tourist season.

     So the past few weeks we have had several visitors from out of town and Sarah has been playing tour-guide while I worked in my new job: it has less-than-convenient and variable hours until December or so.  I attended what I could, which was great, because I wouldn't normally do these "touristy" activities. 
     We headed out to Matanuska for a combo-activity day of glacier hiking on the glacier followed by rafting the river.  The glacier hike was mellow but gorgeous.  They provided boots/crampons/helmet and we walked around out there for a few hours.  Though I had spent plenty of time on glaciers this spring it was nice to do in another setting and its features were just as interesting.  After lunch we geared up and went for a 3-4 hour rafting down the Matanuska river.  The rapids were fun and our guide was decent.  This made me realize how quickly Alaska gets wild once you leave the pavement and how rafting would be an efficient way to backcountry travel here.

 

     One thing we did was a cruise out of Seward to the Holgate and Aialik glaciers.  The weather was not great and they almost cancelled it due to high seas.  For some reason we still went out, the only boat, and people were filling their barf-bags like pros.  Though it was cloudy and socked in the we saw plenty of wildlife including orcas, gray whales?, puffins, sea otters, sea lions, etc.  I had never seen wild whales and those were on my "things to see/do in Alaska" list.  We also were able to see the Holgate and Aialik glaciers, and the Aialik was especially cool as it was quite active and calving frequently.  The sounds and waves from that were amazing.

 

    
     After the guests had gone Sarah and I celebrated our anniversary by doing some packrafting.  We rented from a guy here in town (http://pacraftalaska.com/) for a day.  We started with Campbell creek in the evening and floated from Lake Otis to Taku lake Park.  The water was a touch on the low side but overall a relaxing evening on the water.  There were some massive salmon swimming around in there, I saw a beaver too, and afterwards realized I should have brought bear spray and questioned our decision to go while the salmon were running.  The next day we headed to Portage and floated the Lake to the highway.  I read 3-4 hours but it took us more like 2.5.  I don't think the water was unusually high or fast.  We lucked out and the skies cleared affording us spectacular views of the surrounding mountains and glaciers.  This float was less challenging and more relaxing as it was wide open with fewer obstacles.