Take the midnight ferry...

For our return journey from Valdez, Matt and I decided that instead of driving the full 6.5 hours back or so, we would take the "shortcut" and take the ferry from Valdez to Whittier, which is southeast of Anchorage just a few miles from the end of Turnagain Arm, though it is on Prince William Sound. The map here should show it better. Valdez is in northeastern Prince William Sound and Whittier is on the northwestern end of Prince William Sound.

The ferry from Valdez to Whittier is part of the Alaska Marine Highway System. Many of the coastal cities in Alaska have no road connection or lie at the ends of roads, and getting from place to place can require major detours inland. Thus, the Alaska Marine Highway was born. It's an official part of the Alaska State Highway system and is even eligible for federal funding through the interstate highway system because one of its connections is at Bellingham, Washington. The Alaska Marine Highway System (I'm going to use the AMHS acronym from now on) is one of the primary modes of transportation between the many towns on the many islands in southeastern Alaska, places like Juneau, Sitka, Ketchikan and Skagway. However, there is a "cross-gulf" route that goes across from Juneau to ports on Prince William Sound like Valdez and Whittier that are connected to the mainland road system. This greatly simplifies travel to the rest of the state from Juneau, as it affords people with cars a way of getting them out of Juneau and to someplace else.

The ferry also has a western branch to its system, with departures from Homer on the Kenai Peninsula out to Kodiak Island (famous for its bears) and then west along the Alaska Peninsula through the Aleutian Islands to the cities of Unalaska/Dutch Harbour. When I ge the money one day and can come back up here, I would love to take the 3 day--2 night ferry ride out from Homer and Kodiak to Unalaska/Dutch Harbour, slowly cruising by all of those islands in the Aleutian Chain. It's expensive, but not moreso than any other method of travel. The cost to transport a single passenger out to Dutch Harbour is around $800 one way, which is about the cost of a plane ticket to go out there anyhow. I would plan to take the ferry out there and then drive back.

The city of Anchorage does not have immediate access to the AMHS, as they expect you to drive to Whittier or Homer to pick up the ferry. It's meant to be a supplement to the road system instead of an alternative, for the most part. However, we just wanted the experience of riding the ferry, so we went for it.

It cost us $89 per person to get passage across Prince William Sound, and another $105 to transport my car. Rather expensive, but we still wanted the experience. The cost and scheduling are the most prohibiting things to travelling on the AMHS.

