Portage Glacier Lake

As glaciers inch their way along, they typically push rocks, gravel, and powdered rock (flour) into a long mound called a moraine. When the glacier recedes, the melt water is trapped by the moraine, and a lake forms. Icebergs floating in the lake are chunks that break off the glacier as it melts in the summer. Perhaps Portage or one of its neighbors dug the trench that is now the Turnagain Arm of the Cook Inlet.

This pond winds beside the highway west of Portage. We're looking southeast toward the Kenai Mountains on the southeast edge of the Kenai Peninsula.

This beautiful pond floated a group of white swans when we drove by on Sunday, but traffic was such that we couldn't stop and get their picture. By the time we got there on Tuesday afternoon they had taken flight on their trip south for the winter.

Here's another irresistable lilly pond just north of where Highway 1 turns west to become the Sterling Highway. The main highway goes south to Seward as State Highway 9. On the Seward Highway we see frequent signs telling people to use the turnouts to allow faster traffic to get past. It is manditory to do so if as many as 5 vehicles are in a string behind your vehicle.