Seward is a town on the Kenai Peninsula, about 9 hours south of Fairbanks. The Kenai is what comes to mind when people think about Alaska--towering mountains, lush forests, crystalline rivers. It's still pretty sparsely settled, but the Sourdough quirkiness prevails with little oddities like a water-powered axe grindstone open to the public in Moose Pass, and another tribute to the frankly disturbing Alaskan obsession with mannequins* a little further up the road where two fashionable plastic ladies wait for a bus that isn't coming. (No, I didn't get a picture, but I was driving so I have an excuse.)
Now, I love me some Fairbanks, but Seward is GORGEOUS. I'll stop talking for a minute and let you just enjoy some pictures.
The view from our yurt at about 3 a.m.
I think that's Mount Marathon on the right. On the 4th of July a bunch of crazy people run a 5k to the top of the mountain and back. The race begins downtown, and the halfway point is a stone
marker atop Mount Marathon, just shy of 3,000 feet above sea level, and a mile
and a half from the finish line. It
usually takes 30-40 minutes to get to the top and 10-15 minutes to get back
down to the finish line. According to
Wikipedia, the average speed uphill is 2 mph while the average speed downhill
is 12 mph, and “it is not uncommon for the racers who finish to cross the
finish line injured or bleeding and covered in mud." Local legend says it started as a bar
bet. Because Alaska.
Sunrise. Or maybe sunset. It's hard to tell.
Back to the story. We thought we'd save some money (hotels can easily run $200 a night for a single room) by renting a couple of yurts at the Seward Military Resort. $50 a night for two yurts? SOLD. We would rough it for a few nights if it meant we didn't have to sell a kidney. Anyway, we forgot one very important detail--we were in Alaska. Coastal Alaska. That first night it dropped to 41 degrees; the next night it was in the 30s. The older girls just snuggled down and grumbled a bit when they woke up absurdly early in the morning. Claudia, however... Well, 15-month-olds aren't the best at staying under blankets, so she wound up in my sleeping bag and made sure neither of us slept. The next day, Rick got us a propane heater for the yurt. (Yes, while writing this, it seems obvious that we should have taken notes after getting frozen out on our camping trip the week before. Shut up. We figured it out.)
Our adventure for the day was a wildlife cruise through Resurrection Bay. It was amazing. It started off with a humpback whale feeding just outside the docks. We saw several humpbacks, a gray whale, and some fin whales as well. There were otters, mountain goats, seals and sea-lions, puffins, Dall's porpoises and a billion freaking kittiwakes (think gulls).
Seward harbor.
This dog was just chilling and watching the tourists while his master worked on the boat.
A jellyfish the girls saw while we were boarding the boat.
This was a World War II outpost at the mouth of the bay.
Three fin whales.
The coveted humpback tail shot.
See the baby?
And, of course, one of many otters. They are little divas.
Of course, when you get up at 4 a.m.**, you fall asleep halfway through the cruise. At one point, all six kids were passed out (even Brenna "closed her eyes" for fifteen or twenty minutes near the end of the trip). Because I'm a good mom, I just pushed them under our table so they were out of the way.
They weren't really kidding.
After a much better night's sleep (thanks, Rick), we explored Seward. The Alaska Sea Life Center was pretty interesting. The touch-pool was my favorite part. Rick took advantage of the sea lion skeleton to lecture the girls on comparative skeletal anatomy (#medicdadproblems). To their credit, they were very good at pretending to be interested.
A crested puffin at the Sea Life Center. I love the eyebrows.
These are feeding barnacles. They were wicked cool to watch.
The underside and mouth of some kind of starfish. You'll be seeing this in your nightmares tonight.
Looking for mussels and otter. We found both.
After a quick walk on the rocks at low-tide and a stop at the playground, we went to Exit Glacier. It was a great little hike, and we all took a drink from the glacial run-off--all of us except for Bren, who was pretty sure the rest of us were going to get parasites and opted out. (We totally didn't, btw, so ha.)
The glacial runoff we drank from and totally didn't die. It tasted like minerals.
The foot of Exit Glacier.
Exit Glacier.
These are wear marks where the glacier had scraped past centuries ago.
