Sunday, June 27, 2010

Seward, 6\27 (31 photos), by Jennifer Bowne


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drive to Seward, 06\26\2010 (8 photos), by Jennifer Bowne


I'd like to share my Snapfish photos with you. Once you have checked out my photos you can order prints and upload your own photos to share.
Click here to view photos

Seward; June 27

We woke to a light rain, but that didn’t stop us from our activity for the day: a long, steep hike up to Exit Glacier and a trek across the glacier. It was a 2-mile hike up, but with a 1500-foot elevation gain, and we had to contend with steep, muddy, rocky, slippery terrain and it felt like we were on a Stairmaster for 1 1/2 hours straight! When we reached the edge of the glacier we had to put on helmets and attach crampons to our hiking boots to prepare for our trek across the ice. Relative to our previous glacier trek, on the Exit Glacier we covered much more ground, blazing a trail a couple miles across and around the glacier. Our position on the glacier afforded sweeping views of the mountains and valley below. After a couple of hours on the glacier we hiked back down and then took a well-deserved break the rest of the afternoon to do our laundry.

Drive to Seward; June 26

After having spent the night at a hostel in Anchorage, we provisioned ourselves and hit the road for the 150-mile drive to Seward, which is on the Kenai Peninsula south of Anchorage. We drove along the Cook Inlet, so the views were spectacular and we past several glaciers on the way. The road wound along the inlet with the ocean on our right and steep cliffs going up on our left. These cliffs are home to Dall sheep, so our eyes were peeled and we finally spotted one lone sheep munching on flowers on the cliff face, only about 50-feet above the highway. We made two stops along the way: Portage Glacier, which has receded so much that you can't actually see it from the Visitor's Center (but you can from other vantage points); and the small town of Hope. Lonely Planet describes Hope as one of the last cute little towns in Alaska without a touristy gift shop. Hope first came to being nearly 100 years ago after a very minor gold strike and it seems there has been little or no development since that time. There were a couple of restaurants, an art gallery (in the artist's house), and a handful of homes all in slightly rehabilitated ramshackle old buildings. It started to rain in the afternoon, just in time for us to camp!