Leg 9 Seward, Alaska

Seward is south of Anchorage, on a spit or peninsula.  It is a major (for Alaska) sea port and a significantly picturesque place. Our chosen campsite was Resurrection City CG, precisely on the water.  Basically a parking lot, but, oh, what a parking lot.  Here are some of the views of and from our site.

 

And this was the view out our back window.

So much to do in Seward. The major things that we did were a) visit the fantastic aquarium there – followed by a visit to the Yukon Bar, b) an ocean ride to visit the fiord and it’s wildlife, and c) a super fishing trip for silver salmon.

Walking to the aquarium, we spotted some local eagles perched in a tree watching for lunch.

 

 

 

And off to grab a nice lunch treat.

 

 

What a fantastic, magnificent birds!

Then the aquarium, great spot.

And the puffins.  We saw puffins here, beautiful, we saw puffins in the wild on our boat excursion, and we saw puffins hanging about on our silver salmon fishing trip.  Here are the guys in the aquarium.

Two of my favorites were capturing this great sea lion, what a majestic and bucolic creature he is.

Then in front of the museum, whilst waiting for others to finish, had to capture a flower or two.

To end this days journey, it is off to the famous, or is it infamous, Yukon bar.  If you remember a previous post talking about the drink  “duck fart” , this is the place it originated. And what a place.

Simple looking outside, funky inside.

So we order a beer and a duck fart, of course!

 

 

Now you know, these are nice – but esthetically they pale to the beautiful drinks Stacy (and now Murray and Rich) make!

This bar had so much to look at, it was amazing.  The building had been many things including a barber shop.   It was resurrected at one time and a local who befriended me (read I couldn’t get rid of him) pointed out at one of the resurrections they found in the basement of the place a human skull!  It is now surreptitiously sitting on a shelf (as my new best buddy said “try that in the lower 48!”) – see below.

  Next adventure was the ocean going trip out to sea.  Seward, like some of the other Alaskan sea ports, is actually a fiord – a long narrow channel carved by a glacier.  Our voyage took us out the fiord, out to sea and back. On board was a ranger/marine biologist narrating and helping us with the nature stuff.  Fantastic trip – could go on for a long time, but will only share some pictures from same trip.

Going out the channel/fiord. This is so massive, if you look really, really close, on the far right of the picture you can see a tiny white blur, this is a fishing boat, and not a small one!

Below, a sea otter, we saw several of these from our camp.

Above, we saw this glacier from a distance.  In the total course of our trip we saw several glaciers, in fact even walked on one.

Spotted this nice eagle, below, from the ship.

We saw several sea lions, just tons of them.

And then some wild puffins.

 

And we were lucky enough to have a couple of whale encounters.

On the return trip we cruised by a huge glacier that had calved some icebergs.  The icebergs were captured in a fresh water lake created by a moraine (pushed aside dirt and rock from a proceeding glacier) . Look closely at the size of that big iceberg, remember that 2/3s of it are under water, and compare the height to those tall pines in the foreground!

As our last treat we espied some mountain goats as we cruised home.

Not at all a bad days journey.

The following day Rich and I opted to take a small boat out into the bay/fiord/ocean and do some salmon fishing. We had a coupon (from our coupon book – a must buy for any Alaska trip) that got us two for one, or 50% off – and off an already very respectful price. What a day! Aside from rising before oh 600 – friggin’ early, rough seas, aftermath of a storm, and fog and rain (so what do you want, it is a fishing day!), we had a great trip.  The owners of the operation homesteaded the property and started their little business, now shared with their son – who was our skipper. What a great seaman and fantastic fisherman.  Full of vim, vigor and love for fishing, augmented with oogles of enthusiasm.  We were lucky we were in an enclosed boat, most boats fishing were open. Here we are starting out to sea.

And the stout boat looked like this.

We really lucked out and got some fantastic action.  The salmon were silver salmon and so much fun to catch.  Took a little touch and feel to get used to the fishing but we did great.  The skipper let us fish for the boat, meaning if one person limited out they were still allowed to catch for others that didn’t. We had 7 people fishing plus the skipper and deck hand (who were constantly busy) and the boat caught 48 fish. I was lucky enough to catch 10 or 11 – what a day.  We could only keep our individual limit – which was 6 – but what a mess of salmon we took home. Below is our wonderful, energetic skipper, Chance.

And below before the boat’s catch, in a celebratory mood, Rich and Mur.

Seward was a great stop, how much fun. We had some gloomy weather, actually the norm for most of these sea ports, but were also blessed with some awesome clear days allowing us to see the complete grandeur of this magnificent place. We took a drive and then hike to Exit Glacier, another great drive, fantastic up close look at the glacier and most informative narration by a ranger.  Below a shot of Exit Glacier – next off to Homer, another great and interesting sea port.