4 Wheels 4 Girls

July 8th, we drove from our campground to the Kenai Fjords National Park visitor center. Hummph, my brain didn’t seem to be doing its simplest job: thinking. So for some strange reason, I thought we were going to the grocery store. I know, I’m so retarded, aren’t I? I don’t know when or why I thought that, but whatever. So of course, I confused everybody when I said, “Wait, I thought we were going to the grocery store!” , when we pulled into the visitor center parking lot.

When we got out of the RV and stepped into the visitor center, Dad was already there, looking at the 3D map in the middle of the room. I walked over there and stood next to Dad as he examined the mini mountains, glaciers, and icefield. Even though I’m never really enthusiastic about those kind of things, I had to admit that the Harding Icefield was pretty big. And later that day, Dad told me that the Harding Icefield was the second biggest icefield in North America.

I was getting a little bored with standing there, staring at the 3D map, so I decided to look around at the other things in the gift shop. I slowly walked over to a stand of cans, looking around at other things on the way. When I was over to the cans, I picked up the first one I saw; the one that was opened. First I looked at the label: Canned Puffins. Canned Puffins? So I pulled at what was inside and finally tugged out–a puffin! A stuffed puffin! And it was adorable! At the bottom of the can read: CAUTION!: This puffin is known for sitting and waiting in your bed for you to come and snuggle you to sleep! I was in love with this little puffin! Not only because of the caution sign, but also because, well, it was just so cute! And because I’ve always loved puffins. They are all colorful and happy, and all flappy-winged and me-like. I just love them!

I was terribly disappointed when I asked Jean if I could get it and she answered no. But then she made a deal: if we see a puffin, I get the canned puffin! So I’ll be looking out for puffins!

Near the Exit Glacier at Kenai Fjords. The people behind us to the right are a lot closer.

From the visitor center, we took a short hike to the Exit Glacier, which flows down from the Harding Icefield. We saw a pika on the way to the edge of the glacier. A pika is a little brown mouse-like thing with a stripe on its back that looks like it is spray-painted red. Its tail is really small. When we came up over the hill, the temperature dropped about ten degrees. I realized that when you are right next to a glacier, you are right against a whole lot of ice, and you are also right against cold. For some reason, I didn’t realize that glaciers are ice and ice is cold. So as we walked up to the very edge of the glacier, I was shivering like a raisin. And Dad kept us down there for about half an hour, asking questions to the ranger. Since I thought we’d never leave, I stared at the packed blue ice. The ice wasn’t actually blue, it was just the light. I didn’t really understand why blue was the only color of light reflected, so I’m going to let someone else explain that. [Editor’s note: glacial ice is a lot like metamorphic rock, ice compressed over hundreds of years by the pressure of thousands of tons of snow and ice above it. The ice is so dense it absorbs the light which enters it, all except blue.]

I was relieved when we finally left. I don’t think Greta knew it was the shorter way when she said it, but she convinced Dad to let us go back that way to the visitor center. When we got back Dad took us to the 3D map again and pointed out Exit Glacier. It seemed so big when we hiked up to it, but it is one of the smallest glaciers of Harding Ice Field.