Seward, AK

Tuesday, August 14, we doubled back up the western shore of the Kenai Peninsula and hooked up with the part of the Seward Highway that we hadn’t driven on previously. We turned south on the Seward Highway for a short easy drive to Seward. (Total of 170 miles). It was a lovely drive through glacial valleys and mountain peaks into the ice free port of Seward. It is located on one of the southern tips of the Kenai Peninsula and is known as a great fishing harbor and a cruise ship port.

The annual Silver Salmon Derby was going on (with prizes totaling $100,000), so we decided to dry camp on the beach near the boat harbor. We knew it would be crazy and crowded, but we decided to be where the action was. (We got what we expected.) We got a site right on the water’s edge where we could observe the boats coming and going, the fishing, and the wildlife. We had a sea otter and bald eagle going by our site every day.

Pris particularly enjoyed the Alaska Sealife Center. It was a state of the art facility that was built with money from the Exxon Valdez oil spill. The marine displays were absolutely outstanding with live seals, sea lions, fish, birds, octopus, a touch tank, etc. Exit glacier is located just a few miles out of town, so Pris drove out and took a ranger lead walk up to the glacier. (John was under the weather with a bad cold.) It’s the most accessible glacier in Alaska. You can walk right up to the glacier and actually reach out and touch it. There are signs posted along the road and trails showing how the glacier has retreated in recent years. It is sad to see all these glaciers retreating so rapidly. They really do see the effects of global warming here. Along with the changing temperatures, the wildlife and vegetation are also changing.

It’s big business here for tour boats to take people out to see the Kenai Fjords National Park. It has the largest ice field in North America and the tour boats visit some of the glaciers and also include wildlife viewing. We decided not to take the tour this time because we had already done it 8 yrs ago when we visited this area.

Even though Seward is a town of only several thousand people, it has lots of nice restaurants. We weren’t tired yet of eating halibut, so we enjoyed a great halibut dinner down on the waterfront, while we watched the fishing and fjord tour boats coming in. (To the Homer gang: they had blackened halibut cheeks on the menu.)

Pris visited the local historical museum and saw the destruction caused by the 1964 earthquake. The earthquake of magnitude 9.2 lasted some 4 minutes (that’s a lot of shaking). The earthquake and 40’ tsunami destroyed much of the town. This is just one of many towns that suffered massive destruction.

The weather in Seward was what we expected-cloudy, with drizzle, and temperatures in the 60’s. Like anywhere, the coastal weather is much different from that inland.