Matanuska Glacier

The Matanuska Glacier is about a two hour drive from Anchorage at mile marker 101 of the Glen Highway. 
The glacier is about 3-4 miles wide and 27 miles long and cost $20 to enter and do a self guided tour or you can pay $50 for the guided tour.

This day trip started out a little rocky but turned out to be a really awesome day.  By rocky I mean that I almost missed my ride. I was supposed to meet Sarah at Thunderbird Falls, I was running a little late and Sarah almost left without me.  Sarah is a temporary here too and we are both determined to see as much of Alaska as we can while here.  But she apparently has more contacts than I because she just went King Salmon fishing and caught the biggest one on the boat!  She was nice enough to share a couple fillets with her hiking buddy..... me.  :)

Our first view of the glacier was at about mile marker 98

The very front of the glacier is about 3 miles wide but is about 4 miles wide and 27 miles long according to the information on the Alaska State Parks web site.  Mount Marcus Baker, 13,176 feet high is in the background.

Arriving at mile marker 101 there is no giant sign saying that you have arrived and we were not even sure if we were at the right spot or not.  I intended to snap a picture on the way out but........  The road down was just a steep gravel road that leads to a small gift shop where you sign the two page waiver and pay either the $20 for do what you want tour or $50 to walk v e r y   s l o w l y and listen to someone telling you be careful it is slippery, be careful on this bridge, be careful of this rock........ lol, no thanks!  Maybe when I'm 80 something.

Once you pay your money it is another two mile drive down to the glacier.  It was warm, about 70 degrees so it was tee shirt weather, on the glacier it was a little cooler but a fleece sweater kept me warm.  As you approach the glacier there is a lot of rock and ice mix

This can be really slippery still even with the rock on top so this is about the time we put on our crampons which we were able to borrow from the State of Alaska, little employee benefit I guess.  A few more views as you progress on the glacier:

This last picture was taken at a good angle and is really not as technical as it looks but it is a very cool picture.  It was still a really long way down that crevasse.

It is really hard to put into words the beauty of the glacier, these pictures do not do it justice.  It is even harder to express the inner feeling of being here and being able to see first hand these incredible sites.


One last surprise for the day, on the way down a group of Japanese tourist waived us down to them, really could not have gone any other direction but we were greeted with a climbers cup with a small chunk of glacier ice and a couple choices of whiskey in those small airline type bottles.  As we accepted and drank it was being filmed by a professional looking camera.  I think we are now part of a tourist advertisement or at least somebody's home movie. Oh well it was the perfect ending to this day trip.

It turned out to be an awesome adventure!  When I leave in September I will be taking the same route to the lower 48 and just might do it again.

Life's Journey

Someone once told me that my journey through life is really not my journey because my journey also involves everyone that I come into contact with and I am part of their journey.

What exactly does this mean?

I was going to make this a theme for this blog and maybe discuss my journey or was it their journey?  Anyways, I think we can all relate to this and think of our own situation(s), how have you effected somebody's journey?

The three Bears

I have been told that there were bears around here but I was really starting to think this was an exaggeration.  Well not really it was just surprising to me that it was taking so long for them to start coming into the campground.  Yesterday I just came back from a bike ride with the local adventure group, sat down to my table and saw:

As I look out my window

Then again this morning 8am I just sat down having a little morning coffee looked out the window to see the same bear, well at least looked about the same size he/she came down the same path behind my RV.  I had my sweat shirt on the line, the bear pulled it off slobbered a bit on it before it continued it's slow pace down the trail.  I saw an air horn in the barn I need to go get it so I can blast it if he comes back.  Make it feel uncomfortable about coming this close to the campground.

For those not that familiar with bears they are shy animals and do not like contact with humans but they are also lazy animals and if they find a easy food source such as a campers picnic table they will come back for more.  I (we) do nightly checks around the campground to make sure everyone puts coolers inside their vehicle, no trash in other words no food sent.  Ultimately it is the bear that will pay the price and have to be destroyed if it becomes a problem when it is actually the human that is the problem.  Just too lazy to clean up their camp. 

