Day 23 – Saturday, August 15th
The drive between Anchorage and the Kenai Peninsula was amazing. Unfortunately, we ended up scheduling this on a Saturday, which is when we were told that everyone in Anchorage decides to take this same drive. But, still no serious traffic like our experience in Southern California! Actually, although there were quite a few cars, nothing bad at all. The bummer was, our streak with rain continues on, so we had on and off rain all today. We had some breaks though, and had some nice stops despite the weather.
South of Anchorage, on the Turnagain Arm (a smaller fjord off the Cook Inlet),We saw the famous mudflats south of Anchorage which look like your everyday average large sand beaches, but are really glacial slit that when it is low tide look like sand, but are really quicksand. Every year they have people who get stuck in these and sometimes die because they can’t get out before the tide turns. They have large tides here, sometimes over 20 feet. Impressive! It was low tide, so we couldn’t see any Beluga whales that come in at high tide. We hope to see some of them on our boat trip, too.
A little side trip included stopping at the Alaska Wildlife Conservation Center. This is another of the places that people are working hard at both taking care of injured and orphaned animals, and helping to reintroduce animals back into the wild. Highlights included a couple of bears, 
one a Grizzly and the other a Brown Bear, who were really large and highly impressive, lots of moose who were willing to pose for quite close ups, musk oxen, elk, plus wood and plains bison. We love that people are doing this type of work. And can never pass up a chance to get yet MORE great animal pictures.
We went over Moose Pass and had to stop to take a photo of the sign that was next to the waterwheel and grindstone. You had to smile at the message: This is a peaceful little town, if you have an axe to grind, do it here.”
We were also able to do a little hiking at Exit Glacier, the first thing you could really see in Kenai Fjords National Park. We’ll see much more of the park tomorrow on our boat ride, but the glacier was beautiful!
And the walk was really especially lovely since, although the flowers are now gone, it is big time mushroom season here. It is really wet, and the mushrooms are EVERYWHERE. 
A park ranger told us that if we knew our mushrooms well enough to know which ones are not poisonous, we could pick and eat them. They all looked the same to us, so we certainly didn’t want to take that kid of a chance, but they sure were pretty.
The main event for tomorrow is going to be going on a glacier and wildlife tour down in Kenai National Park; A six-hour cruise!
We are staying at a historic hotel The Van Gilder in downtown Seward. It was built in 1916 and is filled with great old photos of earlier Alaska. The funky rooms include modern and comfortable mattresses, as well as good Internet access, Yah!
Driving and sightseeing kept us from eating today, so we settled on an early supper at the wharf and really gorged ourselves on truly fresh crab and salmon. Delicious! And artfully prepared. There is nothing like great food when you are so hungry!
We walked the mile there and back to our hotel. Of course, by the time we were walking back, it began raining again! Then settling in for the evening working on the blog and Patti finished a great book we bought about a woman racing in the Iditarod Dogsled Race.
One of the really interesting things that is happening before our eyes is the seasons are changing! This is especially interesting now that we have on our 12 years living in San Diego eyes. Here are the signs that we see: one of the hotels we checked into last week has now gone to their “winter rates”, the wildflowers are mostly gone, we had a couple of nights below freezing with frost on our car while we were in the Denali area, there is a frosty feeling-a briskness in the air, we stopped being able to wear shorts and Patti had to buy some long underwear at Costco, we haven’t needed sunscreen for a while. Our friend, Scott, in Healey told us this was the type of weather that caused people to ask, “How’s my woodpile and my fuel oil?” and “Am I going to get that weather stripping project done before winter sets in?” We understand that “real winter” is still a ways off, but it is less like summer in Alaska.
The drive between Anchorage and the Kenai Peninsula was amazing. Unfortunately, we ended up scheduling this on a Saturday, which is when we were told that everyone in Anchorage decides to take this same drive. But, still no serious traffic like our experience in Southern California! Actually, although there were quite a few cars, nothing bad at all. The bummer was, our streak with rain continues on, so we had on and off rain all today. We had some breaks though, and had some nice stops despite the weather.
South of Anchorage, on the Turnagain Arm (a smaller fjord off the Cook Inlet),We saw the famous mudflats south of Anchorage which look like your everyday average large sand beaches, but are really glacial slit that when it is low tide look like sand, but are really quicksand. Every year they have people who get stuck in these and sometimes die because they can’t get out before the tide turns. They have large tides here, sometimes over 20 feet. Impressive! It was low tide, so we couldn’t see any Beluga whales that come in at high tide. We hope to see some of them on our boat trip, too.
A little side trip included stopping at the Alaska Wildlife Conservation Center. This is another of the places that people are working hard at both taking care of injured and orphaned animals, and helping to reintroduce animals back into the wild. Highlights included a couple of bears, 
one a Grizzly and the other a Brown Bear, who were really large and highly impressive, lots of moose who were willing to pose for quite close ups, musk oxen, elk, plus wood and plains bison. We love that people are doing this type of work. And can never pass up a chance to get yet MORE great animal pictures.
We went over Moose Pass and had to stop to take a photo of the sign that was next to the waterwheel and grindstone. You had to smile at the message: This is a peaceful little town, if you have an axe to grind, do it here.”We were also able to do a little hiking at Exit Glacier, the first thing you could really see in Kenai Fjords National Park. We’ll see much more of the park tomorrow on our boat ride, but the glacier was beautiful!
And the walk was really especially lovely since, although the flowers are now gone, it is big time mushroom season here. It is really wet, and the mushrooms are EVERYWHERE. 
A park ranger told us that if we knew our mushrooms well enough to know which ones are not poisonous, we could pick and eat them. They all looked the same to us, so we certainly didn’t want to take that kid of a chance, but they sure were pretty.The main event for tomorrow is going to be going on a glacier and wildlife tour down in Kenai National Park; A six-hour cruise!
We are staying at a historic hotel The Van Gilder in downtown Seward. It was built in 1916 and is filled with great old photos of earlier Alaska. The funky rooms include modern and comfortable mattresses, as well as good Internet access, Yah!
Driving and sightseeing kept us from eating today, so we settled on an early supper at the wharf and really gorged ourselves on truly fresh crab and salmon. Delicious! And artfully prepared. There is nothing like great food when you are so hungry!We walked the mile there and back to our hotel. Of course, by the time we were walking back, it began raining again! Then settling in for the evening working on the blog and Patti finished a great book we bought about a woman racing in the Iditarod Dogsled Race.
One of the really interesting things that is happening before our eyes is the seasons are changing! This is especially interesting now that we have on our 12 years living in San Diego eyes. Here are the signs that we see: one of the hotels we checked into last week has now gone to their “winter rates”, the wildflowers are mostly gone, we had a couple of nights below freezing with frost on our car while we were in the Denali area, there is a frosty feeling-a briskness in the air, we stopped being able to wear shorts and Patti had to buy some long underwear at Costco, we haven’t needed sunscreen for a while. Our friend, Scott, in Healey told us this was the type of weather that caused people to ask, “How’s my woodpile and my fuel oil?” and “Am I going to get that weather stripping project done before winter sets in?” We understand that “real winter” is still a ways off, but it is less like summer in Alaska.
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