Alaska Part 4 - 17 to 19 July 2014

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SEWARD

We just loved Seward and our hotel which was situated on the harbour had gorgeous views over the mountain tops. Settled at the head of Resurrection Bay on the Kenai Peninsula, Seward with a population of about 2500 is one of Alaska’s oldest and most scenic communities and we could not agree more.



The historic downtown district was filled with quaint shops and art galleries, and of course the amazing boat harbour that is shared with humans and wildlife alike - so many bald eagles flying past us all the time. There was a free shuttle bus into town and the drivers were so happy and informative it was a pleasure to hop on board.



Located at the terminus of both the Alaska Railroad and the Seward Highway as well as a Port for many Cruises the town is ideally situated for those moving around the area. Overshadowing the town is Mount Marathon, the scene of one of Alaska’s most famous and challenging foot races. A friendly wager in 1909 resulted in this annual 3.1 mile run to the top of the 3022 foot peak - not for the feint hearted and definitely not for me!



Every morning we woke up and looked out of our window to the mountains and glaciers in the distance and in the harbour a new cruise boat would have arrived sometime the night before. There was only ever one boat and its passengers would have a day in Seward before departing in the early evening many taking trips out on Resurrection Bay to see the glaciers and bountiful wildlife or spend the day in Seward. Our boat should be arriving in a few days and we would be leaving on it……….



Every day we would also watch a variety of local and visiting fishermen bring in their catch of giant Halibut, Salmon, Lingcod, Yellow Eye and Rock Fish. This was displayed on the dock and photographs were taken of the fishermen with their catch. After this the captain of the boat would proceed to fillet the fish tossing all the inedible parts into a giant tank under the pier. I asked what happened to all of this and they said they took it out to sea and discarded it - keeping the harbour fresh and also keeping it from becoming inundated with flocks of large seagulls - we were surprised how low the numbers were considering all these easy pickings. Although some had figured out how to pinch a beakful or two without being detected!



After filleting, the catch is vacuum packed for the fisherman/client to take home - many have it shipped directly back to their front doors. Whilst others took the chilled catch home with them - some by plane (we often wondered what would happen if they had a big delay). One couple we met did this every year and it kept them well stocked with fish until they returned to fish again the following year - so it obviously worked for them giving them the double bonus of the enjoyment in catching the fish and then eating it for the rest of the year knowing exactly what they were putting on their plates……….



We took a six hour cruise from Seward Harbour with Kenai Fjords Tours to the Kenai Peninsula National Park - the ice age still lingers on the land all around here. There were several cruise operators but we had met a chap at the Native Heritage Centre in Anchorage who had worked for Kenai Fjords Tours and he thoroughly recommended them.



Nearly 40 glaciers flow from the massive Harding Icefield, Kenai Fjord’s crowning feature. We cruised past Bear Glacier, Holgate Glacier and also Aialik Glacier. They were all amazing but the Aialik Glacier was breathtaking, the boat came close enough to the glacier that we could hear the ice crashing into the water when it broke off from the glacier sides and slithered all the way down into the icy cold water before floating away - you are always dazzled by this unique spectacle.



Wildlife thrived in the icy waters and lush forests surrounded this vast expanse of ice. We saw so much wildlife including; dall porpoises, humpback whales, endangered stellar sea lions, harbour seals, sea otters, and an assortment of birds including horned and tufted puffins, common murre, rhinoceros auklet, kittiwakes and of course plenty of bald eagles. We also had friendly harbour porpoises breaking the waves in front of the boat. The grand finale though was a humpback whale mother with her calf breaching as it swam along beside her.



The crew stood off the edge of the boat and brought on board giant pieces of glacier ice and explained how the various colours showed the age of the ice. It took them a while to catch the ice and lift the heavy lump on board. It really was a memorable cruise and we sure would like to repeat this experience one day……….



In Seward town we took the free shuttle bus and visited Seward Library Museum which was located in a colourful building. This small museum was interesting with heaps of facts on local people and their lives. We particularly liked the stories of Alaska Nellie and Benny Benson - if you would like to know more about these amazing people then read below.



ALASKA NELLIE

Nellie was born on a farm in Missouri in 1873 and as a young child she always dreamed of going to Alaska. On her parents farm she learned how to trap and hunt and she left home in in 1901 heading for Alaska although she did not finally arrive in Seward until 1915, the year my father was born in Devizes, Wiltshire, UK. How different these two countries must have been then!



