Seward: A Whale of a Good Time

Resurrection Bay at 10:30 pm

There is something very fishy about Seward, Alaska.

In fact, the whole Kenai Peninsula is mostly about fish. 

Seward is on the east side of the peninsula, approximately opposite Soldotna, which we drove back through to get over here from Homer.  Soldotna is still a madhouse, with fishermen and dip-netters everywhere.  The red salmon are still running there.  Seward is calm by contrast.  It is tiny town hemmed in between Resurrection Bay on one side and mountains close at hand on the other.

There seem to be a lot more boats here than people.  Boats of all sizes, ranging from a huge cruise ship, to tour boats, to skiffs.  Boats from all over.  We even saw one from Fairfax, Virginia, a suburb of Washington, D.C.   And one minnow from Seward that was taking its first cruise (below right).  Way to go Brad!

Halibut is the big deal here. 

People come here just for the Halibut.  These odd-looking, but tasty fish used to come out of the waters here in huge sizes—200 pounds was not uncommon.  Now they are much smaller. But still heavy compared to other fish.

The middle of the Kenai Peninsula is mostly ice.  The Harding Ice Field is a huge pack of ice that sits atop the interior mountains.  Fingers of this ice snake down canyons on both sides.  They move at glacial pace.  But they do move, imperceptibly. As more ice gets deposited at the top, its incredible weight pushes down on its lower tenticles, causing them to inch toward the sea. 

We hike to Exit Glacier

The first day we were here, Jack Stayton suggested we take a stroll up to Exit Glacier, the only one you don’t need a boat to visit.  I asked if he knew the Exit entrance.  He did.  It is near our campground just north of town.  We found a paved walk heading up the hill past the National Park hut.  We figured it would be an easy walk.  I should have been suspicious when Gayle decided not to come along. It got harder when we had to scramble up a rocky path.  But sure enough, there was a glacier there. One of many in this area, as it turned out.

Didn't Gilligan Take a 7 1/2 Hour Cruise?

Against my better judgment, we decided to join Jack and Gayle on a 7 ½ hour cruise to view the bigger glaciers down south where they meet the Gulf of Alaska. I needn’t have worried about getting seasick, you could have waterskied the whole trip.  But if you had, you might have been eaten by a whale. Just kidding.  More on whales coming up.

We saw the Bear Glacier, the Holgate Glacier, and the Pedersen Glacier, but the kicker was the Aialik Glacier. Aialik is an Indian word meaning, “A very big, blue glacier.” The governor of the Territory of Alaska had earlier offered to name it for President Warren Harding, but Harding declined. They eventually named the whole ice field after him.  It is huge.  As was Harding.

That's our boat, at right.

The first thing we noticed about Aialik Glacier (above and below) is that glaciers this size are chilly. As we got close we found the breeze coming down off this huge ice flow was not unlike the air you find in your fridge at home. Or freezer. The second thing we noticed was that pieces of the wall of ice were falling off into the sea. 

Photo by Gayle Stayton

Big chunks of ice came crashing down.  Others floated past us, and close to the glacier the water was like an ice slush with big chunks in it. 

The seals reclining on the chunks and slush (left) didn’t seem to notice the cold.  They looked as warm and comfy as tourists sunning themselves along Waikiki Beach.  I didn’t notice until I was examining my photos on the computer later, but there were people in kayaks in among the seals in that frigid slush. Brrrr.

The enterprising tour company,  ever alert to finding new ways to separate you from your money, came up with one I thought was truly novel.  They were selling glacier margaritas.  They  fished a big chunk of glacier ice out of the water (right) and used it to make frozen margaritas, calling them “the most ancient drink you will ever have.”  I suppose they meant that this ice had formed hundreds or even thousands of years earlier.  It takes that long to get from the top of the ice field to the bottom of a glacier.  They were forgetting that the water we had brought with us in bottles was much older than that, and had probably passed through a dinosaur a million years ago.  It is all salesmanship.  On this ship, anyway.

As we motored out into the Gulf of Alaska we went past lots of islands, which seemed alive with birds, otters, seals and other wildlife. 

The otters were floating around on their backs (right).  

The seals were doing what seals do best: Eat and rest (below). 

Puffins and gulls raise their families out here.

And we had some Dall’s porpoises racing alongside us for a while, playing in our bow wake.  Then came the whales.  Lots of whales.

Humpback whales would surface for a second spouting big clouds of water vapor as the exhaled.  Then they’d take a breath and slip back beneath the surface.  Hundreds of cameras would then be pointed where they disappeared, and all would then miss the next spout which would come somewhere else. 

Occasionally, we photographers would be rewarded with a piece of tail.  The Park Service naturalist doing commentary told us that seeing the whale’s tail as they dived meant they were going deep and would stay down for up to an hour.  But there were plenty more where they came from.  You just had to get lucky and have your camera focused on exactly the right spot when one surfaced.