Case in point, the only ferry that would allow vehicles on it was the 5 hour and 45 minute ferry that left Valdez at 8 in the morning. There was a second ferry leaving around noon that only took three and a half hours, but this "express" ferry didn't allow vehicles. Twice on my confirmation email and on the AMHS website appeared the line "FOR ALL FERRY PASSENGERS WITH VEHICLES TO/FROM WHITTIER--CHECK IN IS 3 HOURS PRIOR TO SCHEDULED DEPARTURE". This meant we had to check in at the ferry office by 5 AM. Early morning...
We got up at 4 in the morning and were at the ferry terminal by 5 AM (the terminal was only a five minute drive from our hotel). It was very foggy and rainy in Valdez, but still light out, since it's always light out up here. The lights in the ferry terminal, however, were all dark and a sign in the window said that they were closed. This bothered me. So we parked the car and I went up to read all the signs posted in the window. The largest was a schedule which listed all the departure times and the phrase "All departures must check in one hour prior to departure." One hour. We now had two hours of nothing to do. Very disappointing. So, Matt went back to sleep and I read for an hour and a half until someone showed up and the terminal opened. We went inside and picked up our tickets. We then got back in the car and were directed to a holding area by the ferry. There were already six vehicles there. I don't know how six vehicles got in ahead of us when we were sitting there in front of the terminal the whole time, but somehow they did.
In the photo above you can see the ferry on the other side of the covered sidewalk. This was in the holding area. We waited there for another half an hour before they finally began boarding the vehicles.
On board the ferry, we turned to the left which would be toward the aft of the ship. There's a wide deck inside, but we were told by the crew members there that I would have to back down into this narrow side "hallway" of sorts because my car was small enough. I don't like backing vehicles into anything, and everyone else somehow seems to be very good at it, but I'm not. They had people directing me though, and after watching these other drivers get yelled at and crew members running toward them yelling "NO! NO! STOP! STOP!" my nearly flawless parking job meant all the more to me. They packed the cars in very, very tight.
This is the first time since I've had this car that the car has been able to travel somewhere without having to do all the work in getting it there. I felt good about giving my car this break, particularly after all its been through in the past few months, even more so after driving down the McCarthy Road the day before. You're not allowed to access your vehicles during transit, so Matt and I collected a few things then climbed the stairs to the surprisingly lush passenger deck.
This was the foreward observation lounge. It reminded me of a theater, but with windows instead of a screen or stage. The chairs were all very plush and they all reclined--wide seats with plenty of legroom too. If only flying could be so comfortable. I enjoyed watching the rest of the vehicles go down the ramp into the ship for a while.
Somehow they got all the cars in and we shoved off right on time. The fog was very dense and it was pouring rain, so for the first hour or so we didn't see anything at all except white emptiness. The boat moves at around 14 knots, but the waters were also very calm and you could hardly feel that we were moving. A member of the US Forest Service was on our ferry, and the AMHS has Forest Service or National Park employees on many of their ships to act as guides and answer questions to take the pressure off the crew. Our guide set up a schedule where every hour he gave a 15 minute presentation on some aspect of our surroundings--be it glaciers, fishing, fox farming, or the city of Whittier. I found this to be very entertaining and fun. Our guide was an elderly man who lived in North Carolina, but came to Alaska with his wife every summer and the two of them did work for the Forest Service. Apparently there are a lot of people with summer jobs in Alaska...
After a time, the fog began to clear a little and we could see a bit of the surroundings. The ship's bell is out front and the label on it has our ship's name, the Aurora. I went outside to the outer deck that runs around the outside of the ship and was able to take in the misty scenery.
After a short while, we passed Bligh Reef, which was the actual location of the Exxon-Valdez oil spill. This is how it looked through the fog--all cleaned up now.
Soon we passed north of an island called Glacier Island and entered a strait between it and the northern shore of the Sound. Apparently the very large Colombia Glacier was to our north, but we couldn't see it through the fog. However, chunks of ice that had calved off the glacier recently started showing up all around.
Some of these icebergs came VERY close to the ship. I think everyone has ingrained in them he danger of icebergs to ships because of the whole Titanic thing. A lot of people on board the ship became very edgy as these bergs came in closer. The captain and our Forest Guide had to keep assuring people that everything was all right. I just went outside and took pictures.
The fog set in again, though, and we spent most of the rest of the trip lost in obscurity. There was a full-service, cafeteria-style galley behind the observation lounge and when they opened at noon for lunch Matt and I ate. I enjoyed a fish (cod) and chips meal that I didn't expect to find on this ride at all...I had no idea they had a cafeteria on these cruise ships. Very pleasant find.
On the way there, I noticed the familiar "Alaska Scenic Byway" sign that I had seen on so many roads in the state. Apparently, since the ferry system is funded as part of the state highway system, they can declare the ferry as a "Scenic Byway". Strangest scenic byway I've ever been on...
Anyhow, we were due to arrive in Whittier around 1:30, so we soon approached.
Whittier is a very funny kind of town. It's only a little over an hour from Anchorage by road, down past the end of Turnagain Arm. There's only a small strip of land separating the eastern end of Turnagain Arm from Prince William Sound. Once again, see the map I linked to above for better details. This strip of land is that low ridge of mountains you see behind Whittier. Without that strip of land, the entire Kenai Peninsula would instead be Kenai Island. Of course, as we can see here, Whittier is on the Prince William Sound side of these mountains and not on the Turnagain Arm side. In the 1940s, the US Military established the town of Whittier as a military outpost during World War II. Turnagain Arm and the Cook Inlet (where Anchorage is) freeze over during the winter, but Prince William Sound does not. Thus, the military wanted an ice-free part that was near Anchorage and thus Whittier was born. Of course, accessing Whittier from the Anchorage side was still a problem, so the Army Corps of Engineers constructed a 2.6 mile long tunnel under the mountains to connect Whittier with the rail line to Anchorage. More on that later.

