On day four, our small family group traveled along the Copper River Highway to Childs Glacier.
Although four of the five glaciers feeding the Copper River Delta were named after Civil War Generals--Sherman, Scott, Sheridan, and Miles--Childs Glacier was not.
In 1884, Lieutenant William R. Abercrombie, who headed the first United States military exploration of the Copper River, named Childs Glacier after George Washington Childs of Philadelphia.
The glacier is some 300 feet high and is possibly the most active glacier in Alaska. Visitors can often observe huge masses of ice calving from the glacier into the river below.
On the drive back to Cordova, I stopped to photograph two beautiful trumpeter swans, which were standing on a beaver lodge. Later, I stopped again to photograph a family of swans, which included three cygnets. |