My wife and I decided that the local park trails don't provide enough of a challenge, so we headed southeast to Portage Lake and hiked to Byron Glacier.
.It's bear country there (as it is most places around here), so I decided to carry openly, as an experiment. For the record, no one paid the slightest bit of attention until at the end, when we returned to the parking area. A tourist who had apparently just gotten off a Princess bus was glaring at me like she had just spotted John Dillinger. I smiled and said, "Hi!" She glared some more. Probably from some blue state where guns are E V I L ... Her problem, not mine.
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The trail is well maintained, a gravel path rather than the asphalt which inserts such a jarring note while walking through the woods.
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It was around 70 degrees, hazy and a rather more humid than normal, which make a warm day for an Alaskan. The bugs weren't bad, either, as the 98% solution of DEET we applied was more effective than the junk we used last time.
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The trail is well maintained, a gravel path rather than the asphalt which inserts such a jarring note while walking through the woods.
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It was around 70 degrees, hazy and a rather more humid than normal, which make a warm day for an Alaskan. The bugs weren't bad, either, as the 98% solution of DEET we applied was more effective than the junk we used last time.
Glaciers create their own micro-climate, with cold air and wind pouring off the thousands of tons of ice. When we got within a quarter-mile of the ice, there was a stiff, cool breeze. By that time, it was welcome. The half-dozen or so people at that end of the trail were walking with their arms out, like so many gooney birds about to make a take-off run.
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The streams pouring out of the glacier were fast and cold. The coloring visible in the photo above is typical.
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(Please excuse the periods between the paragraphs. Blogger does weird things to spacing when photos are added.)
6 comments:
Perhaps she was merely wondering why you weren't clinging to you gun with a Bible in the other hand.
Or, perhaps, she has never seen the damage a bear can do to a camp site and fleshy creatures like herself.
Funny! But I suspect it's the latter; those who think bears are those cuddly, apathetic things at the zoo have no idea what a large brown bear or grizz can do.
We stopped at Portage Lake on the first day of our Mission Trip enroute to Moose Pass.
Needless to say we were already in a state of wonderment over what we had seen to that point! Amazed at God's handiwork!
We only checked the Interpretive Center and took pictures on the lake shore. It was a gray, cloudy drizzly day. Prior to that we saw two Brown Bears on a bike path? Must make for interesting bicycling! We stopped took pictures from the vehicle and before we left had numerous vehicles parked around us with people swarming the roadside to get pictures!!
Wonder what would have happened had the bears which were about 100 years away had decided to come investigate? We were carrying but did not see anyone else who were!
I was surprised at how Alaskans accept open carry. I went hiking up in Mclaren Glacier area off of the Dneali Highway..which was then basically a dirt road full of potholes, but a beautiful drive nonetheless. I used to carry a .44 magnum in a shoulder rig when i went hiking, and out of laziness wore into the convenient store and noone batted an eye...reading your blog makes me wish i'd never left Alaska. It truly is "the great land".
Mjolnir - agreed. It's wonderful to be able to openly enjoy personal rights and freedoms, and to be welcomed for doing so.
We stopped at Applebee's on the way home, that day, and I just pulled my shirt-tail out. There were several California and Washington license plates in the parking lot, and I didn't see the sense in starting an uproar. We're free to carry; they're largely afraid of these tools.
Since I just wanted to eat lunch, it didn't bother me; I still had the pistol, and they could eat secure in the knowledge that The Great Nanny State would take care of them.
Sad, isn't it?
The photos are gorgeous!! Looks so beautiful!
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