August 1

This morning Don and Glenn headed back to Soldotna and we got up at 6:00 AM to catch our train ride in Girdwood at 8:00 AM. However, as soon as we were in cell phone range we both got messages that the train ride was cancelled again and still due to the rock slide near Seward earlier this week. Because the train was booked both Sunday and Monday we decided to bag the train ride and cancelled our reservations. This was a big disappointment since we may never get to do that again and today was the first sunny day in three weeks here. But we did not let that stop us from enjoying the blue sky and clear views of the mountains. We drove to Portage and walked the mile-plus long trail to the snow field at the base of Byron Glacier. Following this Mom and I took the one-hour cruise aboard the Ptarmigan to the base of Portage Glacier on Portage Lake. We both saw and ate the crystal clear glacier ice fished from the lake. The ice is incredibly clear and sparkles in the sunlight like a diamond. Glacier ice is much denser than normal ice and does not have the dull appearance caused by tiny trapped air bubbles. It was noticeably harder to chew and it was interesting to think that we were tasting water from snow that fell possibly centuries ago. We then went through the visitor’s center at Portage and headed back through the train/traffic tunnel to Whittier to see what we could not see on our last trip due to heavy cloud cover, rain and fog. The scenery around the bay is beautiful but the town is pretty drab except for the large cruise ship in the harbor. We had lunch there and then headed for Seward in hopes to visit the sea life aquarium there before it closed. A brochure we picked up said the cost was $12.50 for adults and that the hours were 8:00 AM to 8:00 PM. We scrambled and were there by 6:00 PM only to find that the admission was $20 and it closed at 6:30 PM. So, another disappointment, no aquarium visit. Seward is a much more interesting and cleaner town than Whittier. We then took a stroll along the sea shore and had an ice cream before going up the canyon to visit Exit Glacier since the road, washed out by flooding on our visit a couple of days ago, was now open. Here we took another mile-plus long hike to within a few feet of the side of the glacier. We returned back to camp a little after 10:00 PM after a full day.