Anchorage Cultural Center

I will make a couple more posts about our vacation time and then will focus on our usual August activities – getting ready for a new semester. I am headed to Palau this weekend for the Deacon’s Conference  there. I would appreciate your prayers for some profitable conversation with the church leaders in Palau as we work together for the kingdom. In the meantime here are some pictures of the Alaskan Native Cultural Center in Anchorage. We spent an enjoyable afternoon there and learned a lot about the indigenous people groups of Alaska.

The totem poles were very interesting

We saw a dog sled demonstration. They pulled a sled on wheels since there was no snow.

Joyce holds a fox pelt. The skeleton is of a grey whale

The center was constructed around this lake with villages representing the different indigenous groups in Alaska.

I could not resist playing with the tools

Portage Glacier #2

Here are a few more pictures of us with the glacier!

You can see from the way we were dressed that it was a beautiful day, although you could feel the coldness coming off the glacier

The glacier looked mostly blue

We liked the “spires”

Posing in front of the glacier…

and with the name of the boat, and the captain

As I mentioned it was my favorite part of the vacation

Portage Glacier

My favorite event of the vacation portion of our Alaska trip was our journey to see the Portage glacier and cruise around Portage lake. The drive down from Anchorage to the lake was gorgeous and the glacier and surrounding scenery was just breathtaking. It was a beautiful day, even though Joyce got cold enough to go below in the boat and do some of her glacier watching through a window. We took a lot of pictures so I think I will break this into two posts. 

 

The scenery on the way from Anchorage to the lake was amazing. These pictures were taken from the side of the highway on the way there.

We enjoyed seeing the mountains with snow on them while we enjoyed temperatures in the 70’s

There were waterfalls everywhere

There were several little icebergs floating in the lake

And the glacier itself was spectacular

Trip to the Anchorage Museum

On Sunday afternoon the conference ended and Joyce and I shifted into vacation mode for a few days before we returned to Guam. One of our first outings was to the Anchorage museum. We took Isis with us and spent most of the day there. I love museums and would actually be pretty happy with a vacation that included nothing but museums and historical sites (note that my next post will contradict this – I let you know in advance.), and, of course, restaurants. I was impressed by how much the museum had to offer including a planetarium, multiple tours and shows, an art gallery along with the usual stuff. I felt like I learned a lot about Alaska’s geography, history and cultures. And we had a great time too.

This is as close as we got to a grizzly bear.

Although later they saw a real moose

Saw some movies about the “Alaskan bush”

One whole floor was devoted to the history of Alaskan aviation

There was a large hands-on science area where we spent a lot of time. Here Isis encloses herself in a giant bubble.

We ended the museum visit with a walk around downtown Anchorage