Sept 18, 2009 - Moose Pass to Exit Glacier and to Seward, AK

Driving through thick mountain fog from Moose Pass, spectacular morning light effects with the fog lifting from the Resurrection River;

Past the markers showing the reach of the ice sheet down the valley, marking it's gradual recession over the last 200 years.

Hiking from the Visitors Center to the front edge of Exit Glacier, massive bedrock formations all around, recently exposed, graceful chiseled mounds and deep-cut ravines, the work of time and pressure and ice and grinding stone-on-stone, ice sheet as "sculptor"; A tremendous view down into the valley below and the "outwash plain" of the glacier, flat silt/gravel valley criss-crossed by wandering threads of meltwater. 

....Seward Highway south , the valley opening up into Resurrection Bay, and the town of Seward, beautiful situation on the west shore of the bay, with the cordillera running the length of the opposite shore, curtains of folded stone rise from just across the bay; A lone bald eagle sitting on an old piling in near our campsite; Sea otters appear and coast on their backs, then slither underwater again.

At the park in town, an historic marker at Mile 0 of the Iditarod Seward to Nome Trail. The Iditarod trail markers were traditionally fashioned from three long poles lashed together in a tripod, with one of the three poles left a few feet longer than the other two. The tripod would be positioned with the long pole end pointing the direction of the trail.  Spend the afternoon at the marvelous Alaskan Sealife Center.