We didn’t have to depart the hotel until noon so we slept relatively late and then went out for breakfast at a local deli that was very popular. I had poached eggs and reindeer sausage. We then wandered around the many gift shops around town and picked up a few souvenirs. After that we got on the bus and headed for the Portage glacier. We drove up the Kanai peninsula along the coast and had lovely views of the forests. It was raining slightly most of the way. Supposedly sometimes whales were sighted but we did not see any. We entered the Chugach National Forest and stopped at the visitor center that had some great informative things including information and photos from the 1964 earthquake in that region which was 9 on the Richter scale. The visitor center was at the end of Portage lake and had icebergs that had broken off of glaciers in the water. The water was very cold and grey colored from all the glacier silt. The day lodge had a nice selection of soup which is what we had for lunch. We then boarded a small boat and drove around Portage lake right up near one glacier that came all the way down to the water. One person saw a black bear on the bank but it quickly went behind a bush and was never seen again. There were also eagles sighted. The boat ride was very nice. They had a lady from the park service that gave a nice talk about the glaciers. The captain of the boat looked the sea captain part and his name was Sean Connery (apparently other days he wore a Kenny Rogers name badge). Air temperature was about 55 degrees but it felt colder than that next to the glacier topside on the boat. The sun came out for us so it didn’t feel too bad. We then got back on the bus and headed for our next hotel which was the Alyeska Prince in the Alyeska ski resort. As we came in we could see several people parasailing. They have a gondola that runs from the hotel to the top of the mountain year round and there is a restaurant on top. We ate dinner in the hotel which was mediocre other than the brownie dessert that Cal ordered. On the way to dinner in the elevator I ran into Dan Kreyer, former ESSI employee. What a small world.