After leaving the airport, we started out with some last minute food shopping before heading towards Whitter, a small town an hour or so away from Anchorage. The drive was along a scenic 2 lane highway that had been constructed on a thin strip where the mountains meet the ocean. On one side of the road there was a steep rock face and on the other large tidal flats for most of the drive. We stopped to watch a passing pod of Beluga before nearing the tunnel to Whitter.
Whitter has a population of around 200 and is located on the other side of some tall mountains and is only accessed by sea or through a rather long rail tunnel (that's now also used by motor vehicles). The tunnel is the second longest in the USA at almost 2.5 miles. It's tall enough for a fright train, but is only wide enough for a single train track, which makes the entrance look a bit skinny. The drive though this skinny, long, dark, rail tunnel was rather exciting. The same tunnel is used by cars and trains in both directions, so careful co-ordination is required to ensure you don't find your-self in the middle of a dark tunnel, driving head-on into a fright train!
We left sunshine on one side of the tunnel and found rain on the other. The kayak rental center was located in a large old warehouse, now used to store fishing boats in the winter. We backed up the truck and began sorting out the gear for our trip. Everything we were going to need for the next 10 days had to be water-tight and needed to fit into our boats, so we wanted to get this in order before being left in the wilderness. After Andy cooked us some vegi-burgers on the camping stove, we put up our tents and spent a night sleeping in a warehouse.
2 comments:
I'm glad that you're blogging again! I'll admit that while you two were gone, I had to find other blogs to keep me occupied, but don't worry, this is still my #1 blog ;)
Excellent! Well we’ll try to stay on task in that case. We definitely want to keep our readership happy! :-)
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