Rainy Peninsula

“You have to pay the piper,” so the saying goes. That was the case today with the weather. After two days of perfect weather, our morning met us with rain, low hanging clouds, wind and just about anything else you can conjure to describe a tourist nightmare.

Alaska state flower, fireweed

Onward and forward, however as we leave Seward. Our original intention was to travel to Homer, on the opposite side of the Kenai Peninsula. Those hopes were dashed with the weather, as we had heard that the whole Kenai area was going to be socked in with rainy weather until Friday or Saturday. Yikes. It just didn’t make sense to drive 170 miles to Homer and then sit for a few days, waiting for the weather to break. Scratch Homer.

If we travel north, it looks like the weather will break on Wednesday. That sounds better. We had planned to visit the town of Wasilla on our way to Valdez. This will work. We head north from Seward amid the rain. When we reached the crossroads where we could visit the Portage Glacier and the town of Whittier, we decided to give it a go. It seems as though there are remarkable glaciers wherever you go in Alaska. It turns out that 5 % of Alaska’s land mass is covered in glaciers. The Portage Glacier Visitors’ Center is dedicated to the late Alaskan Congressional Representative Bebich and the late U.S. Senator Hale Boggs. Both were killed in a plane crash in Alaska in the 70’s.

The weather did not cooperate with us, so despite our efforts, the most we were able to capture were some significant ice flows moving from the glacier. The flows have a cyan color to them. Almost looks as though they are laced with de-icer, but you know it's not the case. Just, brrrrrr.

We did hit the jackpot however as far as wildlife goes. In almost 6,000 miles of travel, we have seen wildlife, but not in the numbers we saw today. Within a two mile radius we saw moose, elk, reindeer, musk oxen, buffalo, great horned owl AND a black bear looking down at all of them from a tree.

Well, okay, we didn’t see them on the road. We stopped at the Alaska Wildlife Conservation Center. They care for orphaned and injured animals. Since they do their best to maintain an environment for each species that is as close to their natural habitat as possible, the animals could pass for in the wild. In the spirit of full disclosure, we have to “’fess up”.

On our continuing journey towards Wasilla, we stop in a town called, Eklunta. The town was originally inhabited by Athabascan Indians. They believed that when you die, your spirit still needs a place to be, so they built small, colorful houses above the graves. Eventually, the Russians converted the Indians to Russian Orthodoxy and a small Russian church (onion type steeple) resides next to the graveyard. It is about as picturesque as a graveyard can be, even on a rainy day.

Tomorrow, we visit Wasilla and the home of Dorothy Page, the mother of the Iditarod. “Mush!”