Visiting Alaska! Part 1

When Scott and I celebrated our 25th anniversary by visiting several Southern states, we decided to visit Alaska for our 30th. Our goal was to visit all 50 states and that was going to be our last one. So last week, we did it!

We left early Friday morning, arriving in Anchorage about 11am. We used Turo to rent a little Chevy Sprint hoping for better gas mileage. That afternoon we rented a tandem bike in downtown Anchorage and rode about 22 miles on a coastal trail that was quite pleasant.

Afterwards, we bought some groceries, had dinner, drove to our Airbnb and then went to the Anchorage LDS temple.

On Saturday morning, we drove to Seward on the Kenai Peninsula and did a boat cruise through Major Marine Tours. It was pricey but I think it was worth it. We were able to see a lot of really cool sights including lots of wildlife and an active tidal glacier. Before the boat tour we did a little walk around an old park with cool vegetation including this large uprooted tree.

Bald eagle.

Humpback whale. We didn't see a lot of the body but we did see his tail at one point.

Seals

Seals at the bottom of the glacier.

Scott in front of the "active tidewater glacier". I don't know if we saw real calving of the glacier but we saw a few avalanches.

Seals on ice floes

It's a little tricky to see him but there's a black and white puffin flying through the air in the lower left quadrant of the picture. We saw a lot of little puffins but it was hard to get a good picture since they're so small and fast.

I think this bird was a cormorant. We saw lots of birds who make their living from the water--about 5% of all birds do this.

Sea lions--this might have been my favorite.

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