Then we got the leaper.  He would streak to the surface at high speed and go straight up until more than half his length was above water.  Then he’d fall sideways back into the sea.  It seemed a game.  I was glad I was not in the small boat floating  next to him when he did this.  His game may have been to splash them. He made a very large splash coming down.

We even had one whale wave to us (right).  One flipper emerged from the water and gave a languid wave before disappearing again into the deep.  

Like idiots, we all waved back.

Here are a few more photos from the cruise:

There is a town here, too

There is a shopping area built up around the boat harbor.  They charge $10 to park there.  We prefer to shop where parking is free, so we went into the old town at the south end. 

We ate in a Greek restaurant called Apollo.  Nina, a friend from Tucson, had recommended it.  I had the best dinner yet on the whole trip. It was so good we went back the next day for lunch.

There are lots of shops here.  And a barber who advertised special rates for military, seniors and zombies.  So Jack and I got haircuts.  And two of three discounts.

There is also the Alaska Sea Life Center in Seward

We went there to see all the wildlife we had already seen two days before on our glacier cruise.  They had sea lions, puffins, and fish.  Lots of fish.

Ok, so I'm not big on science centers, having been intimately involved with two of them.  But this was very nice.  They had lots of things for kids to experience.  Like the tidewater animals you could touch.

Tomorrow we move on again, back to Portage to see if there are streams we can fish there.  Then we'll go on to Anchorage for a few days to see if Winnebago can figure out why our living room slide won't unlock and extend.

I'll do another edition from there.  We already have a bunch of photos taken at the Hood Seaplane Base, the world's busiest.  We will show you Anchorage soon.

After that we are headed to Valdez to find an Exxon station, then on to Skagway to see the Chilcoot Trail and Chilcoot Pass that my grandfather traveled in 1897 on his way to the Klondike.  

There is still lots of Alaska and Canada left to report to you.  So stay tuned.    This trip just gets better and better.

John and Marsha

(All photos copyright 2013 by John and Marsha Taylor)

Homer, Alaska: The Town With Spit

Day Sixty

The town of Homer is a homey sort of place that sits towards the south end of the Kenai Peninsula.  I think of it as the town with spit.  A long spit of land sticks out from main part of town into Kachemak Bay.  The spit is loaded with tourist shops, charter boat offices, a boat harbor and about a thousand RVs.

Our RV is not one of them.  We are staying at Anchor Point, about 14 miles north of Homer.  Kyllonen RV park is a small place with a great view and an espresso shop.  My kind of place.  The nice lady who owns it put us on the bluff overlooking the ocean and an active volcano on the other side of the Cook Inlet.  They thoughtfully put the hookups on the wrong side so we could park facing the ocean instead of backing in.  Our motor home has its view out the front.  Anchor Point, by the way, has the most westerly highway in America.  Sorry, Kauai, you folks are easterners to us. Or maybe you just don’t have a highway.

The volcano we see out our front window is called Redoubt.  I have no doubt that it is perfectly safe.  It hasn’t erupted since way back in…lessee…2009.  We had experienced a 4.6 scale quake last week while in Soldotna, but didn’t notice.  This area is so geologically active, they got hundreds of aftershocks. We didn’t notice those, either. Marsha points out that 4.6 is the same size earthquake that hit her hometown of Logan, Utah back in 1962.  It scattered bricks from the front walls of business out across Main Street. That was the very day I arrived in Logan for college. We wondered at the time what quaint Mormon custom required scattering bricks out in the street. Now I know.

But back to Alaska: Just to the left of Redoubt there is another volcano, even bigger (photo at right).  It is called Mount Iliamna, which is an Indian word meaning “Dang, that’s a big volcano.” [See my explanation of translating Indian names in our blog on Denali].  Iliamna is straight across the straights from Anchor Point and has a summit over 10,000 feet high. It does frequent earthquakes but no eruptions. We hope.

Thursday, the morning after we were here, our neighbor and friend Jack Stayton (I’ve mentioned Jack and Gayle before; we first met them in Dawson, Yukon) called my cell to tell me there was a bull moose in a pond down the bluff in front of us. Sure enough, it was a moose.

The night before, we had driven down the lane to the ocean and saw a bald eagle take some food away from a flock of seagulls.  Then another bald eagle tried to steal the food from him in mid-air and the first eagle dropped it into the top of a tree.  Life is complicated for eagles, apparently. And for trees, as well.  I’m sure they are saying something like, “Look out!  Here come the eagles to dump more stinky fish on us.”

The next day Jack and I put on our waders, grabbed our fly rods and hiked across the meadow to the river to fish.  The meadow had been a fresh water bay a week or so ago, so with all that water the fireweed had already grown taller than we are.  We needed a machete to get through it (below).

