We woke up bright and early (literally...since its bright early) to go to the train station this morning.
We picked up our boarding passes and we waited for the "all aboard" call. (They really do say that!)
And then we were off! We lucked out on our assigned train car. The car in front of us had a whole girl scout troop and the car behind us had a bunch of high school kids on some sort of school trip. But ours was nice and quiet and we had a dome section in the middle where you could sit and see more things at once.
We passed by one of the first framed structures in Anchorage (since at its beginning it was a city of tents and swamp).
And there's a neighborhood along the train route with a plane runway in their backyards..
We saw a fox, moose, dall sheep, and leftover avalanche remnants.
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| 2 Moose on the hillside |
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| A group of very blurry Dall Sheep...they are the white dots... |
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| Lots of avalanches along the Turnagain arm. |
We continued south along the Turnagain arm and had a short stop in Girdwood to pick up 3 people.
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| The Girdwood train stop |
We napped a little and saw some eagles sitting in dead petrified trees from the earthquake in '64.
South of Girdwood, around where the town of Portage used to be (another victim of the earthquake in '64 i think) the train parted ways with the Seward highway and went on a different southern route.
We saw an eagle's nest. (The eagle is even in the nest!)
We went by Spencer glacier and the Placar river, through the snowy valleys of Grandview. (And for you folks going on the train later this summer, our guess is that there will be snow all year on this train route! There's still over 6 feet of snow and it was even snowing today! It looks like February not like May. And that rhymed. I'm cool like that..)
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| Spencer Glacier |
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| Going through the s-curves. Look at all that snow!!! |
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| Placar (pronounced Plassar) River |
We saw more moose and went through the small community of Moose Pass. It was named by a mail carrier who, being sick of moose confrontations, named it Moose Pass hoping that it would attract hunters and then his troubles would be lessened. (I don't think that worked out the way he had hoped. There are still a lot of moose here!)
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| They are running from the train. |
Then we made it to Seward. A town named after William H. Seward, the man who orchestrated the purchase of Alaska from Russia in 1867. The whole territory of Alaska was purchased for only a few cents an acre! (Alaska began as a yard sale no wonder they are so big here. Ha!)
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| Nice "billboard" along the train route |
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| Seward airport, and a view of Resurrection Bay |
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| We walked down to the beach...the very rocky beach. (At least it's not huge mudflats like we have in Anchorage!) |
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| Resurrection Bay was named by Russian Alexandr Baranov, on Easter Sunday in 1792. |
Besides walking around/exploring the town, we chose to go to the Alaska SeaLife Center. I had another 2-for-1 coupon for admission and a behind the scenes tour. (Gotta love the Northern Lights Coupon Book. It made this whole Seward trip possible!)
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| It's an aquarium, a research facility, and a rehabilitation center. And we thought it was very very very cool! |
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| Jellyfish |
There is a touch tank at the aquarium. And it's awesome!
The water in the touch tank is FREEZING! (Just fyi...)
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| Leather Starfish. I can't remember if that's the real name of it...but it felt like wet leather |
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| Chinese Rockfish |
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| Horned Puffin |
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| A harlequin duck trying (unsuccessfully) to impress his lady friend. (She's the one flying away in terror...) |
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| This is Woody the Stellar Sea Lion |
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| Lulu the octopus |
We got to wear badges for our behind the scenes tour. We felt super cool! And we were the only 2 people on the tour...Lucky us!
We got to see the research part.
And the rehabilitation part.
Their current "patient" is Olympia. We only saw her on video surveillance.. She was in quarantine.
We saw behind the scenes of this:
And it looks like this:
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| The fish kept swimming up to the top of the tank to see us. They wanted food! |
We even saw the kitchen where the food is prepped (a.k.a the fish are thawed and cut up), and the basement where the heat and water filtration systems are. It was all very very cool! (Luke especially loved the heating system. They use ocean water to heat their facility.)
Anyway, we eventually left the sea life center and found a place in town to eat. The sign said they had the best hamburgers in town, so we just had to try it out! (And they were actually very good burgers!)
As we walked around, we talked about a possible retirement home in Seward...but only if it looks like this:
Or this:
There were a lot of interesting homes and things to see while we were walking around the town.
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| When there earthquake in '64 hit, there was a tsunami in Seward. But all the people saw the water go out of the bay, and everyone made it to higher ground before it hit. The mountains are pretty close, so they didn't have to go far! |
The mountain in the background of that picture is called Mt. Marathon. One one the oldest footraces (the result of a bet) happens in Seward every fourth of July. The race starts in town and goes up to the top of that mountain and back down. At the end of the race there are paramedics to help bandage up all the race participants' cuts and bruises. (Sounds not very awesome....I must be getting old!)
There are a lot of places to camp around town. We really want to go back and camp...maybe sometime in the off season. It's easy to see how the town can fill up with people in the summer. It's not very big to begin with!
Eventually (after we stopped to get ice cream cones) it was time to get back on the train.
And it started to rain again.
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| The start of the s-curves...going the other direction this time. |
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| Placer river gorge...I think. |
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| Sunset over the mudflats. |
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| Backyard planes again...because they are cool. |
Yay for fun adventure!
