August 20, 2008
Ship Creek RV Park, Anchorage, Alaska
We drove to Portage Glacier South of Anchorage
Another beautiful mountain we saw on our drive down to see the Portage Glacier. It's about 45-50 miles South of Anchorage
View from the Visitors Center close to the Portage Glacier
This is the Portage Glacier. It is receding at a pretty fast rate. I can't remember the exact details, but they said it used to be much larger. It is still 4 1/2 miles deep and you can see
how wide it is at the water's edge.
This is another small glacier close to the Portage Glacier
Snow capped mountains in the distance on our drive on Seward Highway towards the Portage Glacier
Howard beside the Portage Glacier Tour sign
One of the ice bergs that have broken off of the Portage Glacier
Another Iceberg
Merrell & Donna at the Portage Glacier Tour sign
Donna and Carolee at the Glacier sign
I fell in LOVE with SMOKEY!! He had such a "bare" chest. No pun intended!!!! Teeheehee
Howard was in Awe of the Glacier. Check out his MOUTH. He said he didn't know it would open that wide. LOL
Howard on the boat
Alaskan Department of Transportation Garage....................
And, last but not least............ Now for the rest of the story. After we left the Glacier and the Information center, we decided to drive on down to Seward so we could say we had been there. Well............. Merrell had replaced the battery on our car a couple of days ago while we were in Denali because it hadn't been holding a charge. We thought everything was fine. NOT!!!! We were driving down the highway and all of the lights on the dash came on, including service engine and change oil soon!! Teeheehee Anyway, it wasn't any of those things and he checked the battery and it wasn't charged up. He was pretty sure it was the alternator at that point. It had started raining and luckily an Alaskan Department of Transportation truck stopped and had us follow (we had enough juice to go for awhile) him to their building so he could charge the battery. His name was Drew something or other. He charged it and we hoped we could make it back to Anchorage (about 60 or so miles from where we were at). We were traveling right along and doing fine until about 20 miles out and BANG, everything quit. Thankfully, we coasted into the parking lot of a restaurant called Turnagin House. We have special towing insurance on the RV and our car so I called Good Sam's and they sent a wrecker, but only one of us could ride with him. He got there in about 45 minutes. He called back to his base and one of the owners came in her club cab truck and picked us up and brought us back to the RV park. Merrell had them tow the car here and he charged up the battery enough that he can drive it to the Saturn dealer in town to have it fixed. The tow people were so nice and the bartender at the restaurant kept us entertained while we were waiting on our ride. Everyone we have met in Alaska has been super nice and helpful. Will let you know about the car tomorrow!!
Catch ya later,
The gang
