Seward by the Sea

We  will be staying in the beautiful Kenai Pennisula for the next few weeks or so. Our next stop is Seward, which is the gateway to the world famous Keani Fjords National Park. As we did our previous trip we stayed at one of the City Parks which are all right on Resurrection Bay. We first stayed at Marathon Campground where we got one of the last front row sites.

Cruise ships are here most days, arriving early morning, usually before we are up. Then they leave early evening.

We were close enough to walk into the quaint town to walk around at the shops and where we ate out a few times. We ate at ChinookWaterfront several times. The first time we had the best Mac and Cheese we ever had. It had smoked scallops, pancetta, red onions and several types of cheese. Sooo Goood!!! We had steamed clams the second time and shared a fish plate with salmon, crab,etc. Not quite as good but still yummy.

Some of the many murals in Seward

Below is the library. We sat in the car in front to take advantage of their wifi as we couldn't get any reception from our site.

One day we drove out to Exit Glacier for a hike. Exit Glacier is a glacier derived from the Harding Icefield. There are a few different trails, some that go all the way to the base of the Glacier. We took one that didn't go that far but with a good view. There were signs on the way with dates showing how far the Glacier went that particular year. It has receded quite a bit.

1. 1. I took a few pictures fronm the road as well. It is pretty dramatic with all the cloud coverage.

   

   
   

   

   
   

   

   
   

   After a few days we moved down to another city camping spot down near the Alaska Sea Center. It is a small campground with only five sites but again right on the water. 

One day a gentleman was cleaning some fish he caught. He was throwing the inners out to the birds which ended up attracting a bald eagle. Pretty awesome!!

This Eagle got some fish for dinner

The next post will have our visit to the Aquarium as well as an interesting dinner cruise to Fox Island.

Native Art and a Walk on the Wildside

While staying at the lovely Williwaw Campground we ventured out a few times/ We went back to Anchorage to visit the Alaska Native Heritage Center. We had visited the excellent  Anchorage Museum which had a large collection of Native Art plus contempory art of Alaska. on our previous trip. The Heritage Center is  also very interesting. . First we checked out the Welcome House. It has the Hall of Cultures with displays of the five cultural groups. There were also local artists showing and selling their work.

There is also a cafe and gift shop. We bought a couple of mugs with a native design on them and had a salmon sandwich at the cafe. There was also what was called the Gathering Place which was an open auditorium where there are scheduled dances and music as well as story telling. There is also a theater though we didn't see any of the films while we were there.

Outdoors there are the village sites representing 11 major cultural groups of Alaskan Natives. We took a tour of the sites which are arranged around a lale.

Another day we made a return trip to the Alaska Wildlife Conservation Center which is a short drive from the campground. The Center is a non profit wildlife refusge located on a 200 acre preserve. It is dedicated to wildlife conservation and education. It is also a place for wounded, sick and injured animals from the wild. They also have reintroucted elk to the wild and are now in the midst of a project to reintroduce the wood bison to the wild as well. It is a great way to see some of the wildlife of Alaska in a close up and safe environment.

There was a large raised walkway where you could observe bears below. Some of the animals we saw we wood bison, caribou, bears, musk ox, moose and a sleeping lynx. Then there were these two wild animals below. Pretty scary.

We had a great time. We were at Williwaw over a quiet fourth of July. We were going to go into Anchorage. However we changed our minds for a few reasons. As it never really gets dark, they have the fireworks at midnight and it is an hours drive from there back to our campground. Also on the third we had gone into anchorage and the traffic was terrible. It seemed that everyone in Anchorage was leaving town. We thought after our trip to the Native Art center it would have died down but it was still backed up and took an extra hour or more to get back. We found out later that part of the problem was a bad accident that caused the huge delays. Anyway we had a great time in the area and are now headed to Seward and the rest of the Kenai Pennisula.

Near Anchorage at 2 Great Spots, Bird Creek and Williwaw Campground

We needed to find a spot for the fourth of July weekend. Bird Creek Campground is part of the Chugach State Park and another nice spot near the Turagain Arm which has very radical tides. We got there at the beginning of the week to start off the month of July. It is also only about 15 or 20 minutes from Anchorage.

We went into Anchorage for some shopping. I got a new Kindle Paperwhite which is much easier to read on with the backlit screen. It sometimes is just too dark in our MH and hard to read. My computer also died. It won't charge and the Geek Squad at Best Buy said the charger worked and so probably the battery or the motherboard. As the computer was a low priced one it would cost more to fix than getting a new one. I found one I liked but they only had the display one. The person who helped us checked and saw there were four at their other store. She was going to call and have one put on hold but never did. When we went to the other store the so called salesperson said they didn't sell it at all and said they didn't have anything like that at all. He didn't even try to sell us something different. What a bad salesperson. Anyway I am holding off for now. I can use my phone for emails and looking at blogs,news etc. Plus we aren't getting internet or wifi much anyway.  We also stopped at a place near our campground and got some smoked fish. Joe got some reindeer sausage which he liked a lot. We also decided to check out one of our favorite campsites from our last Alaska trips, Wiliwaw Campground near Portage. This was in the middle of the week and we thought they would be full as the 4th is this weekend. However, there were a lot of sites open and we decided to move there the next day and spent a week there. Williwaw is a beautiful campground with sites like we have been staying at surrounded by trees. However, this government campground comes with its own glacier. Wow. It doesn't have hookups but only 9 dollars a night. What a bargin. So the next day we moved over to Williwaw.  The weather is not great. Rain of course. It's Alaska baby. But its beautiful so no complaints.

There are a number of good trails and we did a little hiking between the rain drops.

We can see this waterfall from our site

Middke Glacier seen from our campground

One of the other Glaciers in this area.

We had taken one of the boat cruises from Whittier, on our last trip,  which is just a few miles from our campsite. We will probably just take the one in Valdez this time around. We did make a return trip to the Alaska  Wildlife Conservation Center. It is a great place to see wildlife. It is also a refuge for sick, wounded and orphaned animals. They do a wonderful job of this. I'll have pictures on that and some of the Native American Hertiage Site we went to in Anchorage.