We took the Seward Highway to reach Exit Glacier and the town of Seward. But the drive itself was gorgeous, so I’ll save Exit Glacier and Seward for tomorrow.

The part of Cook Inlet that runs along the Seward Highway after Anchorage is called Turnagain Arm, from when Cook was searching for the Northwest Passage. It wasn’t, and so was named (in irritation I presume) Turn Again.

The drive down Seward highway takes you from the Cook Inlet to the Gulf of Alaska, and was a gorgeous drive. I kept asking to stop so I could get out and take pictures until I realized how late it was and that if we didn’t move we might not make Exit Glacier before the park closed. (Plus, Tania wanted to visit with her friends in Seward, and I was totally delaying that!)

The drive down Turnagain Arm–followed by the drive back that night–showed precisely how far the tide goes in and out in Cook Inlet.

One of the things I don’t seem to have pictures of are the areas that fell during the Good Friday Earthquake in 1964. (Here’s a picture of what I’m talking about.) When the earth fell, areas that had been above the tide line suddenly weren’t anymore, so I kept seeing areas where there were bare, dead trunks sticking up in the air.

At this point, I kinda lost track of where–precisely–we were. Other than everything around me was gorgeous.

Wherever we went, I was fascinated by the marks on the land–the fractures made by water and ice. I live in mountains worn down by water and time, while these lands are changed not by erosion but by the violence of the earth. Round river stones replaced here by shards of broken rock.