Exit Glacier Overlook Trail; Kenai Fjords NP

Good morning, my friends. We'll say good-bye to Seward this morning and make our way to Homer. We'll have four days in Homer before we backtrack along the roads we came in on. After Homer, we'll spend a couple of nights in Soldotna before making our way to Anchorage. This section of our trip has the most number of days in single spots. 

The weather could be more cooperative, but it hasn't prevented us from doing anything we really wanted to do. Also, no one has died, and so we consider that good fortune. (I really hate it when someone dies.) We've had no sewer hook-up here in Seward. In other words, there is no sewer in Seward. (Did you see what I did there?) We've been careful about what we drain into our tanks. We knew we could make it three days. Four seemed like a stretch, but we made it. Eating out two nights while we were here helped.

Yesterday we hiked the Exit Glacier Lookout trail in Kenai Fjords National Park. We'd been to the visitor center on Tuesday, but came back with warmer clothing for the hike. The trail started out paved, but changed to gravel after a short distance. 

We crossed over a couple of bridges like this one:

These rickety bridges (two of them) crossed swiftly-moving streams.

The first half of the hike was uphill, and we climbed many of these stone stairways.

We also made our way across rock sections like this one. You can see the deep scratches caused by glacial movement.

It was just about a mile to see the actual glacier.

Here's a little closer view.

This sign gave a good explanation of what we were seeing.

From this viewpoint, we could see how far the glacier has retreated in the past 20 years.

looking in the opposite direction, we could see the terminal moraine.

Here's another shot. I left those two hikers in the middle of the image for some scale.

This sign was interesting. As we walked along, markers showed where the glacier extended through the years. The oldest we saw was 1817 when the glacier extended outside the boundary of the national park.

It was an easy hike...about 2 miles. There were lots of wildflowers blooming along the way. This first one is known as "large-leaved avens."

This one's latin name is Pyrola asarifolia, also known as pink wintergreen. The flowers were about the size of a pea.

This is another wild geranium.

And these are known as Jacob's Ladders.

This one is called Aruncus. My friend, Marei, tells me it's also known as "Goatsbeard."

These red guys were growing like this in several places. They weren't quite open yet, and so it was hard to know for sure.

I thought it was red columbine. When we found a tuft that was open...sure enough.

Finally, these we saw just before returning to the parking lot. This is called Peavine.

So that was a good way to spend our last afternoon in Seward. Between raindrops yesterday afternoon, we got Smitty out for another walk. We also brought in some grass for Sadie to enjoy. Smitty likes this Pawlaska grass. Sadie only likes it because Smitty likes it.

We're expecting similarly gray and drizzly weather in Homer, but it seems the chance of rain will lessen during the time we're there. Fingers crossed for the return of warmth and sunshine. We brought plenty of clothes for warmer weather, but so far, we've been sticking with sweatshirts and rain parkas. 

All right, then. Breakfast is next, and then we'll start buttoning things up to head on down the dusty trail.