2019, Our Year Traveling by Ship, Train, Plane, Car and Barge: Whittier/Cooper’s Landing/Seward-August 3-5

Here’s McKinley, he’s a wonderful travel company; not nearly as good as Lily, but he requires less care. He makes a lovely neck pillow too!!!

Whittier was established during WWII as an Army base. The military blasted a one way tunnel though this mountain. The lanes change directions on the half hour & it’s 2 1/2 miles long. (Tour buses get to go through first). They close it at night with gates to keep out the critters. So, if you are on the other side and don’t time it right, you are stuck in your car for the night. WOW!

Most full time people live in the condos close to shore. In the winter, kids can use a tunnel to get to their school adjacent to the condo high rise. This town has about 5 buildings, with a few deteriorating Army buildings. It’s surrounded by mountains and the bay. You fish, work for one of the shops/restaurants, teach or you assist the tourism industry.

We stopped at the Alaskan Wildlife Conservation Center;

a privately run center, where we can see rescued bears, elks, bison, porcupines, coyotes, moose, eagles and so forth. All are here due to life threatening injuries.

This little bear cub was sleeping in a tree moments earlier. “Not sure who was checking out who?”

We have about an hour bus ride to our first Alaskan hotel. Kenai Princess Lodge only has 86 rooms and the WiFi is only available in the lobby area.

They have shuttles to take you around the grounds because of being on the side of a mountain.

Our lodge is a log cabin that has two suites. After our balcony stateroom, our lodge room is incredibly spacious with a fireplace, separate bath and our own porch. It’s really cozy and warm enough no fire was needed.

Fireweed with our log cabin in the background

Loved our little porch where we could have a quiet drink and watch the others go by

This next view is from the Kenai Princess Lodge’s Rafter’s Bar, where we enjoyed drinks, lunch & a snack later on. We watched people in rafts floating by us. With strong binoculars you could see the mountain goats with their kids on the mountain across from ours.

The ride to Seward was very bumpy & windy, but once again the scenery was spectacular!. (It was surprising how good the highways are up here given their harsh winters .)

The tall stemmed pinkish purple fireweed was such a lush contrast with the various greens!!! (Since native times, the fireweed’s growth and death indicates the arrival of spring, and winter.)

Fortunately, we have brilliant sunshine today on our bus trip to Seward to get on a smaller boat to take us into

The Kenai Fjord National Park.

I know, you would think we had enough of boat rides???

Seward has a Mount Marathon Week, that doubles their normal 5,000 population. The race is on July 4th, each year. You can’t wear spiked shoes; otherwise, any clothes goes and you can chose your trail. Most chose the straight up one. (The best record so far is 42 minutes up and back.) How they can race up or down that vertical trail is beyond me??? They have judges at the top and bottom. (I’ll have to investigate this event to send the info to our former Spanish foreign exchange student, Asier. Now in his forties, he and his friend love running these mountain type races. UGH! )

As we come into Seward we can see cruise ships again in the bay. We pick up our boat in the small boat harbor here.

Our boat for today's ride

It was a beautiful harbor with a wide variety of boats

Our darling, professional captain who has been doing this job for app. 20 years plus...

We boarded the Glacier Explorer with Captain Sherry to explore this area. Seward’s waterfront was destroyed on Good Friday, March 27, 1964. A 9.2 magnitude earthquake shook for 5 1/2 minutes and produced a tsunami that brought in a 24’ tidal wave that took out all the waterfront industrial sites and created massive fires that destroyed the rest. By the next year, the town won a beautification award with their rebuilding. They rebuilt the town further in towards the mountain leaving a long, RV Park right on the waters edge. They have a 14’ or more tidal changes here.

We went through Resurrection Bay, the furtherest Northern ice free port. It was heavily fortified during WWII but never saw any action.

Sorry, I just don't get tired of them

At the southern tip of the bay, Cape Alalik we saw Fin Whales, the second largest; then the AK2 and the 88 Resident Orca families. (Many of them have been tagged, so they can be tracked; hence the names and numbers.)The female runs the family. The males only leave mom’s side to mate; then return to her. The resident orca’s hunting range is between 400-600 miles and the others swim much further. The resident orcas eat fish, while the transients eat seals and sharks.

Our first blow!!!

A fin whale first

Then the orca family

Love the perspective with the boat in the background

The family: male, female and baby orca

A bird Sanctuary on this lone island

The Hardy Ice fields up in Alalik Bay are about the size of Rhode Island. We kept passing through periods of sunshine, overcast and fog. With the fog hanging over the glaciers, it gives a real mystical, sublime effect.

Captain Sherry took us right up to Alalik Glacier, but she had to dodge the kayaks. The sunshine broke through as we arrived. There were harbor seals relaxing on the bigger icebergs besides the glacier. The glacier put on quite an active show for us with its calving large and smaller sections of ice.

Mike caught one calving which is why you see the mists

One of the first mates with a big chunk of ice that you could hold and photograph

We went by Bear Glacier which is formed from 3 glaciers coming together. Thankfully, we were well away from the big floating icebergs off it. Like Capt. Sherry said, “Cue the Titanic music!”

Captain Sherry found harbor seals sleeping on the rocks and was able to get us close to them. The seals looked like they were performing yoga on the rocks. Look at the almost white one hanging over the rock in the lower right corner of the photo.

The sea lions are bigger than the seals and mostly cinnamon in color. They are nocturnal, so they sleep on the rocks during the day. After they are born in June, the seal pups only stay with their mom for about 4 weeks.