{"id":1160,"date":"2008-07-22T08:00:34","date_gmt":"2008-07-22T15:00:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/writtenbymurphy.com\/wonderblog\/?p=1160"},"modified":"2012-05-14T09:25:33","modified_gmt":"2012-05-14T16:25:33","slug":"alaska-reversing-the-old-commuting-trail-16","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/writtenbymurphy.com\/wonderblog\/2008\/07\/alaska-reversing-the-old-commuting-trail-16\/","title":{"rendered":"Alaska- reversing the old commuting trail (16)"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I was desperate to close my eyes and sleep. I could have slept in the car, no problem.<\/p>\n<p>But the scene demanded my attention.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;This is the road my dad took to work. This is how most of the people from Wasilla drive to Anchorage for work. It&#8217;s called the flats&#8221; I told Chris.<\/p>\n<p>I looked around. It was a little different. &#8220;There used to be a whole lot of standing dead spruce trees. I never knew why. Now there is just a few&#8230;See? Like that one.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>I kept on remembering. &#8220;This road was considered really dangerous. You can imagine, the flat swamp to the one side that lets the wind rip over the highway. Plus, in the winter when it&#8217;s dark, moose can wander in front of you whenever they like.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>At the moment&#8211;4:30 am on a Sunday&#8211;the road was completely clear.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Now you are going to see some real Rivers, not the skinny seasonal trickles we have in Los Angeles,&#8221; I told Chris. &#8220;There are three bridges ahead. Watch how wide the rivers are.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>We were upon the first bridge. I remember this river, the Little Susitna\u00a0never froze in winter. It was fed by a hot spring. Not hot enough for spa treatments, but just hot enough that it didn&#8217;t freeze. The bald eagles would hang out there during the cold months and eat the rotting salmon.<\/p>\n<p>The gravel river beds holding the water spread very wide. The three bridges must have covered the same river, because I only ever saw one name identifier. It was a wide, wide water flow into the inlet.<\/p>\n<p>I knew after the three bridges came the turn-off onto the Park Highway. that was highway number three of Alaska&#8217;s three highways. It was the main street of Wasilla.<\/p>\n<p>But what the heck was THIS?!? Ther was an overpass! This was new. At most, this turn off had be a T in the road, with a turn lane. I couldn&#8217;t recall if it had a stop sign or a stop light, but this massive overpass was a futuristic addition I had NOT been expecting.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I was desperate to close my eyes and sleep. I could have slept in the car, no problem. But the scene demanded my attention. &#8220;This is the road my dad took to work. This is how most of the people &hellip; <a href=\"http:\/\/writtenbymurphy.com\/wonderblog\/2008\/07\/alaska-reversing-the-old-commuting-trail-16\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[22,15],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1160","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-bookworthy","category-travel"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/writtenbymurphy.com\/wonderblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1160","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/writtenbymurphy.com\/wonderblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/writtenbymurphy.com\/wonderblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/writtenbymurphy.com\/wonderblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/writtenbymurphy.com\/wonderblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1160"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/writtenbymurphy.com\/wonderblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1160\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/writtenbymurphy.com\/wonderblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1160"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/writtenbymurphy.com\/wonderblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1160"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/writtenbymurphy.com\/wonderblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1160"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}