Getting Into Alaska With The Kids

We've spent way too much time in Anchorage.  I do like our backyard.  Sitting out on the deck surrounded by lots of trees in the warm weather was nice.  And traffic out of town around the 4th of July is always awful.  But I was getting antsy and wanted to take the kids down to Portage.

First stop, 30 minutes out, was Bird Point.  It was supposed to be a short stop, but the kids enjoyed running around, playing statue on various pedestals on the overlook walk.  Then under the bridge

and back.  Over the fence, across the tracks to check out the beach.  But the five year old started saying she was hungry (we'd been feeding them since we stopped).  But most of the way back she said she lost her gloves - it was almost raining and very windy, maybe 60˚F - so the 4 year old I went back to look.  But we didn't find them.  His cheek found a big rock though when he missed a step in the rocky part.  He had a good reason to cry and he did.  We got back to the parking lot and they deduced, by looking at the pictures D had taken, the last place Z had her gloves.  So she and I went back and found them.

Then to Portage.   At the lakeside parking lot the rain was coming down hard, horizontally.  The

wind was slamming car doors.  BUT, there were icebergs too.  I'd thought those didn't happen often since the glacier retreated out of the water and up the mountain years ago.  And they weren't the giant ones that used to float around, but they were icebergs.






But it was so rainy and windy that no one wanted to stand around outside very long.  The visitor center was a big hit with the kids.  Lots of buttons to push (raven calls, sandhill crane cackles, wolf howls), a kayak to climb into and lots of things that caught their attention.  And we saw part of the movie.











A stop at Black Bear Campground, which was totally empty, and lushly beautiful.  I'm sure the rain had something to do with both conditions.








Soup at the Bake Shop or ice cream at the cone shop at Alyeska?  The kids won that vote.

A potty break at McHugh Creek, so we walked up to the bridge.

Finally a  brief stop at a Potter Marsh pullout.  You can get a sense of the wind by the ripples in the water and the leaning grasses.  But this was nothing compared to Portage.

A fun day of sightseeing, lots of eating and laughing, running around, and seeing new things for the kids.