We each caught one Dolly Varden.  It was probably the same fish caught twice.  It was tiny. Jack said that the day before people were catching king salmon in the same hole.  We got guppies.  Didn’t the same thing happen on the upper Kenai? Well, no. A three-pound fish is not a guppy. That's Jack below.

That night we grilled half of a salmon I had caught the day before. Marsha had found a salmon rub recipe in a tourist publication and we rubbed them and tossed those puppies on our gas infrared grill.  That was the best salmon I’ve ever eaten.  And certainly the freshest.  So that must be the key to the flavor. That and undercooking it.  This is sushi-grade fish.  We’ve seen people eat it raw.  So you don’t overcook it.  It was wonderful.

On Saturday the four of us went into Homer to the farmer’s market, where they actually had farm produce. Imagine that. Real farmers at a farmer’s market.  They also had marimbas.  A marimba band made up of adults and teens, hammering away on beautiful homemade marimbas.  Boy, they were terrific!  The Williwaw Marimba Band.  We’d been told that Homer was the place the hippies all went when they left the Haight-Ashbury in the seventies.  If that’s true, they’ve since reproduced and are now into the third or fourth generation. Hippies of all sizes and ages.  A fun place (when it isn’t snowing).

They grow vegetables in Alaska.  Honest.  Yes, the growing season is very short.  But during it they get 24 hours of daylight so the plants grow like crazy, reaching enormous sizes.  “No sir, those are not onions; they are radishes.”  Farming is done mostly up in the Matsu Valley, where we haven’t yet been, but Homer has farms, too. 

They grow a mean salsa here.  I bought a pint of salsa from a little Russian girl at the market.  I didn’t notice she was Russian because she had a jacket on over the distinctive dress of the Russian colony.  We later drove out East End Drive about 20 miles to the northeast and at the end we saw an onion-domed church in a village you can’t visit because it is on private land.  James Michener said that after the czar walked away from Alaska in the 1800s, leaving it U.S. territory with no law or government, most of the Russians who remained married into the native population and effectively disappeared as a people.  But here they are:  Speaking Russian, apparently, and wearing Russian peasant attire.  From their dress I first thought they were Amish or maybe polygamists. That they were Russians never occurred to me.  Before I could investigate this further,  my friend Gary solved the puzzle for me.  He sent me a long article from The Atlantic that explained that they are  "Members of the Old Believers--a Russian Orthodox sect that left the church in 1666, in the face of state-issued church reforms--traveled more than 20,000 miles over five centuries in the search for the perfect place to protect their traditions from outside influences."  

After the farmer’s market we went up to the new library and the annual art festival across the street.  Anywhere else it would be called a craft fair, but you get the idea. We sampled local foods---homemade tamales we got from some nice native ladies. Well, I should have ordered Halibut blubber or something else local.  Something they actually knew how to make.  But it is all fun.

Since we’ve been here we’ve visited art galleries and shops in Homer, did some more fishing, and taken a lot of pictures. Oh, yes, and we’ve seen something here we haven’t seen in the two months since leaving home:  a sunset. Well, almost a sunset.  The sun goes down behind Mt. Iliamna, then sort of slides north behind Mt. Redoubt before emerging again as a sunrise.  It never quite gets dark, but we do get beautiful sunset-like colors here. Over the weekend someone decided the almost-darkness was enough for fireworks. At midnight. At first we thought all the explosions were only something like a war starting. Nothing to go see.  But I went anyway, and took my camera.

This afternoon Marsha and I went back into Homer so she could look for fabric with which to make quilted wall hangings--fabrics with bears, fish, Fireweed, and other prints we don't see too often in Arizona.  

We found the lines too long in all the restaurants, so we ended up in a fish market, Coal Point Seafood Company.  There we sat at a counter (right) and each had a huge bowl of seafood chowder made with salmon, halibut, clams and other goodies pulled from the bay today.  It sure was good.  One of the most satisfying restaurant meals I think we've had in Alaska. It was too big to finish so we have leftovers.

On Wednesday we are leaving for the east side of the Kenai Peninsula and the town of Seward. It was named for Lincoln’s secretary of state who was reviled for buying the whole of Alaska from the czar for a handful of beads and other trinkets. Oh.  Marsha says that was Manhattan Island; Seward used money.  But not much of it.  Not as much value as they now take out of the ground here in oil every day.  So Mr. Seward was like the guy who bought Apple stock back in the 80s. Which back then didn't seem like a good idea, either.

Anyway, there is a lot more of Alaska to tell you about.  And more of Canada beyond that.  So stay tuned!

John and Marsha Taylor

(All photos copyrighted 2013 by John B. Taylor)