Friday, June 18, we left Homer and traveled about 170 miles to Seward. Every travel day in Alaska takes us over beautiful drives and each one is a little different. On this day the weather was gray, misty and foggy but inspite of that it was pretty seeing clouds draped across the mountains. When we got to Seward we went to the city campground that faces Resurrection Bay. We had planned to dry camp here so we were able to get 2 sites next to one another facing the bay.
There were several bald eagles sitting on the rocks next to the water.
I had made a pot of vegetable soup Thursday evening in preparation for this day. Larry and Joanne came over with a nice bottle of wine and we all had a nice late lunch. After lunch we road around Seward stopping at the grocery store then we went to a car wash. Larry, Joanne and I were sitting in the car waiting for Tom to get change in order to wash the car when I spied something in the wooded area by the car wash. It was a moose cow with 2 calves.
She didn't seem to be bothered by the activities in the area as a young man was drying his truck of almost next to the moose family. Our generator decided that now that it was really needed to not run. Tom changed the air filter and the fuel filter, but that did not seem to help. We were able to heat the motorhome with the furnace until bedtime. A cruise ship was in port when we got to Seward but then about 9 pm we watched it sail out Resurrection Bay.
Saturday, June 19, we had arranged to take a Kenai Fjord all day cruise which left the dock at 10am. We had a real nice day even with cloudy, foggy weather. Sea otters, stellar sea lions,
harbor seals and lots of birds were seen.
A fin whale was seen but we only saw the spouts of water and Tom saw a small area of his back. We went to the Aialik Glacier and observed several small episodes of calving.
We were served a lunch on the boat but then we stopped at Fox Island for a baked Salmon and prime rib dinner.
By 6:15 we were back in Seward. The city campground was fairly full this weekend as there are many Alaskans here for Juneteenth, a summer soltis celebration.
Sunday, June 20, we were up early. The 2 sites, which had electric and water hook-ups, beside us were vacated early and we not having a generator that was working felt we needed to move to a site with electric. (When we had been here 8 years ago there were very few sites with hook-ups but now there was a large number of sites that had hook-ups.) Larry and Joanne wanted to move also so we hurriedly moved our units to these vacated sites and life was a little more comfortable. The sun was shining brightly and the mountains that had been shrouded in clouds the past 2 days were now visible and just beautiful with their snow tops. Exit Glacier is a land glacier near Seward that we went to. We walked about a mile to the glacier.
It was breezy and the air coming off the glacier was rather chilly. Returning to Seward, we stopped at a bayside restaurant, Ray's, for a Father's Day lunch.
It was a nice atmosphere watching the marina traffic and viewing the mountains across the bay. Back at the campground the sun was so inviting that we sat along the edge of the bay with hooded jackets(the breeze was cool)drinking a little wine watching sea otters float along on their backs. A coal freighter came into the bay and tied up at the coal dock. A cruise ship had come into port during the overnight and then left this evening.
While sitting outside Tom and Larry spied groups of people across the bay standing out in the water. So curiosity got the better of us and we all got in the car and drove over to the area to see these folks standing out in the water fishing for salmon.
Monday, June 21, we left Seward traveling back to Anchorage and the east through the town of Palmer. It was sunny and warm until we got east of Palmer and the we had clouds and some rain. We passed Matanuska Glacier that is visible from the road and the large area of glacial run off in the valley below.
We stopped at a campground a little past the glacier, Grand View Campground.
A nice place that even has a restaurant so we had a delicious Aloha Alaska pizza, Canadian bacon and pineapple, for dinner. After dinner Larry, Joanne, Tom and I along with Travis and Sadie walked across a trail that had a good view of the Matanuska Glacier and Lion's Head mountain.
