My first visitors since I moved to Alaska were my parents, who came for about a week at the beginning of June. To help celebrate their 45th Anniversary gift, my sisters and I made a reservation for the Alaska Railroad train to Seward (on the southeastern side of the Kenai Peninsula, south of Anchorage). It’s a very scenic trip, complete with mountains, glaciers, rivers, flowers, and wildlife. We didn’t see any moose or bears, but we did see 2 eagles at their nest along the way.
Lupin...
AK Railroad Scenes from Mary-Beth Schreck on Vimeo.
After we got to Seward, we took a shuttle to Exit Glacier (not far from Seward) where we hiked right up to the glacier. That’s the closest I’ve ever been to a glacier… pretty neat! Then we had some awesome lunch at the Smoke Shack, which happened to be a few steps walk from our lodging for the night. We did some walking around Seward, checking out their quilt shop and stuff along the way.
We spotted this little guy coming into the harbor as we were walking back to our lodging after dinner. He was swimming over to the fish cleaning station at the harbor, and he got this nice big piece of salmon for dinner.
The small boat harbor in Seward...
Our lodging... which is right on the harbor.
On the second day (Friday), we went on a cruise around Resurrection Bay. The fog and rain moved in Thursday night, so the scenery wasn’t what it could have been, but it was still very interesting to see the cliffs and stuff we COULD see. And there was still plenty of wildlife out there for us… porpoises swimming alongside our boat a couple times, sea lions, puffins, and lots of other birds too.
See the 3 mountain goats on the cliffs? Two are easier to see than the 3rd... the 3rd is with the goat on the right and is a baby.
Lots of kittiwakes (like sea gulls) and sea lions at this spot...
A rainy day on Resurrection Bay... pretty common, actually.
