Julie was keeping the journal day-to-day, so it's told from her perspective. Pictures from this part of the trip can be found in the gallery.
Time to drive to Seward! We left right after breakfast and stopped along the way at several places to look at scenery and wildlife. We saw mountain goats, beluga whales, and some surfers.
Around lunchtime, we stopped by the town of Girdwood and the Alyeska Resort, the biggest ski area in Alaska. We had lunch at The Bake Shop, a diner on the resort property. It was quite crowded, and we waited a long time for our food to arrive — apparently, lots of people had driven out from Anchorage for a Father's Day brunch. Fortunately, we were able to get a table inside because it was a bit chilly outside. Ken's omlette was disappointingly small, but everyone else enjoyed their lunch. (Not being able to eat baked goods was starting to get annoying for Ken.) We watched the mountain bikers ride the lift up the mountain and bike back down. We could have ridden the tram, but it was foggy so we didn't.
After lunch, we walked the Byron Glacier Trail just outside of Whittier. It was a beautiful day for a walk, and not too buggy. Marilyn watched Ken, Mark, and I walk on the glacier for a few minutes. Ken & I weren't wearing our waterproof shoes, so we didn't want to go too far.
Afterwards, we continued to Seward for our condo at Alaska's Point of View, which overlooked the picturesque Resurrection Bay. The hotel pictures on the web site were clearly taken when the RV park in front of us was closed! The waterfront was destroyed in 1964 by the 9.2 magnitude earthquake, which caused a nearby landslide and local tsunami that hit Seward with 40 feet of water. The tsunami was triggered close enough that warning systems probably wouldn't have helped with it. (Later, our guides from our cruise boat sarcastically told us that the best tsunami warning system today is to check whether the RVs are floating!)
We went to the Railway Cantina for dinner. This looked like a Chipotle-esque place, and we had high hopes for a decent, relatively inexpensive meal. Marilyn, Mark, and I had halibut burritos, and Ken had a burrito "salad" with very little lettuce. The taste was fine but not enough food for Ken. At least it was fairly cheap. Next, we went to Safeway for breakfast food for the next few days. They had everything we needed, but they jacked up the prices for a lot of items if you didn't have their saver card.
We got up pretty early since we had to meet our small boat tour with Alaska Saltwater Lodge & Tours at 7:45am. This was the highlight of the trip! We were extremely lucky that the weather was beautiful for the first three-quarters of the trip, too. Our captain Bill and deckhand Devin were good friends and had been working together for years, and both enjoyed talking about Alaska with us.
Ken and Devin talked a lot about boats (both sailing and power) during the trip. The tour boat was brand new this year, and Devin had sold it to Bill. It was a 40-foot boat made completely of welded aluminum by a company in Port Townsend, Washington — and powered by two 300-horsepower outboards with a cruise speed of 35 knots and a maximum speed of almost 40 knots! We saw a whale and sea otter almost immediately in Resurrection Bay, which was really unusual. Then we headed out past Bear Glacier, then into Aialik Bay to go past Pedersen Glacier on the way to Aialik Glacier. We had a picnic lunch in Aialik Bay in front of the glacier and got to watch it calve several times.
We then went back out and around the Chiswell islands, then back to the far side of Resurrection Bay, Fox Island, and back to Seward. We saw a lot of animals including fin whales, humpback whales, sea otters, sea lions, seals, common murres, and kittiwakes. Ken and I enjoyed being on a boat again, and the scenery and feel of being close to the water reminded us of Mahina ... for example, making sure you held onto something as you moved around the boat. Ken and I (and especially Ken) spent more time outside than everyone else and enjoyed the visceral feel of being in a small boat on the water. It also helped that we were wearing long underwear so were generally pretty warm. I was very happy that nobody got seasick, too.
Julie spent probably an hour digging through Yelp to find a good restaurant for dinner. Unfortunately, every top-rated restaurant was closed for dinner or closed on Mondays, and every other restaurant had mixed reviews and generally said it was overpriced. We ended up going to the Chattermark Restaurant, which had pretty good burgers. Yes, it was overpriced at $15 per burger, but that was the going rate for burgers in Alaska so we were satisfied.
In the evening, Ken sent another email to Ryan at Target to see whether he had any other information about Ken's vacation-related questions from last week. We also spent some time talking about how Ken should handle things if he didn't get an answer that he liked.
Ken got a reply back from Ryan early in the morning. It wasn't an answer he was comfortable with, so he sent out an email composed the night before, basically turning down Target's offer.
