Sunday, June 26 Traveling to Seward

When Jim made his trek to the cemetery yesterday, he passed a breakfast place that was almost behind our room.  We decided to check it out, but it was only open weekdays, so we returned to the Downtown Deli and Cafe.  A few seconds after we arrived there was a huge influx of people and there were only 2 people waiting tables, so service was slow.  About 5 minutes later at just 9 o’clock, 4 more serving people appeared.  As usual the food was good and plenteous.  We both had omelets and fruit and rye toast.

We returned to the room and fought the slow internet connection to update another day’s blog entry.  We finished only a few minutes before the noon checkout time.

Our main task for the day was to drive to Seward.  There was lots of great scenery along the way, but we had seen about a third of it on our trip to Portage Glacier.  Today didn’t have the dramatic light of that day, so initially there were almost no photo stops.

At the recommendation of some of our friends, we stopped in Girdwood – a ski resort town a few miles off Seward Highway.  Specifically they said to go to the Bake Shop.  Jim hadn’t written why to stop there in his notes and we assumed we would buy some rolls or something.  There was a long line inside.  People were queued up to buy lunch at 2PM.   

That was just about right with us.  There were no seats indoors after ordering at the counter.  We even had to wait for a spot at a picnic table outside.  We both had great grilled ham and cheese sandwiches:  Ardith’s with Havarti and Jim’s with Swiss.  It was just fine to wait by lovely plantings and hanging baskets.

The really nice scenery came on the stretch between Girdwood and Seward.

We are staying at the Military Resort in Seward.  We have a really nice motel room, as good as any other we’ve been in for about $30-60 less than other places in town.  It is in a lovely setting carved out of an Army base that was built in World War II, but quickly abandoned, even before the war ended.  It has all the amenities we look for: clean, reasonably soundproof, fast internet service, refrigerator, etc.  They also offer discounted tickets for the major attractions in town.

We had a brief look at the quaint downtown area and decided to have dinner at Alaska Nellie’s.  Jim had beer-battered rockfish.  Ardith had Philly Cheese Steak on ciabatta.  We shared generous amounts of oriental slaw and sweet potato fries.  We have noticed that lots more places serve sweet potato fries here than other places we have been.