Day 76: Sunday in Girdwood

June 29, 2014

Today was another absolutely beautiful day in Alaska. The morning temperature was 43 with an afternoon high of a warm 75 degrees and sunny all day.

This morning we visit Girdwood Chapel United Methodist Church. It is a small church with 2 services – 8:30 and 10:00. The website reports average 40-60 in worship. The 8:30 service is the smaller one and the one we chose to go to today. There were as many visitors as members but we met some very nice people and as people came in for the later service they were all very nice and welcoming. Today was the first day of their new pastor who moved here Wednesday from Missouri. However, since she just arrived there was a guest speaker today. We really enjoyed the service and right now we plan to be in this area through the holiday weekend we plan to go back there next week. Alaska is one of the few places we have visited where there may be a bear in the back yard of the church on Sunday morning. And that is what happened today between services. Unfortunately, by the time we got where we could see it was gone but someone else did get a picture.

Beautiful worship area at Girdwood Chapel UMC

After church it was laundry, lunch and a little cleaning of the rig before we got ready to head out on our afternoon bike ride.

Drinking water is hand pumped from wells at this campground

Just as we were readying, we heard Scout scurrying to the front of the rig – he was outside on his short lead. Max had just been outside brushing him and noticed him alerting to something in the woods but thought it was just another squirrel. We went out to check on him and there in the woods at the front of the rig was a bear! He was about 40 feet into the woods and walking away from our site. Scout never barked but he was wanting to check him out. We sure were glad he was on such a short lead. We had so wanted to see bear from our campsite while Donna and Barry were here and didn't but it happened today – a little closer than we wanted. It is our understanding that the bear has been wondering around in the woods since about 1:30 this afternoon and they came around this evening and reminded everyone to be sure there was no food outside.

Young black bear in woods near our site

We saw him again while we were riding our bikes

We biked out toward the Moose Flats today and saw more glaciers and beautiful lakes stopping to find geocaches along the way - being a little more vigilant of our surroundings.  This area is actually a rain forest and everything is so lush, green and beautiful. Not sure what we will do tomorrow, but we are thinking about going to Whittier. There is a hike to a glacier there that we would like to do. We will let you know what we decide – tomorrow.

Explorer Glacier from the trail

Interesting cloud we saw today