Girdwood

On the drive to Seward we enjoyed the beautiful scenery around Turnagain Arm but then the rain came during the second half of the drive. Today’s forecast was for sun in the morning and rain in Girdwood by afternoon. Julie told us the views were spectacular so we were hoping the rain held out and we could see what we missed. The rain held out all day!

We didn’t have anything planned and since it was clear we decided to go to Alyeska Ski Resort. We rode the tram to the top of the mountain. It was a 4-minute ride and the views of Turnagain Arm were amazing. There was still snow at the top. It was fun to watch people who’ve never seen snow before have snow balls fights! Our tram ticket came with a voucher that we turned in for a mountain top drink.

In Girdwood we walked across the street to a local Alaskan bar for the “best deep dish pizza in Alaska”. Since it’s the only one we’ve had here I can’t really vouch for that but we thought it was tasty.

The drive from Seward to Girdwood is about 2 hours and we have to get up early for our glacier boat ride in Whittier. The plan was to go back to our AirBnb and get to bed early. However since the weather was still holding out and the sun doesn’t set until 11:23 we called an audible. So many people told us to go to the Portage Glacier area. It was only ~20 minutes away so we hopped in the car and went!

We wanted to get to the shore of Portage Lake. You could see the glacial blue water through the trees from the road, but the end of the road was gated off at 5:30 and it was way past that. We got out of the car and started walking down the road. This friendly older gentleman stops his truck and asks us if we are trying to see the glacier. Um… yes we are. He tells us we really want the next parking lot and the hike is beautiful to the edge of the glacier. People are very friendly here but it’s after 8:30 and we wonder if we should really believe some random guy (who couldn’t tell us how long the is) and my phone has no service to check.

What the heck… he says we can walk on the glacier and it usually takes him an hour but he goes pretty slow. Since I’m here to type this… you know we didn’t get lost in the wilderness or weren’t eaten by bears!

Bonus photo.

This one was taken last night at 2am. It never gets really dark. And people don’t sleep much during the summer. There were still people cleaning fish at 2 in the morning!