While in Alaska we spent most of our time on the Kenai Peninsula, a peninsula about 2 hours south of Anchorage that has the reputation for being the playground of Alaska and a microcosm of the entire state. While there we hiked in the Chugach National Forest, drove through the Kenai National Wildlife Refuge (seeing a lot of wildlife from bears to moose to musk ox and mountain goats and more bald eagles than I can remember), and also hiked a glacier in Kenai Fjords National Park. These pictures are from a glacial stream, our hike to Exit Glacier, our hike up to an abandoned gold mine high in the mountains, our Resurrection Pass hike (on the other blog post), the most popular multi-day hike in Alaska, where we came across a fresh bear track and quickly turned around. A funny side note, upon arriving we heard a lot about the bears the frequent encounters with humans so we asked the locals how to stay safe while hiking and they told us to buy "bear spray." Bear spray is a large hairspray-sized canister filled with a highly concentrated form of pepper spray, if a bear is advancing you discharge this spray (a can only gives 5 seconds of spray) and pray for the best. We did not want to press out luck, even armed with bear spray so we were very cautious. The bears were just coming out of hibernation while we were there and they were very hungry. Fortunately, our only bear sighting was from our car.
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