Touring Kenai Peninsula Area

Today was a driving day south from Anchorage as we visited the towns of Portage, Whittier, and Girdwood, along with driving part of the Kenai Peninsula. 

Unfortunately we had a very rainy day.  As we drove south the light rain turned into a steady rain so we skipped the Alyeska Tram, hoping to see it later.  We arrived at the site for the Portage Glacier boat and again decided to defer due to weather. So we headed toward Seward. After driving for quite a while we saw we still had another hour ahead of us and it was getting close to lunch time so we reviewed our options and turned around, heading for Whittier.  

After a somewhat unproductive morning we arrived in Whittier via the Car/Train tunnel.  This is a 2.5 mile long tunnel that is only wide enough for a train so car traffic is single file, with the direction changing every half hour. Prior to 2000, it was a train only tunnel and all car traffic had to be loaded onto train cars.  It was quite a thrill to drive through it. In Whittier we had lunch at a nice fish 'n chips establishment, drove around what little we could (not many roads..), then headed back to the tunnel and spotted the train we'll be riding tomorrow from Anchorage to Whittier! We watched it head back through the tunnel as we waited our turn at the tunnel to leave Whittier since trains always have the right of way over cars.

Since it was still raining as we left Whittier we skipped the Portage Glacier boat ride and headed back toward Anchorage.  On the way we spotted the Alaska Wildlife Conservation Center and did a driving tour.  They have a lot of native animals, including wood bison which are working to reintroduce to Alaska. They also rehabilitate injured animals so they can be released into the wild. 

As you can see we got very close to a resting moose and also watched this pair of musk ox square off and push each other around a bit.

Near the exit some reindeer were being fed.  As you can see, one of them even had bells on his bridle so we called him Rudolph! All in all we had a great time at this place.

As we approached Girdwood the rain stopped so we checked out the Alyeska Tram  and decided to take it. We could not see the 5 surrounding glaciers due to clouds and once at the top it fogged up so much that for a while we could not see the ground! But it cleared again as we descended.  

Our tram operator mentioned that today was projected to have a large bore tide so as we drove we decided to wait and check it out.  It was projected to have a 3-4 foot high wave, but from our vantage point it looked to be more like a 1-2 foot wave.  It was cool to see this local phenomenon. 

After that we headed for Anchorage, grabbed some supper, turned in the rental van, and are now getting ready to head for the Crown Princess  in the morning. It was a full day and very enjoyable once we got on track after a run-around morning.