It's Sunday. Time to head south instead of north. The plan? To drive from Anchorage all the way down to Seaward. Seaward is where the Alaska Ididorad dog sled race begins. I heard there are glaciers in that direction and the map I have shows exactly that so off I go.. Will I stumble across any more moose today? Will I find that illusive bear? Hmm one can only hope..

left - once out of Anchorage, this is a quick shot of what the typical view was like from the road. Very nice.. It also demonstrates the added factor of difficulty one must deal with when taking a picture at 60mph with traffic coming in the oncoming lane. As you can see my shot is kinda crooked.. :-\  That's me leaning away from the traffic so I at least think I'm not wandering into the lane.. 
middle - along this very road I again stumbled across lots of tourists (they flock in groups, btw) staring up at a ridge above the highway. Pulling over I saw these mountain goats.
right - more of the goats.. not exactly a bear but the trip is young and there is time..

left - another shot along the road. Notice the increased skill of this shot compared to the above..You can also see the mountains are getting more white as I head more into them.
right - here I turned off the road towards the portege glacier (spelling?). It eventually ends at a visitor's center and a dock where you can take a boat tour out to the glacier for only $25.. However I passed the visitor's center first to see where else the road went. It ended here where they collect $5 to go through a tunnel. The world's longest in fact. over 2 miles long right through that huge mountain. You can see the entrance in the picture. It looks like a little house. It's only one lane wide and the train also comes through it. So at any given time it's either open to the train going through, car traffic heading to Whittier, or car traffic from Whittier. I wanted to go through but the timing was all off. Whittier is a small town near a lot of glaciers where the larger glacier tours launch from (all day ones). The whole tunnel has cameras and lights all through it and very strict procedures. Not a place for your car to stall eh? It even has emergency shelters you can go in if there's a problem and the white emergency lights start flashing.

Here I am twenty-five dollars poorer and riding a boat towards the glacier. So these are shots of us approaching the glacier.
left - ice & mountain
middle left - ice & mountain but closer..
middle right - ice
right - ice with dirt

left - more ice..
middle left - an ice berg.. 90% of the size of an iceberg is underwater.. We gave it lots of room. Thoughts of titanic came to mind..
middle - someone took a picture of me! See I really was there!  So now you know for sure I wasn't just taking pictures of a magazine..
middle right - a waterfall coming from the ice. While we were there a piece of ice broke off from above. It makes the coolest sound.. just like in the shows on TV.. Very loud cracking as the piece breaks off and down into the water. I always thought those sounds were dubbed in on those shows.. now I know..
right - we even went through a little ice field.. sloooowly..

left - more ice..
middle - some waterfalls coming off another mountain.. common sight..
right - just to the left of the glacier above was this other glacier.. it's more receded up the hill as you can see.. But there was a ton of water coming out of it. This picture doesn't do it justice. The guide said the water was going 50mph..

After a long drive towards Seaward with lots of beautiful countryside I turned off towards "exit" glacier.. Yes that's the name of it.. 
left - shots of the glacier from a distance
middle left - hiking towards the glacier.. nice paved road..
middle right - near the glacier looking up at the water coming towards me..
right - here is a great shot of what it looks like when I'm *trying* to get a shot of myself at the glacier. i'm at the far left edge of the glacier.. my camera is on timer on the ground.. 

left - I took this one to give you an idea of how big the glacier is.. You can see other people in it.
right - driving back down the valley.. the glacier is behind me.. the water is all runoff from it and the snow surrounding..

After stopping at Seaward to get gas and food, I headed back to Anchorage. Seaward is pretty small.. There is a ferry there that takes you to Valdez or Kodiak island. Didn't have time to do either.. There was also a small airport and a lot of docks/boats there. It was getting late (9pm or so) so I turned around and headed back up.. This last shot was a mountain I thought looked neat the way the sun hit it..

Unfortunately the bears still elude me.. I saw a ton of ground and was in the middle of nowhere most of the drive.. yet no bears.. no moose.. no orcas.. no bald eagles.. just some road kill.. I think it was a squirrel.. Not sure though it was pretty flat..

Anyways I am tired.. good night everyone