Aug 22, 2008

We woke up to a lovely morning in Seward. It's on a narrow bay, surrounded by snowy peaks. Like Homer, it overlooks the area of the Harding Icefield, so multiple glaciers in view, appearing to slide down the mountains towards the sea. Toured town (that took about 5 minutes) and then went back up the road a few miles to Exit Glacier. We hiked up a mile or so to see it up close and personal but were unable to touch it, due to instability in the area. It was still spectacular to see it so close up, blue, like all the others we've seen, looking oddly like it's made of blue styrofoam. You can hear the road of the melting water flowing underneath the tons of ice. Plus the hike was good, as we're not getting as much hiking in as we had hoped so far. Amazing to see how far the glacier has receded over the past 50 years.
After our hike we headed back to Anchorage and spent the night there at the same campground that A&B used, noisy but do-able. We left first thing this morning for Denali. Drove up the Parks Highway, which is supposed to be scenic, but the clouds have moved in, so the mountains are hiding, and the 5 hour drive up wasn't all that exciting. We have a bus ride into Denali booked for tomorrow, hopefully the skies will clear a little so we can see something. But we did finally see our first Alaskan moose (2 of them, in fact, albeit at a distance) on our way to tonight's campground. With luck we'll see some wildlife closer up tomorrow.
As mentioned, our sunny skies left us somewhere near Anchorage and we we're back to rain today. I'm having high hopes for tomorrow.
The camper is working out really well. Lots of room and easy enough to drive and maneuver.
One of we has been sleeping quite well in it - that would be the one taking it back to Ontario.
More in a couple of days.