Construction of the Alaska Railroad had recently begun, and Nellie was the first woman to be awarded a lucrative roadhouse contract with the Alaska Engineering Commission. She was also a wildlife expert and trophy hunter and kept some of her ‘trophies’, including live bear cubs at her home. The homestead became a popular lodge due to Nellie's wildlife lectures and over time she became so famous that people sent her fan mail addressed quite simply to ‘Alaska Nellie, Alaska’ and the post office always managed to find her and deliver it to her door (a little different nowadays!) We saw the envelope of one of the letters she received at the museum.



Nellie and her husband also ran Mile 45 Roadhouse, a place she renamed Grandview. The name has outlasted the roadhouse itself, and that bend in the railroad is as beautiful as ever as we saw on our train journey to Seward mentioned above. Alaska Nellie later wrote about those times in her memoirs; ‘Grandview seemed the most appropriate name to me for Mile 45 being without paint with which to paint a sign, I found an old blue coat, which I washed and pressed, cut letters for the sign from it and sewed them to a stripof white oilcloth, this pennant was tacked to the front porch in front of the house. - Mile 45 was now Grandview.



Later Nellie had a roadhouse at another railroad stop on Kenai Lake, where she fed her guests fresh vegetables from the garden, fish that she'd pulled out of the Lake, with stacks of sourdough pancakes (they are still very popular in the area). Nellie was a packrat by nature, and she filled her rooms to overflowing with wildlife trophies, photographs, books, travel souvenirs, and other bits of natural and human history. Plenty of stories were attached to each item - tall tales as well as truths!Alaska Nellie's Wildlife Museum grew into such an attraction that the Alaska Railroad offered it as a tourism destination for travellers out of Seward.



In summers, Alaska Nellie tramped the bush on foot and in winters, she drove dogs. One winter, the mail carrier was overdue at the roadhouse. Nellie hooked up her own team and set out to find him in a blizzard. When she found the man nearly frozen, she brought him back to the roadhouse, warmed and fed him, then proceeded to deliver the mail to the train. For her heroic efforts, the town of Seward gifted her with a gold nugget necklace, which she treasured for the rest of her life.



Among the other items on display in Seward Museum was one of Nellie's hats, her marriage license to Bill Lawing, and several historic photos, including a 1943 photo of Nellie signing one of her books for a soldier. Bill Lawing died in 1936, leaving 63-year-old Nellie crippled by grief, but she continued running the roadhouse. The same year a documentary maker produced and narrated a nine-minute film titled ‘Land of Alaska Nellie.’ Friends urged Nellie to write her own life story, but upon completion she had difficulty finding a publisher. She stubbornly refused to make any changes to her manuscript not even one deletion - finally in May 1940 a Seattle firm published Nellie's autobiography entitled, Alaska Nellie.



Nellie died in 1956 and is buried next to her husband in Seward Cemetery. Our visit to the museum was made really interesting by reading about the fascinating life and times of this courageous pioneer woman.



BENNY BENSON



Another interesting fact we found out in the museum was about the design of the Alaskan Flag: More than 30 years before Alaska was to become a US State it was decided to have a competition amongst Alaskan schoolchildren to design a flag. The winner of the contest was a seventh grade student, thirteen year old John Bell (Benny) Benson from Chignik. He was living in an orphanage in Seward, the Jesse Lee Mission Home, following the death of his Aleut-Russian mother.



Benny’s design for the Alaska State Flag was adopted in 1927, it had a blue background to represent the sky and also the forget-me-not, an Alaskan flower. On that background were placed eight gold stars to represent the The Big Dipper or Great Bear, symbolising strength and the lone North Star for the future state of Alaska, the most northerly in the Union. For winning the competition Benny received a gold watch that was engraved with the flag design and an award of $1,000 for his education - he later chose to study diesel mechanics. His design of the flag became the Official ‘State’ Flag when Alaska joined the Union in 1959.



1964 EARTHQUAKE



The small ticket price to the museum also included some movie footage covering what happened in Seward when it was also hit by the 1964 earthquake which effected most of South-central Alaska including Anchorage mentioned in our previous blog. It was the largest earthquake in North America's recorded history and the second largest earthquake ever measured, worldwide. Lasting for a full three minutes it was the subsequent fires and tsunami waves that devastated many small communities. particularly those by the sea. Tremors continued through out the night and fuel storage tanks along Seward's waterfront caught on fire with refugees fleeing to higher ground around Mount Marathon. Seward suffered irreparable damage to its infrastructure, particularly the harbour and railway areas which were its lifelines and later many people moved permanently away from the area.



