Day 5: Drive towards Whittier

When cruise ships come to Alaska, they can dock either in Seward or in Whittier. We started our trip in Seward, with a 7-hour boat tour of Kenai Fjords, and now decided to drive to Whittier to see what it's all about. 

But first, we started with a boat ride on Portage Lake, to see the Portage Glacier. It was just an hour long and very nice. We had great weather, which helped. 

Then we did an easy 2-mile hike to Byron Glacier, also very nice. 

To get to Whittier, you have to drive through Anderson Memorial Tunnel - it is 2.5 miles long, one lane that serves both cars and trains. Not at the same time, of course. For cars, the tunnel is open towards Whittier on the half-hour, and back on the hour, throughout the day - and if there is a train, all bets are off. But trains are very infrequent. And of course Alik enjoyed driving in the tunnel over the train tracks. You can see them in the photos.

We were going to spend some time in Whittier, but there was nothing there, so we immediately turned around and drove back through the tunnel. This is pretty much the only photo we took in Whittier.

And then, on the way back after the tunnel, we stopped briefly at the Portage Lake Overlook...

... and the Williwaw Salmon Viewing Area.

We then went to visit the Alaska Wildlife Conservation Center, which has a large collection of animals native to Alaska - such as moose, muskox, caribou, bears...

And finally, we stopped at Beluga Point on the way back to hotel. Where, amazingly, we saw a Dall Sheep high up on the mountain slope.

Beluga Point is a little island about halfway down from Anchorage along the Turnagain Arm coast, there is a small parking lot and tourists stop there to look out for Beluga whales (in the water) and Dall Sheep (on the mountain slope across the road). I personally think that the ocean there is way too shallow to fit even a small whale, but leaving that aside for the moment, we were hoping to see a Dall Sheep. They are all-white, males with rounded horns and females with pointy ones, and they roam way, way up high, so that from the ground they look like a spec of white - and there are plenty of white specs up these slopes - except if the speck is moving, then it's a sheep... So we were stopping there every chance we drove by, but no luck... we stopped at least 6 times on Beluga point and were scanning other mountains for them, too - I even started saying that they are just a local legend, to keep the tourists occupied.

So this was our last time driving by Beluga Point - we were leaving Anchorage early next morning. We stopped again, not really hoping, didn't see anything, and were getting ready to leave, when - wait a moment!... And sure enough, there she was.

This being our last night in Anchorage, we drove into downtown, didn't find anything there, and had dinner at Orso - food was very good, service was questionable. Alik then returned the rental car at the airport, took the shuttle back to our hotel, and we ordered a taxi for early next morning to take us to the train station. In all fairness, maybe there is more to Anchorage than what we found, we just didn't spend enough time to explore it properly. 

> Day 6