Tuesday, June 28 Seward, Sealife Center, Exit Glacier

We had breakfast at Alaska Nellie’s Roadhouse and were served huge portions of food.  In spite of Ardith ordering a half serving of biscuits and sausage gravy, it was far more than she could eat.  Jim had the Captain’s S.O.S. consisting of a half biscuit with gravy, a big chunk of ham, 2 scrambled eggs and a generous portion of fries.  He managed to put it all away somehow.

The Alaska Sealife Center was our stop for the morning.  The Center is filled with examples of aquatic life that is native to Alaska.  The Center also does research and works with injured sea life creatures.  We had the opportunity to touch many kinds of creatures (mostly invertebrates) and to walk very close to a number of Alaskan birds.  

Common Murre

Eider

Red Legged Kittiwake

Stellar Sea Lion

Touch Tank

Tufted Puffin

It helped us to remember some of which animals were which from our previous day’s boat trip.  There were excellent viewing tanks for fish, sea lions, seals and otters.

We went to hear a talk by one of the rangers.  Jim slept through much of the archaeology talk, but it was not the presenter’s fault.  We learned that the Sea otter has the finest fur of all the animals pelts collected by trappers.  It was the prime money earner in Russian Alaska.  When the otter population declined the Russians didn’t want the territory any more, which effectively led to the sale of Alaska by Russia in 1867 for $7.5 million.

This is the starting point for the Alaska Railroad, which extends to Fairbanks.  It has a lot of passenger business, mostly from tourists that are doing combination package tours among cruise ship, train, bus and plane.  

Former Railroad Station

The start of the railroad is now 2 miles further inland than before the 1964 earthquake.  The station was damaged and the track bed badly weakened. The railroad also carries coal from Alaskan mines for export to other countries.  As we were leaving Seward, a huge coal train pulled into town, but Jim’s camera was buried. There is a coal loading rig in the harbor and one boat of coal a week is shipped out of Seward.

 

What remains of the former roadbed of the railroad and some nearby industrial areas that were also destroyed is now devoted to a huge amount of RV parking space and some recreational fields.  There were more than 200 RVs when we walked by.  They were marking lines in a baseball field for more RVs. 

Those spaces will be needed for the upcoming 4^th of July weekend.  The big deal in town is a foot race up and down Mt. Marathon, which overshadows the city.  The race was started as a bet between 2 miners and has grown to the biggest thing the town sees.  Several hundred people ran last year.

The city of Seward provides a map that leads a walking tour through various sections of the city including the first part of the original Iditarod Trail. The dog sled race starts in Anchorage, because snow is undependable in Seward.

While walking the trail, we passed 2 baby bunnies just next to the trail in a small park area.  They were quite camera shy, so Jim was only able to get a picture of one.   Several blocks away we saw 2 full grown rabbits.  

We also passed extremes of houses, some very expensive, one toward the top of our list of junky yards.

There was a hotel that has been in business since 1913.  It looked like an attractive place to stay.

We ate lunch at the bakery and had homemade chicken noodle soup and sandwiches, capped by a raspberry bear claw dessert.

Throughout Seward there are numerous murals painted on sides of buildings, but not nearly as dense as in Chenaimus, BC.

Seward has a lot of things to make you smile.

In the afternoon we drove to Exit Glacier and joined a ranger who led a tour. One of the first things she did was to tell us the difference between black bears and brown bears and the strategies for encountering either.   Brown bears had been sighted this morning about a mile beyond where we would be going on this walk.

She also told us more about the strange plant we saw in Anchorage.  She said is is called pushky or devil's club.  It has an oil that makes your skin super-sensitive to sunlight.  Jim had touched one along the path, but only touched the leaves.  Supposedly only the stem has the oils.

Like other glaciers we have experience, this was quite magnificent.

The glacier has been receding regularly ever since 1815.  There were signs pointing out where the glacier extended at various key years from then on. 

The ranger noted that the glacier receded 177 ft. this year, far surpassing any previous year.

We stopped at the Safeway and took out salad bar for dinner. Jim’s salad bar had lots on it, mostly fruits and veggies.  Ardith’s was entirely veggies, but she added a small pineapple upside down cake.

Monday June 27 Kenai Fjords National Park boat trip

We had breakfast in our room this morning: yogurt, strawberries and granola.

Today we are going on a 9 hour boat tour to the Northwest Fjord, one of the arms of the Gulf of Alaska.   The is the main way to see Kenai Fjords National Park. We checked in at 8AM as directed.  They told us where to park and that they had a shuttle to bring people back.  Jim said that since it is only 3 or 4 blocks away, he would walk.  When he parked the car, the shuttle stopped directly in front of him as he exited the car, so he felt compelled to ride. We boarded the Kenai Explorer at 8:30 and took off at 9.

