0 That was hard to imagine, but we will know soon enough.<\/p>\n

I asked what Andy had done prior to retiring to this full-time job.\u00a0 He said he was a demolitions contractor and he always worked alone, preferring to buy bigger equipment than hiring and managing workers.\u00a0\u00a0 He mentioned he worked on the World Trade Center demo but was fired as the unions said he had to hire workers and he wouldn’t.\u00a0\u00a0 Interesting.<\/p>\n

There was some new looking 9′ diameter galvanized pipe sections over on the other side of the campground and I asked him what they could be for.\u00a0 He said he is building an underground walkway inside them from his cabin to the Roadhouse so he doesn’t need to go outside in the negative 70 degree winter weather.\u00a0\u00a0 I guess there isn’t permafrost on the site.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>We left in the morning to drive the 100 miles to Isabel Pass on the Stewart Highway.\u00a0 Here is a picture of what trees grow on top of the permafrost.\u00a0 Black Spruce is the type and they look very stunted.\u00a0 When you see them you know to look out for the frost heaves on the road!<\/p>\n

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      We left Wasilla and headed out the Glenn Highway toward Glennallen, AK.\u00a0\u00a0 Along the way we encountered the Matanuska Glacier just south of the highway.\u00a0 The pictures don’t really do it justice, it was huge and right next to\u00a0 the highway, curving its way back up the mountains.\u00a0 The town, if you … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “Driving over to Tolsona”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6632","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-traveling-the-hiways-and-byways"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cowlesmountain.com\/Travels\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6632","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cowlesmountain.com\/Travels\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cowlesmountain.com\/Travels\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cowlesmountain.com\/Travels\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cowlesmountain.com\/Travels\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6632"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/cowlesmountain.com\/Travels\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6632\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cowlesmountain.com\/Travels\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6632"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cowlesmountain.com\/Travels\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6632"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cowlesmountain.com\/Travels\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6632"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}