The Famed Alaska Railroad Brings Us To Seward...

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 45^th 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.

Summer has arrived in Alaska!

Ok, back to Alaska and my adventures therein.  Since it has not only warmed up and snow melted, but things are starting to green-up, I have already gotten out on several hikes.  I haven't brought my camera on each hike, but I'll try to be better about that so I can better document my adventures. Here are two recent hikes I went on... the first is near the Glen Alps trail head... a great "easy" trail due east of Anchorage.  This hike was May 16th.

The second hike is one that is also in the Chugach Mountains (and Chugach State Park)... this one is the Turnagain Arm Trail, and it's a few miles south of Anchorage.  It has been pretty windy in the afternoons through Turnagain Arm, so we weren't sure how windy our trail was going to be.  It turned out to be breezy but very comfortable overall.  It sprinkled on us throughout the hike (which was from about 8:30pm to 10:30pm... with plenty of daylight), even though there was blue sky above us.  The showers were more over the mountains... but the wind carried the raindrops to where we were.

 We saw one couple on the trail, and they told us that they saw a female black bear and her cubs about a half mile up the trail.  We proceeded carefully with bear spray in hand and talking... you see, we both wanted to see a bear, but we didn't necessarily need to SCARE a bear.  Especially one with cubs.  Well, we saw some very fresh scat along the trail, and saw some other indications that the bears had moved on down the hill.  We never did spot a bear during our hike, fortunately and unfortunately. :) 

Anyway, here are some pictures from that hike.  This hike was May 22nd.



I bet this would be a great trail to snowshoe also... I'll have to remember that for next winter!



The mountains on the west side of Turnagain Arm

 

Another view of the same area... closer to sunset (probably 10:15pm or so)




There are some peeks at mountain views along the way... so pretty!

 

A view looking southwest from Potter Marsh

 
There were a couple great little waterfalls along the way... we even had a nice, refreshing drink from one of them! Gotta love glacier water. 

There was a great rainbow over the hills to the east as we drove to the hiking spot... and it was still around when we were driving home so we decided to stop and get a couple pictures of it.  I didn't use all the preferred camera equipment to get an awesome shot, but it is a rainbow photo nonetheless.  This photo was taken from Potter Marsh... just a couple miles north of our trail head.

Many, many more hikes are to come... along with many other Alaska outdoor adventures this summer.  I can't wait to experience it... AND write about it!

A side trip from Alaska... kind of...

I'd like to take a moment to make a post about trains.  My father, an eternal child, is building a train layout in his basement.  He says it's for the grandchildren (especially the grandsons), but I know there's an element of returning to his own childhood in there too. :)

It's not all done yet, but there's already great progress.  Most of the trains, track, and extra elements are cleaned up and refurbished Lionel pieces from a long... long time ago.  Well, actually I don't know exactly when they are from, but they're not new.  It's great to see my dad get into a hobby like this again.  He has talked about it for many years, and now he gets to enjoy designing the layout, cleaning the different parts and pieces, and building it all.  In his words, it's not about getting it done, it's about the process of building, and that has been a lot of fun.  Here are some pictures of the progress as I saw it when I was visiting at the end of April.

Part of the layout....

The OTHER part of the train layout.

The control panel (not everything is there... but you get the idea)

The BIG picture!

New additions to the train collection... the Alaska Railroad!

Another view of the layout (to the right of the control panel)

This one shoots missiles

Shoveling ice into the ice car...

Another Alaska Railroad car... this one exemplifying the awesome customer service that still exists all over Alaska.

Loading culvert pipes...



Another view of the icing station... loading ice into the train car.

 I know there is more progress to be made, but knowing all the layout building from scratch, electrical planning and wiring that needed to be done, and meticulous cleaning of every piece of this layout, I can already appreciate how much has been accomplished.  Hopefully you can too!  It's much more fun to see it all in action though...