In the photo above you can see two large buildings. The tall, lighter-colored one on the right is called the Begich Towers and 75% of Whittier's population of almost 200 live in that one building. The other 25% live in one of two other condominium/apartment buildings nearby. The other, lower, darker building on the left is called the Buckner Building, and at one time it was the largest building in Alaska. Back in the days when Whittier was a military town, the entire population lived in that one building. However, it was abandoned in the 1960s (before the 1964 earthquake, actually) and today no one knows who owns it. The building, though huge, is completely abandoned and condemned as well. People had planned to tear it down, but the building is full of asbestos, which complicates matters. The city of Whittier once offered to let Steven Spielberg blow it up for one of his movies, but he learned he would have to pay several millions of dollars to then clean it all up--which is difficult not just because of the asbestos, but also because the only way out of Whittier is by boat/barge or through the very narrow tunnel. So the building remains abandoned, but several local residents and many tourists still go into it to explore. I'm told the building smells horrendous, several of the lower floors are flooded, walls are caving in, ceilings are collapsing, and bears hibernate in the building for the winter. But people still go there...
We departed the ship and drove towards the tunnel out of Whittier. On the way, we passed this building that, on a sunny day, is what I have often thought one of the most picturesque buildings I've seen in Alaska. It's called The Inn at Whittier and is one of the few places with lodging that you can find in this 3-street town. I have wanted to eat at the restaurant for some time now, but I'm told it's very pricy. One day I'll find out. The rest of Whittier is the harbour with all of the small boats and a lot of the little shacks offering fishing, wildlife, and glacier tours. There are no real "shops" or anything else...in fact, there really isn't anything to do in Whittier unless you catch one of those cruises or the ferries there. Other people have insisted to me that there's "tons!" to do in Whittier, but all I can ever get them to remember is that they bought fudge at a shop there. It's a strange town.

We approached the tunnel, which was only upgraded to include car traffic about a decade ago. At 2.6 miles long, it is the longest car-train combined tunnel in the world, and the second longest automobile tunnel now that the Big Dig in Boston is complete. Normally, coming in from the Anchorage side, there is a toll of $12 round trip you have to pay to use the tunnel. There is no toll booth on the side leaving Whittier, so if you're like us and come in on the ferry, you don't have to pay anything, which I greatly enjoyed. Since the tunnel is only one lane wide, it alternates between which direction gets to go at which times. Every hour on the hour for the first 15 minutes of the hour, traffic out of Whittier is allowed to go through the tunnel. Then it shuts down and if there's a train, the train can go through. Then, at thirty past each hour, a 15 minute window opens for traffic going into Whittier from the Anchorage side. Thus, for whatever direction you're going, you really only have 15 minutes every hour when you can get through the tunnel. The tunnel also closes at 11 PM and I don't know when it opens in the morning...so it's conceivable that you can get stuck in Whittier. Anyhow, since we got in at 1:30, we were able to make the window that opened at 2 PM with no problem. First, we waited in a staging area until we were signaled to enter.
The zoom on my camera was zoomed in a bit much for this photo, but you can see the narrowness of the tunnel. They also send the cars in relatively tightly. It's rather dark in the tunnel, but my camera took in a lot of the light and made it look significantly brighter to give this image.
As you can see, the tunnel is only one-lane wide and the road bed is shared with the railroad tracks. As I said before, the tunnel is 2.6 miles long and the posted speed is 25 mph, so it takes about 10 minutes to get through it. It feels like an awfully long time, though, as you just keep plodding away through this tunnel. At four places along the tunnel's length are "safehouses" which are apparently rooms to the side of the tunnel. This is an earthquake prone area, and should such a disaster occur and the tunnel collapses, in theory people will be able to make it to one of these safehouses where we are told each one has enough food, oxygen and supplies to keep 50 people alive for 25 days. Apparently they think that rescuers will be able to get there in that length of time. The entire tunnel is kept well-ventilated by large turbines that look like jet engines periodically spaced on the ceiling. The walls for the most part are raw rockface. So we spent 10 minutes driving under the Chugach/Kenai Mountains and then popped out the other side.
And from there on it was the normal 1 hour drive or so back to Anchorage down the Seward Highway along the north shore of Turnagain Arm. So, in effect, I only had to drive for one hour and five minutes to get back from Valdez to Anchorage instead of driving for six and a half hours. We spent another five hours and 45 minutes in the meantime cruising across the sound, but it was well worth the time. I enjoyed this experience a lot. And so ended this weekend's trip.

