This morning was a beautiful crisp morning. We had a good night sleep in Clancy but it was our first real cold morning. So brewing up coffee while packing up the car. We also had to deal with a lot of very hungry midges this morning who found us quite tasty. Our plans for the day were not fixed but we were keen on having a look around.

So with breakfast done we headed out to see the portage glacier. This was only a few miles down the road, but the drive highlighted why the insect population was so big, basically there are swamps either side of the road. We got to the Begich, Boggs Visitor Center at Portage Glacier, and could see a carved piece of glacier on the lake in front of us.

We went into the centre and with our membership card got free entry to the history section and the movie. This was incredible in detail and information about the area, glaciers, and the history of the area and well worth the visit. The sad thing is that the glaciers had all retreated from the front of the centre although some were visible from the windows.

Thoroughly warmed up we decided to take the short work to the byon glacier. Now the trail and the walk are relatively easy and once there you could approach the sections that had detached themselves from the retreating glacier and take lots of photos. I then proceeded up to the moraine of the main glacier but decided to return as the scree was quite slippery and the temperature was cool. We stopped off at the Portage Glacier Café http://portageglaciercafe.com/ adjacent to the visitor centre for coffee and a brownie, although the café did claim to have an award winning seafood chowder the brownies just looked so good.

We then left the park and went back onto the portage road toward the Seward highway. At the junction there was also the opportunity to visit the animal refuge and so we went in to have a look around. The refuge is mainly for orphaned wildlife from in and around Anchorage. It is also part of a breeding program for wood bison and musk ox. The refuge also hirers its animals out to Hollywood for use in movies. It was a useful way to see wildlife but nowhere near the fun of seeing them in the wild. In fact even seeing them in there open pen cages was a little sad, and reading on how they ended up here was also not good. A lot of the animals could not be rereleased back into the wild and so were doomed to grow old in the refuge.

We walked the refuge rather than drive the 2.5 miles around the compounds. What was amazing was one of the RV's unhooked there car and then drove it around. Having seen all the animals including my first living porcupine we headed off.

The remainder of the drive to Seward was relatively uneventful with a little drizzle and not a lot of traffic. On our way into Seward we stopped to look at the Stony Creek RV park and then went into town to look at some of the other RV parks. Because of my flu we gave the beachside park up as being a little too exposed. We decided to head back out and checkout the Bear Creek RV Park www.bearcreekrv.com/ it seemed OK, had WiFi so we checked in for the night.

Dinner tonight was soup and then shower and off to bed with our Exit Glacier walk.

Animals Spotted: Ice worms, birds, insects and all the refuge animals (porcupine, caribou, musk ox, brown bear, moose, black bear; wood bison and more).