Exit Glacier Left

This morning we timed our departure to make the 9 AM tunnel crossing and headed to Seward. Seward was named for William Seward, the Secretary of State responsible for purchasing Alaska from the Russians. It is near Kenai Fjords National Park. But most people are here because it is the start or end of a one-way Alaskan cruise. Most people don’t stay here, they head straight to Anchorage or Denali. That is a shame because Kenai Fjords is pretty interesting.

First we arrived at Seward and walked around the town. They have 33 murals around town. We spotted quite a few. Most were on the sides of buildings.

After lunch we headed to the Exit Glacier at Kenai Fjords National Park. The Exit Glacier is one of 35 Glaciers that make up the Harding Ice Field. It is the most accessible glacier from the ice field.

As you drive towards the visitor center there are signs with numbers on them starting with 1815. That number is not the population of bears in the park, as Phillipa suggested, but rather it was the location where the glacier started in that year. We took a hike with a Park Ranger, where the ranger explained how they calculated the dates. They looked for glacier moraines, hills of rock left from the glacier retreating, and dated the trees at that location. Once they got to modern times, they could use photographs to accurately place the dates. The glacier overlook had a date of 2005. There was a group of college students on our walk who were born in that year. It was very eye opening for them to see the distance that the glacier had retreated in their lifetime.

Tonight we are camping along the waterfront in Seward. It is currently raining, so there isn’t much of a view yet, but it should be stunning once the clouds clear.