Weekend adventures

Adam's parents joined us from Seattle this past weekend--staying for a long weekend to enjoy Linda's birthday. It gave us an opportunity to take them adventuring! Adam loves the Tunnel to Whittier--so we did the drive through this one way, 2.5 mile tunnel carved straight through the mountain on Saturday, along with the obligatory trip up to the top of Alyeska. Luckily, the one and only moose to make an appearance this weekend also appeared on the drive back from the Portage Glacier visitor center, fulfilling Dale's one request.

Sunday, we decided to head out of town the other direction. Anchorage was bogged down in a cloud bank, rainy and cold. We hoped that by getting into the Valley, we might escape the yuck. Sure enough, no sun but no rain either awaited us about 100 miles toward the interior. We headed to the Matanuska Glacier, a valley glacier:

I stole these photos from Linda's facebook...some she took and some Adam did.

We stopped first at the state park and did a little nature walk/hike thing. Then we headed down into the valley. You can access the glacier from a private campground by paying your left leg and signing your life away.

It is MUCH colder by the glacier. **insert smartass remark about it being ice, so duh it's colder**. We trekked down towards the melted mud and found this lovely little glacial lake. To get onto the pure icy part, you cross a series of boards and metal grated bridges across the mud--some of which were a little precarious.

We eased onto the ice--and at some point very close to the start I decided that while lovely, i was not dressed for ice hiking. It was COLD. I crouched on a picnic table, watching Adam lead his folks deeper onto the ice for the perfect family picture.

Then, Adam vanished over the edge. I prevailed on Dale and Linda to hike back out off the ice to the warm picnic table with a better view from which to watch for the reemergence of lost-Adam. Finally, we ended up calling him (yes, there is cell service on the glacier but no where else on the drive out there) to ask him kindly to return. He had snapped these awesome photos from the area we wimped out of.