Back at the beginning of May, I got to take a short trip to Alaska to visit some schools that I work with as part of my job with GLOBE. I traveled with my work colleague and friend, Julie. We only had two full days in the area, but we made the most of them when we weren't at schools doing visits.
The first afternoon we had free we took a drive around the local area. We were visiting Palmer and Wasilla, Alaska (staying in a hotel right next to Sarah Palin's house!), and it was the bird migration season! We found fields of geese and cranes. We even caught a little "show" from two cranes, who I think must have been engaging in some kind of mating dance.
The mountains were beautiful in all directions. While we didn't get to see Denali (we would have had to drive a few hours further north to get a chance as a glimpse), there were snow-capped rugged mountains all around us.
We did drive a ways to see a glacier though. What we thought was going to be just under an hour, probably took around and hour and a half to get there. It didn't help that the cell phone GPS didn't work so well, as it guided us to a point that was still about 30 minutes away from the actual glacier. Thus, it's ETA is what we based our trip on (which told us it was an hour away), and then when it said "arriving at destination" we were pretty confused given it was right on a tight bend in the highway. To our left was a steep mountain slope, and to our right was a steep drop off into the river valley that the highway was skirting along. We tried to use the cell phone GPS to look at a map, but our signal was nil. Luckily we had a paper map that helped us figure out where we were and gave us some confidence that we should keep going to see the glacier that we'd already come so far to see. It was worth it....
The Matanuska Glacier
There was a road on the map that looked like it took you down really close to the front edge (actually the terminal end) of the glacier, and while we just had a small sedan rental car, we thought we'd at least check it out. Sadly, it was just a dirt road, and it was pretty steep. This was as far as we got before we decided we'd rather turn around so we didn't end up stuck in the middle of nowhere Alaska.
While it's hard to see from this photo, the road seemed to disappear in front of us as it took a really steep drop off...and we were already on a steep slope at the place where we took this picture and turned around.
On day 2, we visited schools in the morning and then headed south to Anchorage for lunch at a pizza joint recommended to us by one of the teachers. Then we continued on south to see some wildlife. We drove along the Seward Highway along Turnagain Arm, which lent itself to beautiful mountain views along the water front. A railroad track ran right along the highway as well. This day was a bit cloudy and drizzly, so it felt much colder, but it didn't stop our luck on seeing amazing things...check this out!
Grizzly Bear!!!
Okay, okay, okay...that grizzly wasn't out in the wild. He was in the wildlife refuge that we visited. But my camera zoom was able to miss the fence that I was taking the photo through and frankly I think this could by my National Geographic cover shot! :) We saw lots of other great specimens of Alaskan wildlife at the refuge as well...
Alaska is just so full of beautiful and amazing things. I hope that I can get back there again soon, and have more time to explore!
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