Seward, AK to Girdwood, AK – 119 Miles
Not much to report today since most of it was back-tracking over roads traveled earlier in the week as we worked our way back up off the Kenai Peninsula. It rained again most of the night, but by morning the rain had quit and only the overcast skies remained. The low-hanging clouds over the lush green mountains around Seward actually create a very beautiful scene. As we awoke at our campground on the bay front, we could hear the small boats making their way down the bay for a day of fishing. We had a cup of coffee and perused our maps to see how far we might get today, knowing we’d have to spend most of the morning doing laundry before we left Seward.
Since I hadn’t had a wi-fi connection for a couple of days, we drove down into the “real” downtown to a small coffee house we’d seen while walking around yesterday to have a pastry and a hot chocolate for me and a latte for Jeanette while I used their wi-fi to upload the last two days’ blog posts. From there we went a couple of blocks up the road to a local laundromat to do our clothes. By then it was nearing lunchtime so we stopped at a little burger shack by the road and had a delicious burger and fries and reminisced over the ‘50s music they were playing. Great burger! I probably enjoyed it as much as the overpriced crab cakes we had for dinner at the fancy waterfront restaurant last night. If you’re ever in Seward, stop at Red’s on 3rd Street – it’s the place that has the converted school bus for inside seating.
As we left town, we detoured the eight miles or so up to the Exit Glacier, one of the smaller glaciers leading down from the Harding Ice Field that fills much of the center of the Kenai Peninsula. This 30 by 50 mile ice field is the largest remaining remnant of the great ice pack that covered much of North America ten to twenty thousand years ago. It feeds a myriad of glaciers, including many which come down and calve into the heads of the numerous fjords that give the National Park its name. It was these glaciers that in fact carved the fjords themselves. In addition there are tens of smaller land-locked glaciers that feed most of the rivers of the Kenai Peninsula. This particular glacier is called Exit Glacier because it was where the first documented crossing of the Harding Ice Field exited the field after crossing over from Homer in 1968 – not that long ago. The presentation by the park ranger we saw at the Sealife Center yesterday talked about the Exit Glacier and the ongoing studies that are taking place there. Driving into the glacier and later waking up the trail to the glacier overlook there are a number of signposts that give dates from the 1890’s that mark the location of the glacier face at that year, illustrating in a very graphic way the recession of the glacier over the past 100-plus years.
Leaving the glacier, it was a 90-mile backtrack up the Seward Highway to Girdwood where we’re spending the night tonight. It was one week ago, last Sunday, that we spent the night at the Crow Creek Mine, just a few miles up the valley from our present stop for night, which is the Alyeska Ski Resort. The resort allows overnight RV parking in their parking lot for only ten dollars. It’s dry camping, but at least it’s a nice, dry, level spot. It is strange, however, coming from Colorado to see a ski resort with a base elevation of just 250 feet and a peak elevation of 3900 feet. Our home in Denver is 1600 feet higher than the top of the lift here.
Tomorrow we head up the Glen Highway on our way to Valdez, the terminus of the Alaska Pipeline, situated on Prince William Sound, the site of the great Exxon Valdez oil spill.
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