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On Wed, 6 Jan 2010 21:01:43 -0800, "Bill McKee"
wrote:


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On Tue, 05 Jan 2010 20:31:50 -0500, Wayne.B
wrote:

On Tue, 05 Jan 2010 16:21:57 -0500, wrote:

This is a glacier in that park you can call your own for a while.
http://gfretwell.com/ftp/alaska/Glacier%20lake.jpg

Nice. How far did you have to hike back in? Were you able to rent a
4WD in Alaska or did you drive your own?

http://img163.imageshack.us/img163/4...hallglacie.jpg


I think that lake was about 3 miles in but it is over a pretty good
sized hill (1000' or so I guess) I was dead reckoning with a compass
and we finally found the trail.
It was a good 6 hour hike with sight seeing along the way. We walked
around that lake for at least an hour and got lost coming back, pretty
scary actually. There really isn't much of a trail and my GPS was
virtually useless up there for some reason.

We ended up in a Hertz Windstar van, not 4wd but we still got around
OK. Flew into Fair banks, out of Anchorage.
About 99% of the "roads" in Alaska are dirt paths. There are a few
main roads but vast areas without any vehicle access at all except
snow machines and dog sleds.

My truck is 4x4. And I only used the 4x4 a couple times. More for
safety,
than anything else. Top of the World Highway in a rainstorm. We did not
see that big of a percentage of dirt roads. A few gravel but mostly
paved.
You can rent 4x4 truck campers.



I guess we just look for dirt roads. The most interesting things are
at the end of one ;-)
That was one reason why we liked South Dakota so much. In the Black
Hills there are hundreds (thousands?) of miles of logging roads.
We put 2300 miles on a 4WD Suburban in 3 weeks, probably half in the
dirt.

I did take some back dirt roads, but they were not 4x4 required. Maybe if
there was rain, but I think most of AK is gravel and rock. There are so
many glacial moraines that they can gravel coat a road easily.