I'll try to post again sometime later this week (maybe FINALLY describing the scenic goodness that is that Turnagain Arm drive), but this is my last full week in Alaska, as I'll be flying into Washington this weekend to make the presentation for my scholarship.

Update

Made it back from our travels today, but it's very late and we have to be up early again tomorrow, so the description of today's travels will have to wait a day...

The Rest of the Chugach

This weekend marks my last full weekend in Alaska before flying back to Washington to make the final presentation from my internship. It's amazing how quickly this summer has gone by. But, there's still the drive back to look forward to, and always another adventure after that. This weekend I decided to head back into eastern Alaska, an area I haven't really been to since driving up here. The basic destination for this trip is Valdez, at the end of both the Richardson Highway and the Trans-Alaska Pipeline. My friend Matt from up here wanted to accompany me on this trip, and everyone else had shifts to work or didn't want to tag along. So, I worked 10 hours per day for Monday through Thursday of this week to get my 40 hours in and was able to head out today.

We began by heading north on the Glenn Highway out of Anchorage like usual, only heading east through Palmer and staying on the Glenn Highway. When I drove in originally, I mentioned that the Matanuska Valley was extremely scenic, but had no pictures at the time to show of it. I took a few this time, but it was rather cloudy and the valley didn't have the magic spectacular-ness I remember from my first time there.
At the head of the valley is the Matanuska Glacier, one of the most accessible glaciers in Alaska. The state park service claims that there are only three glaciers accessible by road in Alaska-he Matanuska Glacier east of Palmer, the Worthington Glacier north of Valdez and the Exit Glacier north of Seward. We would get to see two of these today, starting with the Matanuska Glacier.
A lot of white water rafting trips start in the Matanuska River just below the end of the glacier. Apparently thousands of years ago the glacier used to extend all the way to Palmer, some 50 miles west of its current terminus, but over the years it has retreated. We didn't drive up to the glacier, but did stop at an overlook to take the photo above.