The other night I had to wake someone up to tell them to take care of their food that they left out, 30 minutes later I had to wake him up again because he just put it all in the bed of his pickup.  I don't claim to be a bear expert but I'm guessing that food in the bed of the pickup will not stop the bear.  Now that was not only lazy but stupid too, and he lives in Alaska.

A little rain, finally

It has been very dry, the weather man has been saying for weeks that it was going to rain.  The law of averages says they have to be right........sooner or later.  I just thought we were getting light rains but then I met Lowell and Jane, originally from Ohio but have lived in Alaska now for several years.  They use to camp at Eklutna all the time but this was their first time here in the last couple years.  Listen and learn and one of the topics was rain they tell me that Alaska very rarely gets hard rain, thunder or lightening.  Normally it is just a light rain and that is what we have been getting for the past few days.  They were able to offer me some advice on some short canoe/kayak trips on the Kenai Peninsula which will be one of my overnighters  here in the future.

Later that night while chatting with my sister from Texas on FB I noticed the clouds were settling in at about tree top level.  The view from my window I can normally see a part of Twin Peaks which I hiked a shortly after I arrived here. The clouds were very cool looking so I thought I would go down to the lake to see what kind of picture I could get.

 This picture was taken on May 15th and not a very good picture but it shows the height of the mountains.

This picture was taken at midnight last night.  You know as I look at these I can see that neither one of these pictures really captured the moment.  I think I need to work more on my photography skills a bit.







Anyways the rain continues today, I just came back from a walk around the campground.  A nice QUIET campground I might add, maybe 10 campers here now.  Tonight was the first time I had to put my rain jacket on but it was still a very pleasant walk and my pant legs never did get wet.

Back to the Kenai Penninsula

The Kenai Penninsula is deserving of a second trip because I really wanted to hike the Exit Glacier before the "tourist" start flooding the area so I drove back down to Hike the Harding Icefield Trail which is only 3.9 miles but straight up for the most part.  My hiking partner on this trip is Sara from Alabama.  I was expecting a little snow on the trail so I grabbed some Ice Cleats from the park...... yea good move.  Most the snow was only a foot or so deep but a few spots where we sank thru was waist deep.

Making it to Marmot Meadows we found a couple Marmot's playing........

We didn't make it much further than the Meadows the trail headed over to the edge of the cliffs and with the snow on the trail it just wasn't safe to go any further.

Another hike we did was at Portage Glacier, still snow on the trail but not as bad with only a few places over boot level.

The above picture was shot using my standard lens (18mm) you can see the glacier and the mountain to the right of the glacier.  The visitors center is a mile or so to the right of the mountain and the glacier use to be visible  from the visitors center but is now hidden by the mountain.  The Portage Glacier is the fastest melting glacier in Alaska.

This picture was shot with a 300mm lens from the same location, I wanted to show the contrast of the Glacier compared to the tour boat. 

These were short, strenuous but awesome hikes........ with more to come from Alaska 

Memorial Day Weekend

Temperatures were a soaring into the 70's and everyone wanted to get a jump on the Holiday weekend but these Alaskans take good weather and holidays very seriously and the campground was filled up Wednesday night.  For the most part no problems but......

One person grabbed a campsite, paid and hung their tag and than ran home to get their camping gear only to return and find somebody took their tag down and parked their 5th wheel in the spot.  Then they hung a note in the window saying that they were there all night.  LOL too bad for them I checked at midnight and again at 6:30 they were booted when they finally did show up the next night.

Some kids who partied a little too much and the neighbors complaining....... dump the beer and go to bed..... kinda like I'm working again.

Some other kids wanted to enjoy a beach fire....... sorry no fire on the beach, hated to do that to them.  Probably any other night they would have gotten away with it.

Then on Sunday about a third left the campground, figured things would quiet down only for it to fill up again within a couple hours.  I thought to myself that everyone would go home Monday only to find the ATV lot totally packed, the Lake parking totally packed and we were letting people park in the camping area as most of the campers were leaving.

About 4pm most were going home and Theresa and I were going to a bar-b-q.  Amy, one of the Park Rangers invited us over for dinner.  It was a small gathering, the food was good and very friendly people.

So that was my Holiday weekend, busy talking to people it was mostly non-stop, nothing hard but sure glad it is over.