We saw our first glacier in Alaska on the drive to Anchorage when we on a schedule and couldn't stop to go exploring. We finally found time to drive back up into those mountains and revisit the Matanuska Glacier. Our first stop was a state park with a mile loop trail that didn't get you very close to the ice field but provided lots of educational signs and this view of the glacier. From this vantage point we could see there was a bridge across the river and a road leading to the glacier so we headed in that direction.
It turns out that there is a privately owned glacier park where you have to pay an access fee to drive the 2 mile dirt road that takes you right to the base of the glacier. The parking lot is out in the middle of the debris field in front of the ice. You have to hike through the wet, muddy, silt to get to the glacial ice and then you can go anywhere you want. There were only a few people out there and since it is so vast you rarely see anyone as you can see from this picture we call 'Where's Pattie' :-)
This glacier is the only one we visited that is actually advancing. They say it is moving at a rate of one foot per day (or a half inch per hour)! Once we got past the debris field in front, we tried to follow the run off streams where we could walk on solid material instead of ice.