The road then continued out into the widening Copper River basin, between the Chugach Mountains to the south, the Talkeetna Mountains to the north, the Alaska Range to the northeast and the Wrangell Mountains to the east. The valley really widens out as you approach the city of Glennallen, which is some 150 miles from Anchorage. The area is covered in black spruce forests and dotted with glacial lakes.
Normally, on a clear day, you can see the massive, snow-covered volcanoes of the Wrangell Mountains on the eastern horizon. Alas, major wildfires in the Alaskan interior made it so hazy that we couldn't see any of those mountains. We turned south on the Richardson Highway to Valdez at the city of Glennallen, which has nothing really in it except for a few gas stations and some administrative buildings. The first part of this drive south was spend trying to see any of the Wrangell Mountains. All we could see was the entrance sign for Wrangell-Saint Elias National Park, the largest national park in the country.
Wrangell-Saint Elias National Park is mostly a wilderness park, and it covers almost the entire southeastern corner of the main body of the state--all the way down to near Yakutat. Tomorrow the plan is to drive down one of the roads into the park, so I'll leave further descriptions until then.
As we headed south, Matt got really hungry and wanted to stop some place to eat. Of course, this being the middle of nowhere in Alaska, there literally are no services whatsoever for the next hundred miles or so. However, there was a sign for a loop road through the small village of Copper Center, and a sign advertised food, so I hoped to find a gas station with a Subway or something in it for him. The road looped around, past some houses and a few small stores, but no real food places. It was looking like Matt was out of luck. As the road swung back around, there was a junction in it where the main road continued on it to the right, but there was a side road with a green sign and an arrow pointing down it that said "Loop Road". I knew that we were on the "Copper Center Loop Road" so I assumed I was supposed to go that way, though my major instinct was to continue along the road I was going down. So I took the "Loop Road" and immediately thought it was going to just dead end somewhere and I had taken a wrong turn. Then, we came around a corner and saw this:
A very random, well-kept "Roadhouse" motel/general store/restaurant with several people stopped there. I was immediately satisfied that this was a decent place and we went in and had lunch. I had a very good roast beef sandwich with potato salad on the side. Such a random place to stop...and to think I almost didn't take the "Loop Road". This Roadhouse seemed to attract more locals than tourists or travellers, which was also different from most of the Alaska places I had been to. We were amused to sit in their small dining area and overhear bits of conversation from the people in the kitchen or out in the lobby. Conversations like,
"Hey...do you know whose black dog that is?"
"What? No...I've never seen that dog before..."
"Well, he keeps trying to get in the back screen door."
"Do you have your paintball gun?"
"Sure do...but I don't...hey, wait a minute...didn't some lady say she had lost her dog earlier today?"
"Oh that's right...don't remember who, though. Go next door and ask Mrs. Winslow. She was in for breakfast this morning and might remember that."
"All right. I see her in her garden now..."

