Alaska 2024: Roll 19 - Glacier View to Whittier
This next roll finishes out our time overlooking the Matanuska Glacier before our hike back. This first image is taken wit the 45mm lens on the Xpan with the hope of trying to bring the subject a bit closer.
I switched back to the 30mm lens to take the same viewpoint with the wider lens. You can see how much smaller the glacier is between these two frames and how much more space you are given with the wider lens.
I had another roll of Ilford HP5 in my bag on the hike so that is the film that I used for this roll. I liked how the clouds and light were playing well this afternoon as we turned around from our hike.
We stayed at the Sheep Mountain Lodge while we were in Glacier View. It was a nice establishment and one of the only places on this stretch of road that would take all four of us and two dogs.
This is the mountain behind the lodge. It is most likely Sheep Mountain, which would make sense given the name. There were binoculars in the rooms and people were out in the parking lot trying to catch a view of the sheep that were wandering around in the mountains behind us.
The biggest challenge for everyone with this place was that the bathrooms and showers were not located in the rooms but were in a central showing facility. We were told that we would only have one other guest sharing the facilities with us during our stay and everything worked out pretty well though the bathrooms did get a bit chilly in the evenings and early mornings.
I was very happy with the view from our front porch. It made the extra effort with the bathrooms worth it to me, though I am pretty sure that others didn't feel the same way. Because the light was still around well past 10:00 PM we had a nice view of the mountains until we went to bed that night.
The next morning had rain predicted when we got down to Anchorage so we packed things up and drove along Highway 1 until we got to the city. There were a few construction areas along the way that slowed things down but nothing too crazy. The most memorable part, at least for the crew in our vehicle, was seeing a folding chair fall out of the RV in front of us as we were moving along. That falling chair replayed in our conversations over the next few weeks quite a bit.
We picked up sandwiches and some vegetarian groceries for Kristy and I in Anchorage and made our way to Whittier where we planned to have lunch. The rain had really started by this time so we didn't do much stopping as things were wet and socked in with clouds.
To get to Whittier you have to take a one-lane tunnel that is 2.5 miles long. Every half hour the traffic flow switches so you can get back the other way. When there is a train needing to go through it will take precedence to the cars. Mostly the trains are scheduled so you know when that is coming.
Whittier is a fishing, boating and cruise ship port that has quite a bit going on. There were people wandering here and there looking in the shops, getting ready to go out on different boats and doing other tourist things. The rain made things look a little miserable as we sat in our Suburban eating our veggie wraps that we picked up earlier.
When the rain let up a little bit I took a short walk to take some pictures of the surroundings. The ocean activities are so different that everything I saw looked strange and wonderful to my eye.
You can see how stormy things were with the weather and the low hanging clouds and mist in these images. I was a bit worried about the camera so I tried to keep that covered as much as I could.
I believe that these frames were all shot without the center filter on the lens to try and get a bit more light to hit the film. The 1.5 stops that the center filter cuts in the light can really make a difference when you are working in less light so it is a consideration.
From Whittier we took the road down to Seward where way stayed the night. It continued to rain for a few hours but then cleared up when we got into town so we could do some laundry and a tiny bit of exploring.
