Wednesday, June 25, 2008

 

Awoke to rain…again.  Soggy morning and soggy cereal.  Deaune got up earlier than the rest and went for a drive to see the bore tide again.  She said it was cool.

 

We got going and headed to Whittier.  Begish Boggs Visitor Center at Portage Glacier was just up the road from where we camped and had a lot of information about the glaciers and Portage Lake had a number of very large, bluish chunks of ice floating in it.  We spent at least an hour there before we headed out to the tunnel that connected to Whittier.

 

The tunnel cost us $12 to drive thru, and it is the longest tunnel in North America that is shared by both vehicles and trains.  There is only room for traffic one way, so you could only enter the tunnel every half hour.

 

Whittier only has a population of 117, and most of them live in a high-rise building that looks like a Veterans hospital…sort of depressing!  Aleesha wanted to go to the post office and Tim had read in the Alaska magazine that it was located in that building so we checked it out.  Aleesha thought it would be too weird to live in this town.

 

The town is a port, and as far as scenery goes, it is fantastic.  Mountains surround it, and we counted well over 20 waterfalls.  There was a cruise ship docked, and our kids had never seen one up close; it was monstrous.

The tunnel timetable was thrown off due to some train issue, so we were held up for a while.  We hiked up a trail to see a glacier, and had not been on the trail very long before we saw fresh “evidence” that a bear was nearby.  We hiked the trail anyway with a watchful eye and making lots of noise.

 

There were several large areas of snowfall, and the kids attempted to slide down the snow on their ponchos, but the snow was not cooperative; all we got out of it was one ripped jacket and some bruised buns and a good time.

 

Supper tonight was incredible.  We were going to have kabobs but since it was raining and we couldn’t have a campfire we decided that it would be easier to cook in skillets on the stoves.  We had thickly cut and cubed London broil round steak seasoned and cooked with onions, green peppers and mushrooms.  We also cooked potatoes and onions to go with it.  It was so good.  Since we are in bear country, we have to be careful not to leave anything food related around our campsite.  Every time after we eat, we take our trash to the dumpster which has special handles that bears cannot use.  We also need to properly dispose of our dishwater so that the bears aren’t attracted to it but at this campground there is not a place for that kind of garbage so we are just dumping it over by the water pump, which is away from all the campsites.