Seems like such a mundane conversation, but it only further emphasizes just how random stopping here was. We didn't know this place existed until we happened upon it, and the food was decent and we were entertained. Pleasant stop. They even had one of those old-fashioned type gas stations across the street that was actually a working gas station instead of a deserted, abandoned shell of a building.
After finishing lunch, we followed the "Loop Road" around, which rejoined with the "Copper Center Loop Road" and then headed back to the Richardson Highway. We continued south Valdez and entered the Chugach Mountains. Now, the far western edge of the Chugach Mountains is in Anchorage, so this is a very "familiar" range to us. This was the eastern part of the mountains, though, and I thought this part was a bit more scenic.
Many mountainous vistas.
Ironically, the Trans-Alaska Pipeline actually parallels the highway all the way into Valdez. However, it's almost entirely buried at this point, since they don't have to worry about melting permafrost this far south. After driving up for a ways, we came to a turnoff for the Worthington Glacier. We thought this was worth the stop and we turned off.
Though it's not the most spectacular glacier, it still is rather impressive. They have several short, paved trails leading to viewing platforms near the glacier's base. From there, several small footpaths are visible in the glacial till surrounding the glacier that head up to and along the glacier. Loose rocks made these trails a bit interesting to follow, but we decided to head up a short ways down one of the paths we could see to get a closer view.
You hear a lot about glacial moraines, particularly if you live in southeastern Wisconsin. For instance, Kettle Moraine State Park is full of hills that are the moraines left by the glaciers after the last ice age. Moraines are just hills of soil and gravel that build up on the edges of glaciers and then are left as the glacier retreated. The glaciers that covered Wisconsin were much, much more massive than our little Worthington Glacier here. However, the mechanics are the same, and there were several small moraine hills around the base of the glacier.
There were also a lot of streams all filled with meltwater rushing down around the glacier.
After a bit of exploring, we continued heading south on the Richardson Highway toward Valdez. We started climbing to Thompson Pass, the highest summit on the highway as it goes through the Chugach Range. While only half as high in altitude as the Atigun Pass through the Brooks Range up north, it's still a decently tall pass at over 2,000 feet. This location is also one of the snowiest places in the United States during the winter.
The pipeline also crosses this pass (though it is underground). From here, it's all downhill to the ocean, so the oil in the pipe is just carried by gravity all the way to the end of the pipeline at the port of Valdez. We, however, decended a series of wide switchbacks along the road decending the other side of the pass. It was enough of an incline that I didn't have to use the accelerator on my car for a full five miles on the other side. You can see these odd, bent poles on both sides of the road. These are to guide snowplows that have to try and keep this road clear in the winter. The cross parts come all the way over the stripes on the edges of the roads so the snowplow drivers don't get too close to the edges.
At the base of the decent, we entered a river canyon called Keystone Canyon.
It reminded me a whole lot of the Big Thompson River Canyon in Colorado, the one that famously flooded in the 1970s. It was just the road and this raging river with steep canyon walls on either side.
The canyon only lasted a few miles, but it was fun to drive in and there were several waterfalls coming down the canyon walls. However, the road soon began winding down towards Valdez. A few miles further and we could see the massive Alyeska Pipeline facility that marked then end of the Trans-Alaska Pipeline. We couldn't get up there because there were security gates. However, you can see all the big storage tanks where they store the oil until tanker ships can come and pick it up.
Of course, many people remember the Exxon-Valdez Oil Spill in 1989. Yes--the Valdez part of that ship's name comes from this port city--Valdez. The actual oil spill itself occured just a little ways from Valdez out in Prince William Sound. The area is as cleaned up as it can be now, but I'm told that for years you could still find oil slicks out on the sound from that disaster. Many of the beaches near here still have darker veins of sand where there's still oil mixed in that had washed ashore. Just some background there. This visit out here also means that I've been to both the beginning and the end of the Trans-Alaska Pipeline. It seems so familiar now...
We entered the city of Valdez and it was...a lot smaller than I had expected. It has a population of over 3,000 and is slightly larger than Seward. However, it's clear that this is a fishing and oil industry town and not as much of a tourist town. They had one street by their harbour with some touristy shops and tour places. More on that tomorrow, though. We ate dinner at a nearby restaurant that advertised the "best New York-style pizza in town". I don't think there was much competition, but the pizza was decent. We got to our Best Western hotel on the waterfront and are going to bed early for our trip back into the Wrangell-Saint Elias National Park tomorrow.

There be whales here!

This weekend one of our group up here wanted to take a cruise to see whales and this sounded like a fun idea. We found a three hour "wildlife" cruise out of the city of Seward for $60 per person. Not exactly the cheapest thing ever, but still not too bad. We decided to make a full day trip out of it and see the city of Seward, another popular Alaskan destination. So, this Saturday morning we headed out.

Seward is on the eastern shore of the Kenai Peninsula, so the first half our drive was retracing last weekend's drive down Turnagain Arm and through the Kenai Mountains on the Kenai Peninsula. This time, we took the road to Seward instead of Homer.
I really don't think that the drive down to Seward is that spectacular, but it is one of those "Alaska Scenic Byways," so I suppose it must be something scenic? You stay in the mountains and drive through a lot of trees, but I don't think that these mountains are as scenic as most of the other mountains in Alaska. But that's just me. One of the guys who was on this trip with me thought that the drive was spectacularly scenic. I suppose it all depends on the perspective. Since I was driving, I didn't take any pictures.

