homeward bound

September 25, 2013

Day: 24

Total mileage (car): 4204

Total mileage (with ferry): 5,049.5

Happy little family - with a very sleepy toddler!

Our first night in a hotel all trip.  Our child decides to get sick and pop two teeth.  Sigh.  It was a brutal night, you might say.  Yet another thing we wouldn’t experience if our dear little Colt-n-beans wasn’t with us. Thank goodness the illness only last a few days and the teeth popped through quickly.  Back to his normal, chipper self.

Love the glacial waters behind him.

Someone was a bit grumpy.

What made up for it?  The 26 Glacier Cruise.  We had a short hour and a half drive to Whittier from Anchorage – along the Kenai Peninsula coast.  It can be summed up in one word: Wow.  To get to the town of Whittier, we drove through a mountain in a 2.5 mile long train tunnel constructed during WWII.  On the half hour, you can go towards Whittier, on the hour you can leave.  Colter’s new favorite word?  Tunnel.

Into the tunnel...

Once in Whittier, we hopped on the Klondike – apparently the fastest catamaran in Alaska.   We were all a bit exhausted and welcomed the chance to sit on a boat for five hours and let a Forest Service Ranger guide us through the happenings of twenty-six different glaciers (though I’m pretty sure we saw more than that).  We even enjoyed a fish and chips lunch – and Colter loved his hot dog.  Nasty chocolate mints to finish it off and I was desperately pleading with the old lady at the table near us to not feed them to my 22 month old child.  He’s just so darn cute not to give chocolate to.  Unless you’re his mother, that is. 

Yummy hot dog.

The catamaran, the Klondike

Prince William Sound.

It was a great day to be at sea: Relatively calm and only a few rain drops.  We didn’t see any icebergs calving, but there were plenty of them floating around in the glacial waters of Prince William Sound. We tasted iceberg.  Colter threw a wicked tantrum.  We ate homemade cookies and milk with our tablemates from Georgia.  We spotted porpoises, bald eagles and lots of sea otters.  All the while, we glided past glaciers. It was yet another wonderful day.

Nap thirty.  Post-tantrum. Mama sippin' a beer.

Sea otters playing in frigid waters.

woohoo!

Coxe glacier.

Yummy glacier.

Radness.

Hanging with Dad, checking out the icebergs.

 

Off the ship, back through the tunnel and into Portage Valley (Chugach National Forest) where we popped the top for the night. The storm clouds rolled in and small trickles of water down the mountainsides turned into roaring waterfalls.  The winds howled.  And our PopTop flooded. 

The storm begins....

This picture just doesn't do the winds any justice...

This wasn’t just any old rainstorm, mind you.  Wind gusts were over 85 mph and over 3 inches of rain fell in less than 12 hours.  For the first time in 23 days, we broke out our rain jackets.

Rain jackets and sandals?  Check.

With most of the water mopped up, we headed south to Seward for some afternoon fun at the Sea Life Center.  Colter loved seeing the sea lions and the seals up close and personal in the tanks.  CJ and I studied up on the life cycle of the different salmon.  We stayed dry.

Kenai Peninsula.

Directing the seas.

Downtown Seward.

The Sea Life Center.

And then?  We headed for Anchorage.  Which means, my friends, that today we officially started heading home.  After 5,000 miles and 96 hours, 22 minutes of journeying in these Northern lands, it is time to start the voyage south. 

Casting out.

CJ reels one in.