Alaska Day 5

   On Day 5, we got up early and went to pick up our rental car. We wanted to see all that we could, but if we had a guided tour it would take so much time and we didn't have lots of that. We drove from Anchorage to Seward, a 2 hour drive about. The road followed the ocean for a good while. It's no wonder that this is one of the most dangerous roads in the US, there was so much to see. About 45 minutes into our drive we stopped to get a drink and see this random train stop. The train was going to Prince Edward Sound, and along the way there were several glaciers to see. We decided to drive up that way and see ourselves a glacier. They were all quite a ways off the road, but so big that you could still see them great. Then we came across Bryon's Glacier, which you could hike to. We really wanted to hike on a glacier so we stopped in. It was a mile hike just to get to the snow. We wanted to hike up to the blue glacier ice, but after 3 hours we settled for the view. On our way back down, we found several holes in the ice, turns out we had been hiking on the glacier the whole time. 

   Along the highway. It was low tide so you could see the sand here and there all the way across.

    We stopped along side the highway to hike down and look for Beluga whales. There were signs everywhere telling people to look for them. Turns out we had just missed them by like a week. It was fun to explore anyway.

    The water is pure glacier run off. Beautiful.

  I love Alaska, glaciers everywhere.

 Bryon's Glacier.

   Snow in July, we were pretty excited.

  What we hiked up.

     We parked in the trees all the way at the bottom of the picture. It was a mile hike in before we even got to the snow.

    If you zoom in on the picture you can see people actually climbing the wall back there. We wanted to climb all the way to it but we had already be hiking for a few hours to get this high and were really tired so we decided not to.

    Dave says the rock was slate so really fragile and easy to scratch writing into it.

    

   We made a snowman for the boys. They asked us if we would build one if we saw snow and how could we not on a glacier.


     Dave saw something that looked like a hole and ran down to check it out. Turns out is was a big hole!

   Like a huge hole! Of course he had to climb in.

     It was so blue.

   Then I got in on farther down. We were on the glacier the whole time.

   After our stop at the glacier we finished our drive to Seward. We stayed right on the water.

     We saw several Bald Eagles. They were eating salmon that the fishing boats had filleted.

  Fishing boat. We sat out here for a long time, I was sure if we stayed we would see a whale. I've seen Free Willy so I know they come up close....but they didn't. Oh well.