Seward Glaciers fed by the Ice Field! by Kenny & Kristen

After getting up and gathering some gear we headed down the road the the Kenai Fjords National Park. Our plan was to do a small 3 miles loop to see the foot of exit glacier and then take the 4.1 mile out and back (8.2 total) to the Harding Ice field.  The Exit glacier was an awesome sight. We were able to get pretty up close and personal with the glacier and see just how big it is. On the way to it however we learned that in its past, it was much MUCH larger than its current state. Over the past decade, this glacier has continued to sink many miles in size. In the last 10 years alone, the glacier had shrunk nearly a mile!  The hike up to the ice field was a different story. This hike ascends nearly 1000 feet per mile until you hit the top. They estimate about a 6-8 hour climb time. This is where we went wrong - we made it to the top in about 2 hours. Our bodies were hurtin’! Along with the steep slope, the bugs on this hike were far worse than any of our other adventures in Alaska. There were millions of flies and mosquitoes on this trail until we hit the ice at the top. The view however was worth every bit of effort we put into that trail. I have never seen anything like what i saw here. This was the view i thought of when someone brought up alaska. Ice hundreds of feet thick push the glacier down the mountains carving their paths in the lan through the summer. Over the winter over a hundred feet of snow will fall on the ice field and over years compress and to the mighty glaciers. Once we hit the top, we stopped and ate our lunch and just enjoyed the view. This was one of my favorite sites of the whole trip. On the way down, we actually got to see some hikers making their way up the glacier itself. I tried to convince Kristen that we should go back and do that but she was not for doing this hike twice in a day. After finishing up the ice field we headed home to grab a shower because we had booked a small cruise to Fox island to grab dinner. The cruise allowed us to see some whales and eagles feeding in Resurrection Bay and it was a site new to me. It was something else that was almost a magical experience. I had never seen a whale feed in person before (a blue whale at that!) nor had i ever seen a bald eagle in the wild. Kristen loved it as well and noted it was probably her most favorite moment. So this was pretty awesome to see.  Our dinner was nice and during it we were able to hear a park ranger talk about some of the history of fox island and the inspiration it was for some artists who had visited it. After the talked we went and skipped some more rocks before boarding our boat to finish the loop and had back to the land.  On the last half of the cruise we were able to see another glacier and an Iceberg that had cracked off and was floating in the sea. This was an awesome site as well because we just don't normally see chunks of ice that big floating in any body of water.|Once the cruise was finished we headed some and got some shut eye. The next day would be our last in Alaska and we wanted to get an early start to enjoy it as long as we could! 

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