Our first expedition beyond the city...

Since I had a day off of work, Ben and I went for a quick drive (actually about 300 miles round trip!) down south to the town of Seward. The road skimmed right along Turnagain Arm (named by Capt. Cook when he had to turn around after thinking it was an outlet) and through beautiful powdered mountains. We hoped for better weather, but it didn't snow too much and the clouds lifted enough for some great pictures. Along Turnagain Arm, we pulled out and saw the water and ice (yes, those are ice chunks, a bit colder than our old Hawaiian waters) flowing rapidly into the Arm. Turns out it has the second largest tidal difference in the world, having a change of about 33 ft in height.
On our way down to Seward, we stopped by the Exit Glacier, only a tiny part of a huge ice field in Kenai Fjords Park. The wind was whipping through the valley. Luckily winter hadn't set in too far yet so the following sign didn't apply to us.

We attached a topo image in addition to the picture of the glacier to show you how small the glacier is compared to the ice field.



As we came into Seward, Resurrection Bay was on our left with the wind howlin through. This is where the Alaska Pipeline ends and the Iditarod official trail starts (not the race---that starts in Anchorage). The wind was so strong on the Bay, we wished we had our surfboards still with us!
We also saw a series of frozen waterfalls coming out of the mountains like this one...

Since our days are short, we had to drive back to Anchorage in the dark. We found out after about 90% of the cars on the opposite side kept flashing us, that my lights are positioned a little too far up, so I'll have to get that fixed. We came home to our cozy house, thought we'd share what it looks like. Thanks for stopping in and taking a look into our Alaskan journey!!

Our place from outside.