Alaska - Day 1 (Highlights: Mirror Lake and The Matanuska Glacier)

For Day 1, we drove about 100 miles Northeast of Anchorage on the Glenn Highway to the Matanuska Glacier.  What an amazing sight!  This was the first time either one of us had seen a glacier in person.  The drive to the glacier was peaceful and pretty.  The glacier experience was.....different and fun (as explained below).

Before we even left the hotel parking lot, I thought this tree still hanging onto color was a pretty sight.

 Our first stop was just about 15 miles Northeast of Anchorage at Mirror Lake.  We just happen to catch a glimpse while driving out to our main destination, the Matanuska Glacier, so we pulled off to view it.  Man oh man am I glad we did.  Gorgeous Reflections.  Mirror Lake is the only place in the area where you can fly up and land right in front of your house.

The next beautiful sight along the way was the Chugach Mountains.

 


We then made it to our main destination for the day, the Matanuska Glacier.  The drive there seemed shorter than it was, due to the gorgeous views along the way.  This was our first glimpse of the glacier...

We pulled up to a small Mom and Pop looking store.  My husband says it reminds him of the "Norman Bates Motel".  We walked in to pay, and encountered a very nice woman, playing solitaire, and her adorable doggy laying in front of the counter.  We paid, looked around the gift shop, and then signed a liability form.  We didn't think anything about this, until we pulled up closer to the glacier.

The reason for the liability form sank in as we closed our car doors and started walking towards the glacier.  See, the beautiful thing about Alaska is they conserve the beautiful landscapes and wildlife better than anyone else, and leave things without human interruption as much as possible.  Which leaves them showing their true and natural beauty.  So, a few orange construction/caution cones marked the "safest" route to the glacier.  The safest route...through mud/slush/gook and rocks and water, and ice.  I say this like it was a bad thing, but it wasn't.  It made the journey that much more interesting and fun.  However, my husband does want me to admit....I did slide down one of the hills on my rear.

It may be hard to tell, but we are actually standing on the glacier in the below pictures.  We walked over quite a bit of ice just to get to this point.  The main glacier was much further than it looks, and, us having flown into Anchorage and being unprepared, we did not have the shoes or equipment to actually go explore the main portion of the glacier.  It was still awe inspiring though and a first for us both.

And then, of course the drive back to the hotel was just as gorgeous as the drive out to the glacier.

We ended the the day with dinner at Humpy's Great Alaskan Alehouse in Anchorage.  We found it on Urbanspoon and it had great reviews, so we thought we would give it a shot.  We started with the Alaskan King Crab Nuggets as an appetizer - WOW.  D.e.l.i.c.i.o.u.s.  For our main meal, I had the Hawaiian Big Island Burger, my husband had the Blackened Halibut Burger.  We were both very pleased with our meals, although, mine was much more than could be finished.  We each also had a local beer with dinner, me the Moose's Tooth Hard Apple Cider (Very good!) and Jake had the Alaskan Baltic Porter and swears it is one of the best he's had.  The place was very busy when we got there, but we lucked out and found a seat right next to the door.  In addition, they had several pro football games on large screens and were actually having an Oktoberfest celebration, so there was even a live authentic Polka band playing.