It was raining when we got up on Monday morning, so we decided to try some indoor things for the morning. We visited the Alaska SeaLife Center. Julie enjoyed watching the seals and sea lions swim around, and we got to see a baby walrus in the quarantine area. It had hopped onto a gold mining barge near Nome and eventually found by the crew who notified the SeaLife Center. The volunteers would have to cuddle with it 24 hours a day for months because it's usually with its mother for a long time.
We went back to Chattermark for lunch, where last night's waiter immediately recognized us. After lunch, it was still raining, so we went to the local Seward Museum to check out their displays and watch a movie.
In the meantime, Ryan from Target left Ken a voicemail. Everyone else went into the museum while Ken called Ryan back. Ken stood outside the museum (under an overhang to stay out of the rain), and talked to Ryan for about 15 minutes. In the end, Ken agreed to go forward with his scheduled call with Brandon at 6:00am on Wednesday.
The museum is housed in the city library. The library building was pretty unusual — colored a sort of metallic, iridescent purple. The museum had a lot of photos of the 1964 earthquake and articles about the Mount Marathon Race, where people race straight up, then straight down, a 3000 foot mountain. The current record is 41 minutes. Yikes! It started as a bet between men about 100 years ago. We also saw a great film about the Iditarod Historic Trail, which runs from Seward to Nome and was the inspiration for the current Iditarod Race that runs from Anchorage to Nome every year.
By now, the rain had cleared up, so we decided to go for a walk to Exit Glacier, which is near Seward. It was about a mile walk to the glacier with some fairly steep elevation changes, but Marilyn made it. The glacier has receded significantly ... they had markers for prior locations of the glacier, and they hadn't yet extended the trail to where the glacier is now.
We had dinner at Woody's Thai restaurant (named after Woody the big sea lion bull at the SeaLife center), which was well-rated on Yelp. The food was fine but nothing special.
Ken got up at 5:45am for his scheduled 6:00am call with Brandon. He got dressed, grabbed a Larabar, and went to sit outside in the car so he wouldn't disturb everyone else. Unfortunately, the phone call didn't happen. Ken called once at 6:00am, left a voicemail at 6:05am, and sat in the car waiting for a call until around 6:30pm. Not a good way to start the day.
Everyone else woke up about 7am, so we got on the road at 8am and made the 9:30am tunnel to Whittier. Whittier was created in World War II as a secret deep-water port in case Seward was attacked by the Japanese. The army blasted a 2.5 mile one-lane tunnel through the mountains to connect it with the railroad. The tunnel was opened to car traffic in 2000, and you drive in a single lane on top of the train tracks. So, you have to time your travel correctly because it's only open for cars about 15 minutes an hour each direction. We were in Whittier super early ... and learned there's not much to do there. It's kind of a sad little town with a bunch of tour operators near the waterfront and fairly large industrial / oil depot further up. The town's 180 year-round residents all live in a 15 story tower in the back of the town, presumably above the tsunami line.
We picked up our tickets to the 26 Glacier Cruise at 10:30am and then learned that we could only board the boat at 11:45am for a 12:30pm departure. So, more time to kill. We had passed the closed Wild Catch restaurant earlier, but now it was open, so we had coffee and good reindeer chili. Marilyn and I had to wait for our decaf coffee because they typically don't have anyone order it.
Since I had booked the 26 Glacier Cruise in January, we got fantastic seats - upper deck, right at the bow of the boat by the front windows. So, we could see as well as the people who were standing outside. We had a meal of soup and salad (OK but could have been bigger) while traveling to several glaciers. We went through Esther Passage and got a good look at Harvard and Yale glaciers from a distance, then went to Surprise Glacier and spent some time up close to it there while it calved. We also stopped by Barry Glacier. Overall, we enjoyed this cruise too, and remarked at the contrasts with this one and the small boat tour. The catamaran was amazingly smooth — we were traveling at 34 knots and you could hardly tell the boat was moving.
We continued our trip to Anchorage, got dinner at the Villa Nova Italian restaurant, then went onto the Long House Alaskan Hotel, a dumpy hotel by the airport. Marilyn asked for a 2nd hand towel for the room, and the desk clerk told her they didn't have any more towels because they had all been stolen. The only good thing about the hotel was that it was next to the Lake Spenard portion of the Lake Hood Seaplane Base, so we wandered over there to look at the planes. This is the busiest seaplane base in the world, and a sign we saw says that there is free 72-hour parking for anyone who lands (and it only costs $10/night after that).