41 - Saturday, July 7, 2018, Seward, AK; 4th of July; Boat Tour

Adam, the doggies and I have been enjoying Seward alot. They have a wonderful 4th celebration. They shoot off fireworks at 12am, (yeah, midnight, so very, very late at night on the 3rd) July 4th. It's still light out but getting a little dark. You can still see the fireworks. Photographing them isn't too hard since it's still light. We got up and dragged out our chairs to watch. Kind of surreal, Seward at midnight. We're still in the by-the-hour parking lot, paying $20/24hrs with lots of like-minded neighbors.

On the day of the 4th, Adam the doggies and I walked the .75 mile or so to the little downtown area.
There were a number of different heats for the Mt. Marathon race. It was being video'd for TV. You can see by the clothes everyone is wearing, it's warm & sunny.

Mt. Marathon in the background

Liam really wants to be a sled dog

Below is the story of the 1964 earthquake and subsequent tsunami. Wiped out the whole waterfront. That's why they decided to make the whole waterfront a campground. Yeah, they realized that building again would be taking an unnecessary risk. Instead, they put in the campground. Low cost to build, easy to evacuate and re-build if necessary. Plus, Seward has become a local favorite place for Alaskans to hangout and camp.

Thanks to the local Catholic Church of the Sacred Heart, we dined on their delicious BBQ chicken. Great deal, 1/2 chicken cooked perfectly, a roll, corn and macaroni salad all for $12.

The next day, July 5th, Adam and I went on a 5 hour Kenai Fjords boat tour. It left from the waterfront a few hundred yards from where we are parked.

That's a bald eagle hanging out

Steller Sea Lions sunbathing

The water is very deep right up to the shore. In this case, right up to the cliff face. The boat captain is demonstrating how close he can go with the boat. The Kenai Fjords are 400 - 600 feet deep!

We saw 4 or 5 hump back whales. Unfortunately, they were too small for my amateur camera. We saw lots of puffins and sea otters too.

Bear Glacier in the Kenai Fjords National Park below is the view from our tour boat

A not very close video of humpback whale.

Another humpback whale, look for the tale

This is footage of Orca. According to the boat captain, they were exhibiting hunting behavior. Supposedly we were extremely lucky to see these killer whales.

Again, I apologize for the poor resolution and shaky hand.

We were close enough for great viewing onboard but not for my camera lens. When we saw the orca, we could see them clearly below the surface swimming since we were wearing polarized sunglasses. Unfortunately the camera was unable to pick up the underwater stuff.

Pretty cool to see all of this. If you're in Seward, AK, I'd highly recommend one of these boat tours.

Yesterday, July 6th, we decided to drive the 8 miles to see Exit glacier. It was named this way because it was used to "exit" the Harding Ice field by sightseers and researchers. It was quick and beautiful drive into the Chugach mountains. I stayed in the RV with the doggies and Adam did the hike up to see the glacier up close. Hopefully, I can get him to write a blog entry about it. It's one of the few places where there is a road close to a glacier making it a relatively easy hike to see it.

By the way, I looked up the definition of glacier:

glacier [gley-sher] noun

an extended mass of ice formed from snow falling and accumulating over the years and moving very slowly, either descending from high mountains, as in valley glaciers, or moving outward from centers of accumulation, as in continental glaciers.

The next day, we found an incredible RV spot right on the waterfront AND we're the last RV so no neighbors on one side. Yay! Still same price, $20/night. No hook-ups though. That's ok, our solar is keeping up well. We can drive the few hundred yards for water and sewer every other day or so, no problem. We have a little strip of rocky beach between us and the ocean/inlet. There seem to be 2 bald eagles AND 2 golden eagles that like to hang out along the water in front of us. We also see many sea otters and seals too. The golden eagles are so big, they make the bald eagles look a little small. There is a little fresh water creek that empties into the sea very close to us as well. Local fishermen are over there a lot, fishing for salmon. Apparently though, the big "salmon run" hasn't started yet. We've seen quite a few lucky fishermen catching impressive salmon over there already.

What a nice spot we have. The marina entrance is right in front of us so I can watch the steady stream of boats coming and going. Plus, for Adam, there's a little airport right behind the marina also with a constant stream of small planes and helicopters coming and going. Needless to say, we both love it here.