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.

Leg 8 Trapper Creek/Anchorage

From Denali we drove south to Trapper Creek, a stop on the way to Anchorage.  We stayed at the Trapper Creek Inn, a combination Hotel, CG, gas station, and general store.  Actually this combination set up is not at all uncommon in Alaska. Trapper Creek is a small, little town, but a great stop. We decided to reconnoiter the local fishing and were directed to Peter’s Creek in Petersville, a really small town way off the beaten track. Took a local road which soon turned into a dirt road out into some beautiful country (picture above from same road). Stopped at a country store to get some local info – OMG you should have seen this place. The old boy had a little bit of everything but sure didn’t turn his inventory – nor clean it – which is how I came to the no turn deduction.

 

Note Christmas decorations still up in July. Then here are a couple of shots down the road from Rich’s truck.

I loved this sign (little blurry, went by pretty fast).

 

 

 

The other thing to note about this sign is the bullet holes! Virtually every sign in Alaska is shot up, usually a bunch.

 

 

After about 20 miles we reached the river and found a community of local campers, tents or RVs – nothing newer than 15 years old. We could feel the eyeballs on us – kind of eerie.  We were clearly outsiders (something that apparently doesn’t happen much here).  When we came back the next day and spent some time with these folks we were quickly adopted and became “neighbors”!

This is the one lane bridge if we had wished to continue further on the road, except it was supposed to be very rough and for high clearance 4 wheel vehicles only. Sure was pretty though.

This is part of the river we will be fishing.  We did come back the next day and fish the river.  We were fishing for Grayling or Rainbow – which we did not catch, but both Rich and Jeff hooked into king salmons.  Unfortunately the river was closed to kings and we did not have a stamp – still pretty exciting.

That evening at camped I noticed a guy with an ukulele.  I approached him and we ended up playing together for his friends.  Interesting group of kids.  They graduate college and then this company hires them for the summer to go to Alaska and work/travel.  They get minimum pay, do things like pull weeds, work on trails, etc. and in return get to travel all over Alaska. Pretty interesting to try and find music appealing to 20 year olds and this old 65 year old fart.  Worked really well though and we all had great fun.

Next off to the BIG city of Anchorage.  Rich and Joan wanted to stay in the city, the rest of us, partly due to poor reviews of in city sites, chose to stay at a beautiful state park on Eagle River.  The CG was about 20 minutes out of Anchorage but seemed miles away from any city.  Beautiful forested setting, with access to the mighty glacial Eagle River.

And some rafters enjoyed shooting the rapids and continued on downstream.

All along the river was this great path, augmented with wooden trails where it was marshy.

We took a trip to near by Thunderbird Falls, located in a very lush forest.

Something that we saw a lot of were several varieties of mushrooms (indicating, of course, a very wet area).  Here is one interesting stand along our hike.

Thunderbird Falls.

The lushness of this forest was everywhere.

But lushness comes at a price, here is part of the trail showing how all that lushness came to be.

When we returned to camp, just before we entered the camp ground, who should greet us but the ever lovely Ms. Moose, dining at her “high tea time”.

Somewhere in this journal I have to enter mention of “Duck Farts”.  Duck Farts played an interesting and celebratory part of our trip.  Our good friends, the Wises, introduced us to Duck Farts, a drink invented in Seward, Alaska at the Yukon Bar (more on this interesting place when we get to Seward). We introduced same to the Walters and found many occasions to partake of this Alaskan concoction.  The drink is made by floating Kahlua, then Bailey’s Irish Cream and then a nice Bourbon of your choice on top. When properly made it looks something like this:

Other things in Anchorage. Our first, and so far only, tragic moment happened July 4th in the CG.  We were celebrating the 4th with a BBQ dinner, etc., when Susan tripped and fell and broke her hip.  We called 911 and she was rushed to the hospital and ended up needing a hip replacement.  Lucky we were near a big city and a great hospital.  Eventually Susan had to fly home to get care and Jeff rejoined us later.

We took a walk in Anchorage’s park along the bay, great park and walk, saw eagles and great shots of the city.

And the Anchorage skyline.

Also while in Anchorage we visited many local haunts, some fabulous meals and I had the opportunity to visit one of my previous business partners, a customer way up on my favorite customer list (for those that might know, Hasco – Mike Conniker and Rich Prasil – great folks – we talked business, Honeywell, politics, and fishing – very great time!). And finally, Anchorage has more float planes per capita than I think any other place in the world, so here is some fellow off, I’m hoping, to a favorite fish spot!

Next post will be Seward and Homer – great spots, stay tuned.