Some days are just near perfect and this has been one. The skies were clear and the temperatures in the mid 70s. It is Sue’s birthday and we decided to stay in Seward for another day or two but to move downtown to the Seward City RV Park on the water in Resurrection Bay. The park does not accept reservations and is full this time of year. We expected to be parked without hookups but pulled in just as someone left a hookup site so we are set for the rest of our stay.
We also decided to celebrate with a six hour dinner cruise of the Kenai Fiords National Park.
Yesterday we finally were able to pick up an Alaska Tour Saver Book at the Safeway here in Seward. The book is full of 2-for the price of-1 coupons, including today’s tour.
We met Lee & Jean, a couple from Deland, Florida, yesterday who came up on the Alaska Marine Highway with Art & Jo Savoy. We all purchased the tour books and Lee & Jean decided to take the cruise as well so we had outstanding company all evening. After pulling out of Resurrection Bay here in Seward at 3:00PM we spent four and a half hours cruising outbound with stops to see eagles, sea otters, the endangered Steller sea lion, humpback and orca whales, penguin-like common Murre birds who can fly, porpoise, puffins, glaciers, and a black bear.
There is an active program out of Seward to determine why the Steller sea lion is rapidly becoming extinct. This project includes remote cameras installed on Cheval Island that facilitates daily counts and monitoring of the relatively large herd of sea lions living there. We had seen live shots from these cameras yesterday at the Alaska Sealife Center.
The humpback female whale and her calf were busily skimming for fish on the surface as we approached with a large flock of birds around for the leftovers. The humpback does not have teeth but use baleen to filter seawater for food.
The common murre is a penguin-like bird (no penguins in Alaska) who can fly but not steer very well because they have no tail feathers. Like the puffins we saw they appear to be working very hard to stay in the air!
The sea otter is a cute sea animal that was hunted to near extinction for their pelts, by the Russian hunters who were the first whites here, and later by Americans. They have been very slow to recover and their numbers are still very low.
The stop at the Alalik tidal glacier lasted 45 minutes with the boat engines shut down so that we could here the noise an active glacier makes as it grinds its way to the sea. The glacier was actively calving and very educational. We also enjoyed a grilled salmon dinner that was very good while under way and were being entertained by the wildlife guide who kept us on the watch for the next interesting sea creature or animal.
We got back to the docks at 9:30PM while it was still bright daylight and walked back to our motorhomes.
