Day 74: Biking around Williwaw

June 27, 2014

Yea!! Today started with sunshine and we had a mostly sunny day. No rain at all today! The sky was so beautifully blue with the white puffy clouds. Nice.

We spent most of the morning on maintenance items. We took Fred up to the Girdwood turnoff to the Tosoro station for diesel ($4.169) , LP gas ($3.99), water and dumped the holding tanks (free with purchase of fuel or LP). The Williwaw campground has no hookups so we have to keep everything full (or empty as appropriate) so we can continue to have all our creature comforts including our furnace. It is still in the 40's at night so some morning heat is needed. Once the sun is out Fred warms up nicely. The high today was 65 – great hiking and biking weather. That is exactly what we did after lunch. We biked down the Trail of Blue Ice to Portage Lake and the Begich, Boggs Visitor Center.

The Portage Glacier has receded and you can no longer see the glacier from the visitors center. You have to take a boat tour out onto Portage Lake to see the actual glacier. Since you can see many other glaciers in this area we didn't take the boat tour. From our campground we can see several glaciers with wonderful blue ice. You can see glaciers all up and down the Portage Valley. There was still a large chunk of blue ice floating in Portage Lake.

click to enlarge pictures

After returning from biking, we took Scout on a nice hike. We hiked over to the salmon viewing platform but the salmon are not yet back in Portage Creek. Not due back until mid July. A nice nature trail starts at the viewing platform and crosses under the road and follows along Portage Creek. Its was a nice hike. We keep finding more and more trails around here. This is really a beautiful area.

The campground has filled up this afternoon. We hope this weekend it remains the peaceful relaxing place we have enjoyed the past few days. We plan to stay here until at least Monday and may stay thru the July 4^th weekend – no set itinerary – will move on when we feel the urge. Hope everyone has a good weekend.