They say everything’s bigger in Texas. That may be true until you start talking about Alaska , which in land mass alone, is 2.19 times larger. It’s a big place. And I have only been traveling in a small portion of it. The main roads are all in the southeast corner of the state and there is much, much more land to the north and west.
This is a sign I saw in Earthquake Park, north of Anchorage, a few days ago.
It talks about comparable areas of wetlands between the two. which is a whole nother matter.
There are 4 major highways in Alaska, not surprisingly numbered 1, 2, 3 and 4. Yes, there are other, smaller ones I’ll talk about in a minute.
1 – Runs from Tok, southwest through Glennallen, west through Anchorage and south to Homer. 538 miles, 9 hrs 38 min (per Google).
2 – Runs from the Canadian border with Yukon, northwest through Tok, Delta Junction, and Fairbanks plus a few more miles to Livengood. 624 miles, 7 hrs 34 min.
3 – Runs from Palmer north to Fairbanks. 327 miles, 5 hrs 36 min.
4 – Runs from Delta Junction, south through Glennallen to Valdez. 268 miles, 4 hrs 37 min.
Yes, there are shorter stretches of highway with different numbers:
11 – The “Dalton Highway” north from Livengood to Prudhoe Bay, a dangerous stretch of road not for the faint of heart, and not considered a major highway.
9 – Which branches off from 1 to run south to Seward.
5 – Which branches off from 2 to run northeast to Chicken.
7 & 98, in the Alaskan Panhandle which run south to Haines and Skagway respectively, though I will drive through much more of the Yukon Territory and extreme northwest British Columbia to actually get to them than I will while I am in Alaska.
This is part of the reason I am so far behind posting photos here on the blog. It takes me a long time to get from Point A to Point B, plus the time to stop and take photos. My 2 hr 22 min trip to Valdez took over 6 hours because I stopped every 4 minutes to take pictures! So please be patient with me. Believe me, I am seeing many amazing things EVERY DAY and I am banking lots of photos. I will get caught up eventually.
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