June 19, 2018

Accomplishments

It is still spitting rain this morning but the gales of yesterday have subsided and there are a few fishing boats moving around.  We pack slowly in the hopes that chances are the weather will get better before it gets worse.  The news this morning is full of the record breaking storms of yesterday and we don’t know if we should be proud or disappointed.  We will have a ferry ride across Prince William Sound at the end of our trip so, fingers crossed, we shall return.

After two days of unsuccessful attempts at activities we are determined to visit the Alaska Wildlife Conservation Center this morning.  Leaving Whittier, we wait a while at the tunnel but make it through at the 10:00 am release (their terminology). It takes about 15 minutes to get back to the Seward Highway and the AWCC and it is still spitting rain, but we have seen worse.  We are going to make this happen. We need to accomplish something

It actually turns out OK.  We spend a couple hours chatting with moose, reindeer, caribou, wolves, eagles, owls, black bears, buffalo, musk ox, and most impressively, brown bears.  Some of these are rescue animals and others are here to be representative of the local animal kingdom. The caribou enclosure is next to the brown bear enclosure and when the caribou are gathered near the fence we see one of the bears on the other side looking hungrily through the fence. Food porn for the bear.

It’s a couple hour drive down to Seward, our destination for the night. We stop at Moose Pass for lunch at a little local diner.  John get the Texas burger with jalapenos and Mary had chicken tenders with blue cheese dressing and perfect fries. On the way we passed the Summit Lake Lodge, a gorgeous property in the mountains and on a lake.  We had a spare day at the end of the trip that we booked in Soldotna (critiqued by our coach Marc) so we cancelled that and booked Summit Lake.  A better decision—thanks Marc.

Driving into Seward we finally got a look at the non-stormy picture book Alaska.  The snowy mountains cascading down to Resurrection Bay could have been the cover of an Alaskan tourist guide.  We are at the Hotel Seward, a historic property a block or so from the bay.  We have a corner room with water and mountain views, a fireplace and amenities we haven’t seen so far on the trip.  Very nice.

Our front desk person has recommended Chinook’s for dinner tonight.  It is on the small boat harbor about a mile from our central location. We opt for a seat at the bar when we get there with a nice view of the harbor.  Tim, our bartender, is from Mankato which leads to some in depth conversations about party schools and the Vikings Adam Theilen.  He spends ten months a year here and tries to find warm weather for the other two with an occasional stop back home.  Apparently because of ease of transportation Hawaii is a common destination for wandering Alaskans.  Mary had a salmon sampler which was salmon about 8 different ways and John had a king crab leg and salad.  Both excellent.

We leave a curtain open tonight so should we awake at an inconvenient hour we will be able to check out the midnight sun.  We are at the 19 hour and 21 minute daylight schedule and it won’t change much in the next couple days.  John woke at 3:50 and there was plenty of early morning light pouring in.  Sunrise was less than a half hour away.

Today’s News: A man in Eagle River was killed by a brown bear, a woman and her 5-year-old were swept away in a raging river, and another family was devastated because a river had rerouted itself and was now eroding their property.  All the news today is man vs. nature. Inhospitable.