Alaska - Part Two

Day Two: We wake up bright and early around 7, and after taking my Uncle to work we decided to take the scenic ~2 hour drive to Seward. The Seward Highway (a National Scenic Byway and All-American Road) goes through Chugach State Park and even if we had just turned around and driven back when we got there, it would have been worth it. That drive was gorgeous! So much of the water in Alaska is bright blue or green. We stopped for a couple pictures, made it to Seward, and decided to head to the Alaska SeaLife Center before finding a good place to eat.

"Mama I cold!!!" It was very windy that day.

Did I mention it was cold?

The Center sits at the end of town on Resurrection Bay (also beautiful) and is a public aquarium, rescue center, and research facility. They got their start after the Exxon Valdez spill and settlement funds were used to create the research and rehabilitation portions of the center. They have a lot of information and many creatures to look at. One of the best things in my opinion were tide pools where you could touch anything in them. They also had sea lions, jellyfish, puffins and King Crabs. While we were there they had a photographer come and take pictures of some kids making "fish prints" and Sam was one of the kids so he got to paint two rubber fish, blue of course, then press paper on top to make a stamp. His favorite part of it though was a boat with a steering wheel, he couldn't get enough of it.

For lunch we headed to the Smoke Shack. It was the top pick by the guidebook we took, plus it's located in a refurbished train car. For my two train-obsessed boys what could be better? The food was indeed smokey, but it was very, very good. According to David, the best thing there was their pie, which that day was some sort of rum sweet potato with pecans on top. Sam was especially excited about the wheels on the train car, silly boy.

Enjoying pie and (Dad's) coffee

Sam was especially keen on the wheels of the train so I promised to get them into the picture with him :)

After lunch we headed up to Exit Glacier in Kenai Fjords National Park. Alaska apparently has hundreds, if not thousands of glaciers, but I'd never seen one and wow is it impressive. Heading towards the glacier and up the trail are markers with years on them showing how far the glacier extended in the past. It is retreating, like so many others, and has left a massive outwash plain. The glacial silt (a fancy term for the grey dust of rocks chewed up by the glacier) covers the plain. The hike up wasn't too bad, and though we couldn't touch it we got quite close. Enough that we could hear the glacier groaning and moaning and the runoff rushing beside it.

Once we got back down we decided we'd had enough (Sam was zonked) and headed back to Anchorage. On our way back in we took to exit for Whittier and stopped to see the Portage Glacier on Portage Lake.

 

When we got back to Anchorage Grandma Audrey (who had just gotten in town the night before) had made dinner for everyone and so we had a lovely, delicious supper waiting for us when we got back. She's such a neat lady and it was fun getting to finally meet her and enjoy her abundant hospitality. No trouble sleeping for anybody that night! :)