Seward Military Resort
Seward City Campground
August 8, 2017
We have been amazed by many things while exploring here in Alaska, but today just exceeded all our exceptions!
We booked a 9 hour sightseeing boat ride out of Seward that took us out of Resurrection Bay, into the Gulf of Alaska, ending up at the Northwestern Fjord, ending at the North Western Glacier. There were only 40 passengers on this cruise, which made it real easy to move around as the boat has a capacity of 140 people. The waters in Resurrection Bay were fairly calm as we headed out to sea.
Seward with a population of about 2800 people, is a port city in southern Alaska, set on an inlet on the Kenai Peninsula. We love the Kenai Peninsula, by the way…. In fact we have lived on the Kenai for about 6 weeks and don’t want to leave here. We know once we leave Seward, we begin heading “out” of Alaska on a 4000 mile journey to New Mexico. While that in itself is an awesome anticipated journey, we still want to stay in this beautiful part of our great country. But we know the good weather will soon turn …. Sorry, I digressed.
Seward is a gateway to Kenai Fjords National Park, where glaciers flow from the Harding Icefield into coastal fjords. Surrounded by peaks, the fjords are a whale and porpoise habitat. The city’s Alaska SeaLife Center has seals and puffins, and fishing boats fill Seward Harbor. Mile 0 of the historic Iditarod Trail is at Seward.
Unlike some other sea port towns we have been to with cruise ships, we really like Seward. It is very picturesque, with the narrow Bay surrounded by mountains, with bowl glaciers sitting between the mountains. The business district is kind of divided into two parts. The area where the cruise ship is docked and a couple of miles to the south the old, small, and mostly refurbished downtown area.
We hoped this cruise will reveal not only great glacier views but also that of sea life. We have only seen whales from a distance on other cruises, so with a cruise lasting 9 hours on the water our chances are much better.
Once out of Resurrection Bay, the seas of the Gulf of Alaska swelled to just 5-6 feet and choppy but not too bad. I made sure not eat a burrito for breakfast, plus I took a Dramamine pill just in case.
Just as we are leaving the harbor we see a Sea Otter eating and enjoying himself. Some trivia: Sea Otters eat huge amounts of seafood. Sea otters are covered with very thick fur, a 100,000 hairs per square inch, and they divide their days between grooming their fur and eating. They live from 10 to 20 years.
Our first wildlife sighting was a group of Harbor seals sunning themselves on the rocks. Some of them were a bit skiddish but the old pros just looked at us and went back to sleep.
Harbor seals eat fish, and you’ll see them swimming gracefully in the water. On land, it’s a different story. They’re really too fish-like to be able to maneuver around like most other mammals. So when they’re out of the water, they tend to stay in groups for their protection. Tidewater glaciers calve icebergs into the water, which then serve as pupping and molting habitat for some of the harbor seals in Alaska.
Harbor seals are found on icebergs in June when they give birth, and in August when they molt.
Then we came upon some Stellar Sea Lions. Stellar Sea Lions,….They tend to be big and brown — whereas Harbor seals are black or gray. Sea lions’ long flippers give them some mobility on land. And they’re a lot bigger than a seal. A Harbor seal only weighs a couple of hundred pounds, but a big sea lion can weigh over a thousand pounds. Some of the sea lions are marked to show what rookery they belong to. A rookery is an outcropping of rocks where they mate and raise their young. Then they move to a more protected area.
We traveled to Spire Cove and saw a tremendous amount of Puffins and Kittiwakes. It is amazing how the birds roost on tiny slivers of rocks and have their young there.
As we continued onward the Captain got a report of Humpback whale sighting not too far away from where we were.
Seeing a “blow” of a whale is exciting. You don’t know if they are coming up and breach the water or if they are just cruising along the top feeding. When a group of gulls swarm on the water they are normally feeding on a group of krill fish. If you watch them, the birds will all of a sudden will fly off, a group of bubbles will form and you will see a whale coming up feeding.
Humpback whales travel from Hawaii to Alaska every spring. They come here to eat. Humpbacks are very large. They’re over 45 feet long and weigh 25 to 30 tons. They sometimes feed by blowing bubbles out and making a bubble “net” that traps their feed. They also rise to the surface with their jaw open to catch krill – small floating crustaceans.
Oh the pictures we took trying to get the elusive breach of the whale out of the water. Unfortunately the whales we saw were only skimming the surfacing so we got shots of fins and tails.
Our Captain was very knowledgeable and very in tune with making sure we saw and were able to photograph the wildlife. It helped that other cruise Captains radioed sightings.
About four hours into our trip we started thru Granite pass to the Northwestern Glacier. It is so hard to describe the beauty of the ice floating in the bay, looking like a white, gray and blue colored terrazzo floor.
Seeing the Harbor Seals laying on the larger pieces of icebergs, just chilling and looking at us was incredible. The water temperature is 33 degrees and you know the ice is cold (freezing) and the seals are unaffected by the temperatures. The air temperature is 34 degrees and we are bundled in our skull caps and gloves photographing everything.
The iconic pictures of glaciers is what we saw as we got closer and closer to the glacier. The wall of ice with its crevasses, deep narrow fissures that form when where the ice is under extra tension, the seracs, large free standing columns of glacial ice and the ogives, the black and white bands that form on the glacier after it falls over steep terrain. The Captain brought us up to about a quarter mile from the face and we idled and oohed and awed at the sight before us. You can feel the temperature change as we get closer and closer to the glacier. Thank God we are bundled up.
The highlight of any glacier viewing is seeing the calving of the glacier into the water. At first you hear what sounds like a shotgun blast, you scan the glacier and then see a chunk of the glacier fall into the water. What a rush. George got some fantastic video of this happening not once, not twice, not three times but four times. The Captain said this was the most active he had seen this glacier calve this season. We stayed for about an hour enjoying the wondrous sight before us.
Unfortunately we started heading back to Seward due to our time constraints. Some folks had to get back to their tour buses. The parting shots of the glacier I know are forever ingrained in us. The wonders of our earth were before us and they were spectacular.
We saw a few more seals on the way back and then we saw a Finn Whale skimming the surface. Finn whales are not seen too often in this area so we were lucky to see him.
All in all this was the best cruise we have been on during our trip here in Alaska. The amount of wildlife exceeded our expectations and we are two very happy campers!