July 11: Today’s drive to Seward was only about 105 miles and for the most part, it retraced a portion of our previous drive from Homer to Kenai. A short walk from our campground is the Alaska Sea Life Center, housing a number of local species of sea creatures as well as sheltering injured ones until they can be rehabilitated and released. It was a very interesting display! You don’t realize just how big a 1,700-lb. sea lion is until one swims by you very slowly … and gracefully. They’re huge!! It was also fascinating to watch an octopus maneuver around its enclosure—a truly weird but amazing creature!

July 12: Our day began at a fairly lazy pace, but we were at Exit Glacier Headquarters by around 2:00 p.m. There, a U.S. Nat’l. Park Service Guide met our Motorcade group and narrated our walk up to Exit Glacier and back (about 1½ miles). Along the way, markers indicated points to which the glacier had extended at various times, starting from about 1815. In a nutshell, the glacier has receded a lot already and is still receding. No surprise there ….  Dave and I visited the Exit Glacier 25 years ago.  It was only a short walk from the parking lot to the glacier in 1989. Now it is about a 3/4 mile walk through new forest and over barren rocks.

Dave and I ended our day with a buffalo burger and fries at the local Red’s Burgers, a burger stand housed in an old school bus. Their indoor seating is available in a second old school bus. Can’t say much for the ambience, but the food was great!

July 13: This morning, our Motorcade group met at an outdoor (covered) pavilion very near where we’re parked. We were served a breakfast of omelets-in-a-bag, biscuits, bear paws (sweet rolls), and coffee. In case you’ve never had an omelet-in-a-bag, just put a raw egg (or 2 or 3, all without shells!) into a Ziploc, add whatever ingredients you want to go with it, smoosh everything together, express all the air from the bag and seal it. Then submerge the bag in boiling water for ~13 minutes, let stand a minute or so, and voilà! Omelet in a bag! Pretty tasty, too. 🙂

After breakfast we had a short drivers’ meeting to review upcoming activities, followed by a brief devotional service. Then it was a nap and lunch for Dave and me both. Tomorrow Dave and I will be away on a 7-hour tour of the Kenai Fjords, and no one from our group will be available to dog-sit because most are going on this same tour. So Dave looked up a local dog-sitting business, and this afternoon we met with Heidi, the young lady who runs it. Dave and I were well impressed with her and Beighley liked her as well, so we were glad to have found someone to walk Beighley while we’re gone.

We finished the afternoon with a little shopping in the quaint downtown section of Seward (quilt shop and yarn shop). We also bought a few groceries and picked up a pizza for dinner on the way back to the coach. Soon it will be time to rest up for a busy day tomorrow.

July 14: After a leisurely start to the day, our group assembled at the appropriate pier and boarded a tour boat for a trip to Kenai Fjiords. It was a lovely, sunny day for a change, and the trip outbound was fairly quiet—that is, until someone spotted a whale spout! During the rest of the trip, our boat turned out to be quite a “whale magnet.” We saw humpbacks and caught a glimpse of what our guide decided was “transient” orcas that prey on other whales in the area. One humpback surfaced very near our boat, swam under us, then went on its way. There were porpoises playing alongside our boat along the way as well. We had lunch (featuring prime rib and grilled salmon) near Aialik Glacier at the “back” of Aialik Bay, and while we were eating, the glacier calved a huge chunk of ice. The resulting wave pattern from it tossed us around a bit, but then settled back to normal. As you might imagine, there were lots of smaller chunks of ice floating around us as well.

After lunch, on our way back to the Seward dock, we saw salmon running in Resurrection Bay, as well as stellar sea lions sunning themselves on some rock outcroppings. A couple of the males tussled for top spot on the rock as we were passing by and provided us a show. All the while, there were myriads of sea birds flying about, including puffins, kittiwakes, and the ever-present seagulls.

We arrived back at the coach weary from a full day’s activity.  Beighley was glad to see us and had been attended to quite well in our absence.  We were glad to hear that others in our group who had hired Heidi to look in on their dogs were pleased as well. We soon had dinner and went to bed promptly, to be ready for the upcoming drive back to Anchorage tomorrow.