The earthquake had a devastating effect on everyone and in particular the children that lived through that horrendous day. Displayed at the entrance to the museum were a number of drawings that had been discovered in the museum archive, although it was not known why they were preserved as a collection. The days after the event local school children had drawn their thoughts of the tragic event - such moving artwork from some very young children remembering those harrowing times.



The Jesse Lee Mission home that Benny Benson, the Alaskan Flag designer mentioned above had attended was so badly damaged in the Earthquake that it was forced to close and finally it was relocated to Anchorage. The delay in rebuilding Seward’s infrastructure facilitated the growth of Anchorage which is now the largest Port in the state of Alaska.



The museum covers the History of Seward as well as the history of the Iditarod Trail through photographs, memorabilia and documents. There were many collections of woven baskets and I particularly liked the small Tlingit lidded baskets which were filled with small pebbles so that they rattled when shaken. The Tlingits were from the southeast of Alaska and used the roots of the Sitka spruce tree to make the baskets. Amongst other artefacts we saw many remnants of Alaska’s Russian past. The Russian Orthodox religion arrived in Alaska in 1741 and fifty years later Russian fur traders landed in the area which changed the land for ever.







BACK IN SEWARD we decided to take a hike to Exit Glacier located off a spur road of the Seward Highway in the Kenai Mountains. We did not have a car and there was no transport so the cheapest option was to book a shuttle bus which as well as taking hikers to the glacier also takes hikers out on to the glacier itself. We just wanted a lift so that we could do our own thing or our own time. The shuttle company agreed to pick us up at our hotel which was great and we were greeted by a smiling young lady from New Zealand. We were the only travellers and she dropped us off at the park entrance and said she would collect us later in the day.



At the Visitor Centre there was a detailed 3D map of the topography of the area and some interesting facts on the Exit Glacier which descends 2,700 feet over its two miles length. It received its name because it served as the ‘exit’ for the first successful crossing of the Harding Icefield. A ranger at the VC was very informative and explained that the Icefield also feeds many other glaciers in the region and you could see these clearly on the 3D map. It is also the largest and one of only four remaining in the USA receiving over 400 inches of snow each year - this is really hard to visualise, we get excited when we receive an inch of snow in the UK!



We headed off on our hike which was quite an easy walk with only a little elevation but you had to keep avoiding the huge mosquitoes that followed you everywhere. These were particularly annoying trying to get into your eyes, ears, nose and mouth - ughhhhh. It was not long before we were at the glacier terminus (foot or toe) with some excellent views right in front of us of the blue glacier ice. You could not touch the ice as the edges were roped off but you could get really close.





As we took some photographs we watched a couple arrive who started to strip off their hiking gear - the girl put on a shift dress (it was really cold so she must have been frozen) and then a preacher proceeded to marry them - probably the first and last time we will see a wedding at a glacier. After they were married they put back on their hiking gear and headed off for a longer hike higher up the glacier. We chatted to a couple from Australia for a while before we headed back. We have met many NZ and Oz couples touring the area - it seems to be a favoured destination for them. On the way back we took a different route down the river which was pouring from the glacier waters as well as several waterfalls from the ice field a both and sat on the rocky outwash plain and had a picnic lunch.



It was a great day apart from the mosquitoes and although we were covered in repellant they managed to bite my face. The next morning I awoke with my eye the size of a peach which took a couple of days to go down - it looked like I had just been in a boxing match - Paul kept a low profile until the swelling went down!





Back at Seward Harbour we watched more fish being brought in. The biggest white fish in the photos is Halibut, my favourite fish and we had that or Salmon for our supper most nights in a lovely fish restaurant next to our hotel. The fishermen have been bringing in these huge fish every day just under our hotel window - the biggest one in the photograph is 120 lbs!!!!! how the seas can maintain being emptied of these giant fish every day is quite concerning!



We have so loved our time in Seward and again it is somewhere we would like to return to one day. The weather has been mixed and sometimes very cold but 'hey' this is Alaska - so you in the UK should be grateful that the day I wrote up this blog in heavy rain you had just had the warmest day of 2014, probably all will change by the time the blog is published though!!!



On our last night in Seward guess what, we ate Halibut again looking out over the harbour where the daily cruise boat had just departed before taking an early walk and retiring to bed. In the morning we looked out of our hotel window to see our Holland America Cruise boat safely anchored in the harbour waiting for us to board in a few hours. We were sailing at noon and heading across the Alaskan Gulf - see you there.

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Comments

[D MJ Binkley]

Nice one
A great travel blog portrait photo

[silvernomads]

Nice One
Thanks Merry Jo and Dave