One of the benefits of traveling is be able to do fun things in new places. I was teaching in Anchorage last week and was able to take one day and drive to the Matanuska Glacier. It was about a 3-hour drive. This is one of the few glaciers that is easily accessible from a major highway. A short walk/hike and I was able to walk on the glacier. It was fun. I do wish I had more appropriate shoes so I could have walked closer to the main glacier wall. Oh well…
Here is a short one-minute video of what I saw as I was standing in the middle of the glacier. If you listen closely you can hear the sound of water running off the glacier as it melts. Everywhere I’m standing is ice. The rocks and stones you see have been moved with the ice over literally hundreds of years.
I also took some pictures of the Matanuska Valley as I was driving back to Anchorage. I uploaded them to Microsoft’s Photosynth so you can get a 3-D view of the beauty of this valley. The river you see is fed from water run off from the glacier. Viewing the pictures does require using Internet Explorer as your browser.
For those of you who can’t see the above, below is one of the pictures. The white part is the glacier.
Colorado does have competition. Alaska is beautiful, just quite a bit harder to get to!
I love it when the aspen turn. They are always so beautiful against the background of the green firs.
Great stuff.