Biking to Girdwood

To recover from a quiet spell for a while - a few photomontages and notes from the land of North to the Future™. We took a saturday a couple of weeks ago to bike from Anchorage to Girdwood, which is about a 40 mile trip, one way. Well, 40 miles from some arbitrary point where they start measuring such things (my guess - the start of the Seward Highway). The point being, when we started at about 7:30am, it wasn't until 9am-ish that we actually got out of town. Ahh, sprawl (and a brief, unsheduled trip to Fred Meyer to pick up some zip ties to do a quick, sidewalk repair).

So after we got out of town, we set off, on the side of the highway. Generous shoulders on the side left plenty of room to bike. One of the first scenic points that we stopped at, after maybe 20 miles, to take a break and a few pictures -
Yes, I need a haircut. I know. I'll be shorn one of these days soon enough.

A few miles later, once the shoulder of the highway turned into an actual bikepath at the small (small!) town of Indian, we started to work our way up, much higher than the ~sea level highway. Needless to say, two some miles into a seemingly endless uphill climb, we paused for a brief break where Meg asked,

"They call these things Altoids?"
Yes, along with zipties, we bought a package of the new (to us) Altoids gum. Minty and chewy.

A short few miles later and we were nearly in Girdwood. Pictured just outside of town -


A short uphill mile into town (ha), we enjoyed some much deserved lunch and a drink. A little lounging and rock skipping followed on the stream that runs from Alyeska glacier to the Turnagain Arm south of town, out to Cook Inlet and ultimately the Pacific.

The wind-gods were not as friendly on the trip back. A constant headwind of 10+mph made for slow going. In fact, we eventually admitted defeat, some 5 miles outside of the southernmost edge of the Anchor-sprawl when a good friend Kelly (and Jackson) came to rescue us. It was one of those 'a car never felt so good' moments as we drove back, even if I was crammed into a very small space with a couple of bikes. A good warmup ride for our trek to Seward and Kodiak later this summer.