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Welcome to Alaska! Approaching Byron Glacier The glacier's that big white thing up there... The pink flower is fireweed, so named because it's one of the first plants to grow in the wake of a forest fire... or a retreating glacier. Put a lot of snow in a place where it doesn't completely melt, wait for years and years and you eventually get a glacier. But glaciers do melt, and the meltwater carves out ice caves. Put Texans near a glacier and they do odd things, like find sleds and go tobogganing for the first time in their lives. In July. On a rapidly moving glacier. (Hard to see unless you enlarge, but there are real Texans on plastic sleds in the middle of the photo.)
Many Alaskans were happy to see us.
These folks weren't
