Glaciers and orcas and sea otters, oh my!

We've spent the last 10 days on the Kenai peninsula - an easy drive south of Anchorage (its about 5 hours from Anchorage to to Homer, less to Seward). We read somewhere that it is one of the most visited areas in Alaska by both Alaskans and tourists. Justifiably so. The mountains climb straight out of the sea and though they aren't that tall (the highest is 4,990 feet), glaciers are around every corner. On the map to the left, the huge white area is the Harding Icefiled (30 miles wide by 50 miles long), from which several glaciers descend towards the sea.

First we drove to Seward (on the eastern side of the peninsula). We set up camp for several nights near there at Primrose Campground and made daily trips into Seward for a variety of adventures. We visited the Alaska Sealife Center - awesome exhibits and a sea lion named Woody who we could've watched swim around for hours. Another day we took a hike to Exit Glacier where we got to walk within feet of the glacier (and hike through areas that the glacier covered as recently as 1998). Global warming anyone? On the 12th we splurged on a 6-hour glacier and wildlife cruise to Aialik, Pederson, and Holgate Glaciers.

Carissa and Rich in front of (part of) Aialik Glacier.

We saw lots of wildlife:

sea otter chillin'

Orca whales froliking

We also got to watch an massive piece of Aialik Glacier, which is about 1-mile wide where it meets the sea, calve into the ice-filled bay. We attempted to take some videos, here's our best one (unfortunately this was taken about 30 seconds before the really big piece broke off - about 10 times the size of the piece in this video).

Homer, on the south-western tip of the peninsula, was our next destination - a 6 hour drive from Seward. After many drizzly days enjoyed the beautiful sunny driving day which afforded us views of the volcanoes Mt. Redoubt and Mt. Iliamna across Cook Inlet as we drove down the coast, and of Grewingk Glacier and the mountains surrounding Kachemak Bay and Homer.

Homer had a great vibe, though we admit the increase in sunshine we found here compared with Seward probably swayed our view of the city. Some of our favorite things: yummy snacks and beverages at the Two Sisters Bakery; wine tasting at Bear Creek Winery; hiking to Grewingk Lake in Kachemak Bay State Park. Bear Creek Winery does an amazing job of making wines using local ingredients such as the berries and vegetables that grow in Alaska - such as rasperberries, blueberries, and rhubarb. Some of their wines are blended using grape concentrate from other regions of the world. One example is their yummy Alaskan Chardonnay, a mix of rhubarb wine and Australian Chardonnay that even Carissa (who doesn't like the dry bite of Chardonnay) thought was delish. Our favorite of their wines was called Lo Lo Berry, a combination of Italian Barolo and local cranberries. Yum.

On our last day in the area we hired a water taxi to drop us off across Kachemak Bay at the Grewingk Glacier trailhead. The weather was perfect and the hike was awesome - it meandered through dense temperate rainforest covered in thick green mosses and along rocky moraine (the rocky remains left when a glacier recedes) to the lake. Here are some of our favorite pictures:

View across Kachemak Bay from the end of the Homer spit.

Beautiful skies in the small-boat harbor in Homer before our taxi ride across Kachemak Bay.

Rich on the hand tram over the Grewingk river.

Carissa on the same hand tram (and the view back to the launching pad).

Grewingk Glacier and Grewingk Lake.

Zombie salmon iceberg in Grewingk Lake.

Carissa and Rich at Grewingk Lake (Grewingk Glacier in the background).

We're back in Anchorage this evening - we have begun working our way back through the Yukon to catch our ferry from Haines, AK to Vancouver Island next Sunday Sept. 27th.