Captain Bob introduced himself over the PA system and did a wonderful commentary throughout that trip, but we never saw him because he was in the cockpit.  As we were leaving the dock, he explained that most of the boats nearby are fishing boats and that Seward is 3^rd largest fishing port in Alaska.

It was a chilly, overcast day with calm seas.  Captain Bob says that should be good for finding wildlife.  That was the prime reason we took the 9 hour cruise over the 3, 6 or 7 hour versions.  It seemed to have more of an emphasis on that over scenery, even though it cost proportionately more.

We made a brief stop at Fox Island to drop off about a dozen passengers who were going to spend the next night there.  This made the size of the crowd on our boat “just right” for us.  It was lightly loaded, so the company didn’t make a ton of money.

Jim tossed out a lot of the photos he attempted today.  Between the rolling of the boat, moving subjects and somewhat low light, it was incredible that any turned out.

They gave us a checklist of animals we might see on the trip and we saw most of the major ones.  Below are the ones we saw with pictures where they turned out well.

Steller Sea Lion:  A very huge animal that is highly endangered, having lost 80% of its population in the last 30 years.

Sea Otter: The smallest marine mammal and probably the cutest.  It is also endangered.  This mommy had a baby on her belly.

Harbor Seal: These look like smaller versions of the steller sea lion at first glance, but they lack ear flaps. The raise their young on ice floes to minimize danger from predators.

Cormorant: Captain Bob pointed out different species of these, but we couldn’t tell the difference. 

Jim saw a piece of ice floating along that reminded him of a swimming cormorant.

Bald Eagle: “Eagles mate for life, like humans used to”.  This pair obviously thinks they are number one.  

Just a short distance from a cliff densely populated with birds, another cliff face was devoid of anything except an eagle high in a tree.  Captain Bob said that if eagles don’t find fish, they turn to smaller birds, so many birds stay away from eagle’s nests.

Common Murre: we saw hundreds of these birds in colonies on cliffs.  You can see that there are no nests.  They just lay their eggs on bare rock.  It is the deepest diving sea bird – one was caught in a crab pot 640 feet deep!

Other birds we saw included Thick-billed Murre, Kittlitz’s Murrelets, Black Oystercatcher, Tufted Puffins, and Black Legged Kittiwake.

Dall’s Porpoises followed the boat for a while, playfully leaping around the boat, so playful that pictures only showed tiny pieces of body parts.

The big attraction was the Humpback Whale.  We saw these magnificent creatures several times.  You could see the spray from their blow a long distance away.  Jim was able to get a nice shot video of them surfacing and diving.  He will attempt to upload that, but failed in a previous attempt to put a video in this blog.

Along the way, Captain Bob pointed out some glaciers. 

The farthest point of our boat trip was the Northwest Glacier.  He explained that this glacier is more active than others.  We sat idling for about 5 minutes, then there was a loud boom and ice began crumbling from the top.  Jim was ready with his camera and pressed the button to start a video.  He was wearing gloves and the button didn’t go in.  He recovered and got video of the river of ice pouring to the water below.  This might also get attached to the blog at a later point in time. 

The “calving” operation lasted about 10 minutes.  Quite thrilling.

Captain Bob took us to a place where you can see 5 glaciers at once.  Jim was outside and didn’t hear that and only focused on the side of the boat where three were quite close together.

We also went to a place called Cascade Canyon where perhaps a dozen waterfalls are pouring down a long cliff face.

There were so many beautiful rock formations that Jim’s camera trigger finger got weary :-)

The crew included two recent college grad females who were quite attentive to the passengers and hard working.  One wants to check Jim’s map catalog online.  The other currently has no job prospects after the summer.  Her previous employer went out of business.  Jim will try to link her up with Watermark Tours in Annapolis for a possible fall job.

A breakfast snack was served shortly after we got underway. It included fresh-from-the oven cinnamon rolls, fruit cups and juice.  Coffee and tea were available throughout the trip. Lunch included chicken Caesar wraps, granola bars and carrots.  Warm from the oven chocolate chip cookies were provided for a late afternoon snack.

We ate dinner at the Apollo Greek – Italian restaurant.  Jim had Moysaka (that’s how it is spelled on the menu).  Ardith had veal parmesan with penne pasta and alfredo sauce.

As we walked back to the car Jim noticed a sock pinned up to the community bulletin board.

Power to Seward had been out earlier in the day.  We saw a sign in one shop that it had closed for that reason.  The alarm clock was flashing in our room.  Our internet connection was not working.  Jim went to the desk and was told the router reboots automatically a bit after midnight, and the staff was not allowed to do it manually.  It wasn’t restored until after 9 the next morning.