The threenager quitting.
Dinner was at an unassuming but very Alaskan restaurant called The Exit Glacier Salmon Bake. It had giant bandsaw blades on the ceiling and signs stolen from state parks on the walls. I cannot tell you how much I enjoyed it. The food wasn't too bad, either. I can't speak to the beer.
"Cheap Beer & Lousy Food."
Day Three we picked up and drove to Valdez. It's about 8 hours from Seward on the Glenn and Richardson Highways. It's a pretty narrow road with some major elevation changes and we basically drive a bus, so there were a couple of curves where we held our breath, but the views were breathtaking. It was crazy how much the scenery changed in just 400 miles. It's also crazy remote. How remote? Remote enough that some rest-stops charge you to use their bathrooms because they have to haul water to flush the toilets. Again, the Alaskan sense of humor peeks out at the most random times, such as the 12-foot-high mailbox with "Air Mail" scrawled on the side. And, again, I was driving, so there is unfortunately no picture.
*Preface to the next run of pictures: All of these were taken in an 8-hour span from Seward to Valdez. Just keep that in mind.*
Three guesses why.
Matanuska Glacier on the Glen Highway.
This is near the rest area where the bathrooms had no doors of any kind. I can only assume the bears are grateful. There are also forty miles of trails up here. Rick, being crazy, actually thinks it would be fun.
By Worthington Glacier outside of Valdez.
Coming out of Thompson Pass into Valdez.
Bridal Veil Falls.
Valdez was just as stunning as Seward. There are waterfalls everywhere, and a partially finished railroad tunnel that was abandoned after a gunfight between rival railroad companies. Valdez is the snowiest city in Alaska, averaging 300 inches of snow a year. It is also TINY. We were able to walk from our rented camper trailer all around town.
A little free library on the docks.
Coolest restaurant name ever.
Mine.
No adventures, we just stayed the night and drove out the next day. We will go back again. Anyway, we took a quick break at Worthington Glacier and then drove home. I will never forget how incredibly high that road felt. It wasn't crazy steep or had a lot of shifts, but almost the entire 6 hours home it felt like we were driving on a mountain ridge, the mountain peaks always about shoulder-high. It was a pretty uneventful drive. After the dramatic landscape in Valdez, straggly spruce and far-off mountains got commonplace pretty quickly. Summit Lake was neat--it was still mostly frozen over, even in the beginning of June. The Trans-Alaska Pipeline paralleled the road for a while. Of course, we also got to see a couple of moose, including a mama and her baby at a mountain pond.
*Again, I'd like to emphasize that the following pictures, unless otherwise noted, were taken all within another 7 hour span from Valdez to Fairbanks.*
Horsetail Falls.
The railroad tunnel I told you about.
Worthington Glacier again.
About the midpoint of the trip.
Not the world's best picture, but that's Mama moose's butt in the center, and the dark spot to the left is her unbelievably cute and teeny calf.
Summit Lake. Yes, this is in June.
There were multiple informational boards randomly placed along the Richardson Highway. They were very neat. Now if only ADOT would put more rest areas with bathrooms, it'd be perfect. (Seriously. #tiredofgoinginthetrees)
This pipeline runs from Valdez, past Fairbanks, all the way to Prudhoe Bay and Deadhorse on the Arctic Ocean.
These last pictures are from Fairbanks, to provide contrast to the previous photos.
This should give you some idea of the scale of Alaska. Each color is one separate full day of driving.
5 days, 1,274 miles and 23 hours of driving later, it was good to be home. It was a relief to have a couple of days to rest and wash laundry, because *ominous music* family was coming soon.
NEXT TIME: If it ain't broke, build something on the side of it.
*Seriously. There are just random mannequins, skeletons, and hodge-podge golems set up in the most bizarre places--people's gates, stop signs, around bends in remote roads... You don't see them every day, but it happens often enough that instead of squeaking "What the hell?" I'm now just like, "Huh. Not bad." and keep driving.
**Thanks, Alaska and your stupid midnight sun that screws up my kids' Circadian rhythm...even if it is really convenient to be able to see during late-night bathroom runs.
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