We got into Seward around 11 AM. It's only 130 miles from Anchorage to Seward and the speed limit is 55 or 65 for most of the way. Because of this, I don't understand why all of the guidebooks say that the drive is estimated to be around 3 hours. It took us 2 hours and 15 minutes. Seward has about 3700 people and sits at the end of Resurrection Bay, which is more off the Gulf of Alaska than off of Prince William Sound, but it's pretty darn close to Prince William Sound. The city is divided into two sections--the harbour tourist area and the downtown tourist area. We parked in the harbour tourist area, since that was where the cruise would depart, at a public use parking lot that charged $5 per day. The harbour area reminded me a lot of Homer, though without the quaintness of being out on a sand spit.
As you can see, the marine layer was in and the skies were all cloudy, but it was still rather warm with temperatures in the upper 60s. I will say that I did like Seward's Tsunami Evacuation Signs more than Homer's. Seward's signs include a stylized stick-figure man charging up a hillside ahead of the angry monster wave.
We ate lunch at a local restaurant, where for the first time I saw cod being served as a main fish dish in addition to halibut. Seward is still known as a major halibut fishing area, but apparently there are some kinds of Pacific cod in the nearby waters and I was able to enjoy a fish and chips lunch. We then walked the mile down the road to the downtown tourist area.
Downtown Seward is like that typical-looking "historic" downtown, with the quaint storefronts, advertising local products and souvenirs. I bought a shirt that says "Seward, Alaska" on it a one store. I am continually surprised at, with all of the local pride, how difficult it is at many of these gift shops to find shirts that have the name of the city on them. I can understand that it's probably more cost-effective for some huge screen printing shirt company in Anchorage to make a bunch of "Alaska" shirts and distribute them everywhere, but I want to wear a shirt that reflects the locality, the city I visited, as opposed to just the state. Anyhow, we also stopped at a local museum and spent about an hour looking at relics and photos describing the history of Seward.

I should point out that, had I not visited the (in my mind) somewhat similar tourist/fishing city of Homer the weekend before, I would have been a lot more excited about Seward--it's a very charming town with a rich history. Take, for example, this mountain right behind downtown.
This photo was taken earlier in the day when the clouds were still around. The mountain is called Mount Marathon, and every 4th of July they host a footrace up and down the mountain. This tradition started back in the early 1900s as a bar bet between two guys where one bet the other that he couldn't run to the top of Mount Marathon and back in less than an hour. So the best was taken and it ended up taking 1 hour and 3 minutes that first time for the runner to get to the top of the mountain and back. This race has expanded to include a whole field of competitors, who run, stumble, fall and crash their way up and down the mountain every Fourth of July. The current records are around 40 minutes now for the entire trip. It apparently takes the best runners 30 minutes to get up the mountain, but only 10 to get down--that's how fast they're moving. It's not uncommon for people to be all bruised and bloody at the end because of them falling on the way a few times. This is a major event in Seward every year and their Fourth of July celebrations as a whole draw hundreds of people every year. So, this is a town with a lot of life to it.

There are also more things to see in the area, like the Exit Glacier near town. This is a glacier in Kenai Fjords National Park that you can actually walk to the face of on a half-mile path from a parking area. There's also the Alaska Sea Life center, which is a large saltwater aquarium in downtown Seward that houses all the animals (except whales) you could find in the area, for those who don't want to go out on a cruise to spot them there. There are many unique restaurants and bars in the downtown area, and we didn't have a problem deciding on places to eat (for once). Seward is a good place to spend a day.

