This weekend I drove North on the GlenAllen Parkway to go hunting in the middle of nowhere for snowshoe hares….aka cute, furry bunnies. But my favorite part of the trip was the drive to the middle of nowhere. GlenAllen Parkway is known for being one of the prettiest drives in all of Alaska. The reason it is so beautiful is because there are so many wide open spaces with towering mountains in the background and often lakes and rivers sprinkled throughout the landscape. I especially enjoyed the views on this trip because the ground and trees were lightly dusted with snow. These pictures don't really do the views justice, but some are still pretty spectacular.
Also, on the way to the middle of nowhere, we passed a huge glacier that is often used for recreation such as glacier hiking and ice climbing. This is the glacier that some of my friends went ice climbing on. Matanuska Glacier is currently fed by smaller glaciers from each valley between nearby mountains and it juts out what seems to be about a mile from the mountains. This glacier is about 150 miles from Anchorage, but during the Ice Age, it was part of one continuous glacier to Anchorage. I’ve also heard that during the last Ice Age, all of Alaska and Canada were covered by a huge glacier that went all the way too Seattle. Apparently, there are huge boulders across the northern United States that were pushed there by the glaciers. At some point this winter, I plan to head back out to this glacier, Matanuska, to get a closer look and do some hiking.
We stopped at a lodge about 30 minutes from our destination to get a quick breakfast/lunch. I got an omelet, but had an amazing blueberry pie afterwards. Apparently, this lodge is a popular place to stay for snow-machining in a couple months. We are planning on heading back in December for a snow-machining trip.
Onto the hunt! We pulled off the main road and drove several miles before stopping in an area of low, thick brush. This is where the bunnies live because it gives them a good hiding place.
We only brought one gun, a 22, and there were four of us. We stayed in a mostly straight line spaced about 15 yards apart each and simply walked forward until we pushed a rabbit out and spotted it. Then we followed the rabbit until the shooter had a good angle. Pretty simple strategy. We hunted for 3 hours, and each of us got 1 rabbit, for a total of 4. The next day, we cooked the rabbits, and ate them over a bed of penne pasta with sun dried tomato alfredo sauce and caribou sausage (killed earlier by one of the guys hunting with us). Rabbit really does taste like chicken, but it has the texture of lamb. It was pretty good.
After I got back from the trip, I relaxed Saturday night and finished reading a book, “Brother Odd” by Dean Koontz. I came across a quote in the book that summed up the beauty of the landscape, although the context of the quote had nothing to do with physical beauty.
“Once in a while, however, there are moments……of transcendent joy, of inexpressible beauty, of wonder that overwhelms the mind with awe, or in this case a moment of such piercing charm that the world seems more right than it really is and offers a glimpse of what Eden might have been before we pulled it down.”
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