Drove back on the 60 mile dirt road, back to the Richardson Highway (Alaska Hwy 4) and stopped at Willow Lake for amazing pictures of the Wrangell Mountains - starting from the left, Mt. Sanford (16,237 ft), Mt. Drum (12,010 ft), Mt. Wrangell (14,163 ft), and Mt. Blackburn (16,390 ft).

Drove Glenn Highway (Alaska Hwy 1) through Glenallen and next to the Matanuska River and made it to Wasilla for the night.  We stopped at the Matanuska glacier as we read that it is the only “road” accessible glacier and that it costs $15 to get to the glacier, as that money is supposed to be for maintaining the road.  We drove down a pretty steep dirt road only to find out that the glacier is on private property and they charge $15 per kid (11-16 yo) and $30 per adult!  After already being out on the Root Glacier and knowing we are going to Exit Glacier/Harding Ice Field, decided the $90 could definitely be spent in better ways.  We stayed at the Big Bear Campground in Wasilla where we all had a nice shower and got our laundry done.  It seems the “resort” type campgrounds do come in handy when it comes time to shower – the cost of the site ($22) is sometimes close to what we pay for showers for all of us.

Saturday (August 4)

Drove into Anchorage to get our final big shopping done.  On the way in, we saw a young moose walking along the highway side of the fence.  We found out that when moose are killed in Anchorage, they are given to people on a list who don’t have the ability to hunt (already cut and prepared for freezing).  We made it to the Trail River Campground on the Kenai Peninsula and explored Kenai Lake (right behind our campsite).