Road Trip #3 - Glenn Highway East
Today is the final drive on the Glenn Highway during my 2013 Plein Air Odyssey. What a privilege it has been to explore this 189-mile National Scenic Byway twelve times, both as an artist, and as a tourist with Dave & Ben!
I traveled along not one, but four huge mountain ranges: the Wrangells, Mentastas, Chugach, and Talkeetnas. In the short distance from Anchorage to Glennallen—only as far as from Columbus Ohio to Indianapolis Indiana—there is an abundance of wildlife, waterfalls, lakes, glaciers, and interesting side trips through state parks, historical mines, and tiny communities. Oh my!
Road Trip on the Glenn Highway
Painting Under Fire at Mud Lake
Morning Glow at Matanuska Glacier
Although originally unplanned, I’m enjoying the “roads” theme developing in my work as a result of this great highway.
Today I made a sketch of the Wrangell mountains late in the evening at Glennallen, just before the final turn northeast off the Glenn and up toward Canada, and from it I painted Road Trip on the Glenn Highway #2 a couple of days later.
Early one morning in June, I painted the Chugach mountains in Road Trip on the Glenn Highway as we first drove west toward central Alaska’s MatSu valley, and a few weeks later I featured the Talkeetnas when I did Painting Under Fire at Mud Lake while staying in Palmer.
Morning Glow at Matanuska Glacier was painted during the Great Alaskan Plein Air Retreat when Kurt Jacobson, Jan Stitt and I went out very early to catch the morning light bouncing off the glacier.
Numerous other field studies, photos, and sketches add to my collection of views on or near this marvelous paved stretch of Alaska. Looking back through them, I’m amazed at how few of the many spectacular views I’ve managed to capture. Although I’ve not even finished this journey, I can’t help but wonder, to my husband’s feigned dismay, “Maybe the next time we come…”