Anyhow, we had to be back at the docks by 3 PM to get on our cruise.
Our ship was called the "Orca Song," and at maximum it could hold about 75 people. On our cruise, there were maybe 40 some people, and they were a mix of elderly couples, some college students, families with small children...just about anyone. I really, really like being on boats. I know that one day I will own some sort of boat. I've always wanted to go out on a sailboat and learn to sail, but I've never really had the opportunity to do so, nor does anyone I know conveniently have a sailboat and know how to sail. That's something I really want to do, though. There were plenty of sailboats in the harbour, as well as many fishing boats and some yachts. I was delighted to see all these marine radars on the boats being used. But anyhow, the clouds were beginning to break and our cruise headed out on time at 3:30. We were soon literally leaving Seward in our wake and heading out into Resurrection Bay.
Apparently the bay is called Resurrection Bay because the Russians who first entered it did so on the Russian Orthodox Easter. We headed down the bay toward the open ocean rather quickly and soon saw our first wildlife--a pair of sea otters playing in the bay. Since I was on the top deck of the boat, and the otters were so small, it's difficult to make them out in the photo. But, they're there...
The otters were fun to watch for a few minutes, but then the boat continued on down the coast. Next we saw two bald eagles in the trees on the shore. You can see their white heads against the dark trees in this photo.
The boat then entered a small cove and we drove right up to the cliff face. The area was a major rookery for puffins and cormorants. I'm not sure which of those birds are in this photo, but you can see how many of them there are in the cracks in the rock. Though they look kind of like little penguins, they definitely are not. By this point, I was really wishing my camera had a better zoom ability.
We then headed out to the mouth of the bay where it meets the open Pacific Ocean. There was one small island left. At the top of this island is a small station that used to be a watch post during World War II when the military watched for any boats or submarines trying to enter Resurrection Bay.
At the base of this island was a large colony of Steller's Sea Lions. Steller's Sea Lions are an endangered species, so this was apparently a rare and treasurable photo opportunity. Our boat waited and watched off the shore of the island for a while, and you could hear the sea lions grunting and barking at one another. Very fun.
As you might be able to tell from the photos (aside from the fact that my camera cannot zoom at all), as we headed down the bay and out to the open ocean, we entered the marine layer again and the weather had turned cool and cloudy. We crossed the mouth of the bay and I was able to look out at the open Pacific Ocean. This is the first time I had ever been on a boat on the ocean, so it was an experience. Somewhere out there, 2500 miles away, is Hawaii...
At this point, our captain said that they had spotted two humpback whales up ahead, and the boat plowed in that direction. Everyone gathered at the bow of the boat to see what they could see. I went down to the lower deck to get a better view. We waited for several minutes, hoping the whales would come up again. And they did. First we could see the spray from their breathing...
We soon learned (from our captain) that it looked like we had found a mother humpback whale and her calf. We next saw the characteristic humped back of one of the whales.
Then the two whales resurfaced very near to the boat. The younger whale decided to roll on its back. You can see its white fin in this photo. The mother whale's back is also there.
Then the younger whale lifted its tail out of the water in a classic shot. This photo was a chance happening, but I'm glad I was able to get it.
After this dive, the whales disappeared for several minutes. We thought they had gone and the boat turned to head back into the bay. I happened to be on the ocean side of the boat for this, and everyone was congratulating everyone else on seeing the whales. Then, there was a huge explosion a little distance away...and the mother whale leaped completely out of the water...
Which was followed by a huge splash...
Just spectacular. There were cheers on board the boat. I'm so glad I was able to see that, and that the point of us going on this cruise was fulfilled. Having seen what we all came to see, the boat turned back to Seward, this time following the western shore of the bay. We passed near the Bear Glacier which "empties" into the bay.
As we approached Seward, it was nearly 6:00. Apparently that's the time when a lot of the fishing charters come in. I felt like we were leading a full fleet back into the harbour...
Seward harbour is very scenic. We followed a sailboat through the breakwater. Once again, the maze and tangle of masts and ropes on all the ships reminded me of those puzzles I used to put together. It also reminded me of a poem we had once read in English class in high school--the Idea of Order at Key West by Wallace Stevens. It includes a stanza that goes,

"...tell me, if you know,
Why, when the singing ended and we turned
Toward the town, tell why the glassy lights,
The lights in the fishing boats at anchor there,
As the night descended, tilting in the air,
Mastered the night and portioned out the sea,
Fixing emblazoned zones and fiery poles,
Arranging, deepening, enchanting night... "

This scene just reminded me of all that as we returned in the evening. It wasn't quite "night", but still...
Those few clouds were all that remained of the cloudiness that had been around all day. The sunshine was welcome after all those hours out on the ocean. We got back in at 6:30 and found an Italian restaurant for dinner. After that, I mailed another round of postcards and we drove back into Anchorage. The drive back was rather uneventful, as most of the other people slept on the way.