Yesterday, we went to the Begich – Boggs Visitor Center near the Portage Glacier. The glacier has receded so far that the whole glacier can no longer be seen from the visitor center. So, today we thought we would try to get a view of the entire glacier from another spot. First, we tried driving down to the dock where the tour boats that cruise the Portage Lake are. We didn’t have to go the whole way before we had a really nice view of the glacier (left). We went back to the visitor center and took this picture (right) of another big glacier directly across the lake.
.Next we drove through a tunnel that leads to the railroad/highway tunnel that goes to Whittier. That tunnel has a fee schedule posted that gives all of the different rates, depending on what you are driving. We had been through this combo tunnel when we had taken a Princess Cruisetour to Alaska few years ago. The tunnel to Whittier is a combination tunnel used by both cars and trains. There is a traffic signal and line up procedure to access the tunnel for the road traffic on each end of the tunnel. The railroad track runs down the middle of the tunnel road, so the train and automobile traffic alternate turns to use the tunnel. We had wanted to drive down to watch the action, but there was a guard house before we could get close enough to see anything.
Even though we couldn’t see the tunnel to Whittier, we did get some good views of the Portage Glacier. As we looked across Portage Lake, we could see where the glacier was melting into some waterfalls. The blue ice is quite obvious in the cracks and is such a pretty shade of blue.
We also had better views of some of the surrounding glaciers in the area.
When we were in Anchorage earlier, we purchased an Alaska Tour Saver, a 2 for 1 coupon book. We used one of the coupons to ride the Alyeska Tram Ride in Girdwood, AK. You can see where we are headed in the first picture. One of the tram cars is pictured next. I took the photo while I watched it come up to drop off passengers and pick up others to take back down the mountain. That is why it is at a funny angle. They are very colorfully decorated.
After we had gotten into the tram, a bride and her attendants got on for the ride to the top with us. It turned out that they were having their wedding photo shoot at the top of the tram.
Here are the bride and groom. The wedding party and photographers. The town of Girdwood and the Turnagain Arm are at the bottom of the mountain. That was something different and the group was turning the eyes of almost everyone else who was there at the time.
Here are some of the views from the tram. The trees on the right have been bent and misshapen by the snow and ice and avalanches that have moved through the area over time.
When we were walking around at the top of the tram, we came across an interesting sign on the stairway. I don’t think I will be hiking here right now!
Bumble wasn’t allowed to be out at the top of the tram because it was so windy that she might have just rolled down the mountain. She did, however, find a new friend in the resort gift shop area. The grounds of the resort were beautifully landscaped with all sorts of wildflowers.
We went back to the trailer and took a hike that went behind the campground. It is a very nice trail with boardwalks and gravel base to walk on. We were able to find and photograph the glacier and waterfalls that we can see, through the trees, from our campsite.
This evening, there was another very low tide with another bore tide predicted. The wind is a lot calmer tonight compared with last night. That plus the fact that we went to Bird Point to view the tide, a different location from last night, gave us a few more interesting views of the bore tide. Hover over the photos to get an explanation of what we saw.
If you enlarge the first photo by clicking on it, you will be able to more easily see the helicopter and mountains reflecting in the calm water as the bore tide is coming. We think that the helicopter was taking movies of the paddle boarder.
Because of the calm water before it, the bore tide is very delineated. It appears that it must be about 2 feet high as it surges forward into the calmer water.
This was a very busy day with lots of photos that needed to be edited. I am writing this post a week after it happened, but it is fun to review some of the things we have done.
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