Alaska: April 2021: Day 3: Castner Glacier

Alaska

April 2021: Day 3

Soft taco (not street taco) sized. Bit too oily but unexpectedly legit for Alaska!

Menudo. Broth too salty but otherwise surprisingly decent.

Taco King is packed.

Starting the Castner Glacer trek.

Hiked 1.25 miles for this?

Castner Glacier ice cave was not impressive at first glance.

And then you start to appreciate it....

Pure blue glacier ice.

Blue and gold on the ceiling.

The further in you go, the more texture you see.

Looking back torwards the entrance.

People look like ants.

Waves in the ice. $Frozen water and light lead to some crazy refraction.$
Frozen water and light lead to some crazy refraction.

Ice flakes adorn the ceiling.

Feels like a spiral of ice.

Because the entrance deserves another shot.

Delicate ice crystals.

Almost looks like gold flake.

The rock beneath.

On the return trek.

Got super lucky, just a hint of the sun on the way back.

View from the parking lot. ~1.25 miles each way.

Seeing the road just got hard....

Highway 2 was pretty good, but conditions on highway 4 were pretty bad in many spots. This was one of those spots.

Tanks outside the entrance of Fort Greely.

Petroleum pipeline crossing the Delta River.

And the highway bridge.

Edible enough-- better than some of the crap places I've had back home.

That said this is the "large"?

Looks like a cloudy night tonight.

Taco King, like so many restaurants in Fairbanks, makes surprising efforts at being legit. They're at the end of a really long supply chain and in a market where authentic doesn't necessarily go over so well, but I respect their efforts.

Castner Glacier and its famous (?) ice cave were well worth the drive, even if conditions on highway 4 were a bit hairy in a few places. The hike is flat and relatively easy if you take care to stay on the track and avoid deep snow, although at a little over a mile and a quarter, it was longer than advertised. The cave itself didn't look look like much from the outside, but it turned out to be way cool. Years of fallen snow compressed into pure blue ice, layers of dust resulted not only in black dirt but feathery ice crystals on the ceiling, and what seemed almost like lines of gold flake in the walls and ceiling.

Wrapped things up with another meal at a place tries surprisingly hard at authenticity, Pho House. Again they don't really hit the mark, but definitely respect their efforts! (also while they surprisingly had tendon, they didn't have tripe ;_; )