Seward, AK
First, an addendum to yesterday’s post. I was too hasty to judge Seward by what I perceived to be its main street. We just didn’t drive down far enough to get out of the cruise ship tourist center to see the real main street, which is several blocks south of cruise ship central. Down by the Alaska Sealife Center, a modern aquarium and sea life research facility, is a charming typical main street America town center. Sure, there are a few touristy shops and galleries, but this is the real “downtown” for the locals. But I’m getting ahead of myself, so let’s go back to 5:30 am when our alarm went off to awaken us for our wildlife and glacier mini-cruise.
Seward is the headquarters for the Kenai Fjords National Park, which is known for its ice fields and glaciers, so our main goal in including it in itinerary was to take one of the day-trip cruises to see the glaciers, whales, and other marine wildlife. As soon as we got into town, we stopped and booked a cruise for this morning. But as we opened the shades in the motorhome we thought, oh no, the cruise will surely be cancelled. The sky was completely overcast and we were socked in with fog and misty rain. I turned on the NOAA weather radio and they were forecasting a front to come through, with winds up to 40 knots offshore and seas to eight feet – not pleasant conditions for whale watching and glacier gazing. But as we ate breakfast, the fog seemed to be lifting, so we figured there had to be some hope for the day. So down to the dock for a 7:30 check-in and 8:00 am departure we went.
We had selected a company called Kenai Fjords Tours, and our boat was the Coastal Explorer, a 97-foot twin diesel motor vessel with two viewing decks and comfortable inside seating for those wimps who didn’t want to experience the real adventure of the wind in their face. We headed south down Resurrection Bay toward the Gulf of Alaska, first stopping at a remote island resort owned by the tour company to pick up a couple of additional passengers. Shortly thereafter we saw our first whales, a humpback mom and calf. We shadowed them for several minutes as they cruised along the shoreline of one of the many islands at the mouth of Resurrection Bay. In this same area we saw harbor seals, sea lions, and many species of birds that one never sees along more southerly shores. We also saw a couple of bald eagles.
After the whale sighting we turned west, toward the next major fjord and the Holgate Glacier. We were chased by pods of small dolphins as we rounded the point leading into the fjord. Being a small ship, we were able to creep up to within a couple of hundred yards of the face of the glacier, a mass of jagged blue ice a hundred or more feet tall. Small chunks of ice were continuously calving from the glacier face, and the cove was filled with mini-icebergs. We could hear the ice cracking like rifle shots and booming like thunder as the massive pressure of the river of ice slowly forced its way to the sea, inch by inch. The captain patiently waited to see if we might be able to see a major ice-fall, but we had to be content with the minor chunks that fell from time to time.
After leaving the glacier, our course took us back east over open water to a couple of steep, rocky islands to see the bird rookeries. Along the way we spotted one gray whale, which rolled on the surface a couple of times as it spouted but never breached.
Approaching the islands with their steep, vertical rock faces plunging right down to the lapping waves, we were treated to a scene right out of a National Geographic special. Thousands of birds – puffins, cormorants, murrels, several species of gulls, and others which I can’t remember rested on every nook and ledge of the cliff faces. They were constantly launching themselves from the roosts, wheeling about overhead, and diving back to their narrow perches. And on the rocks below were more sea lions and harbor seals.
Once we passed the islands and transited along the shores of the mainland, we saw several mountain goats on the cliffs above, and another bald eagle nest, this one with a juvenile perched on the branch just outside the nest while a parent watched from a nearby tree. To top it all off after a long six hours, we finally saw a sea otter on our way back to the dock.
Since it was still only mid-afternoon when we came ashore, we drove down to the aforementioned Alaska Sealife Center where we spent a couple of hours viewing exhibits, watching life fish and seals in aquarium ponds with above- and below-water viewing opportunities, and listing to a brief presentation about the glacier studies in the National Park by one of the park rangers. That’s when we discovered the real downtown Seward. We then attended 5:30 Mass at Sacred Heart Catholic Church, a small but very beautiful church near the downtown area. After Mass we went to dinner at a nice seafood restaurant back up in the tourist area of town. By then we were ready to call it a day, and a great one it was.
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