Saying Goodbye to Brooks Falls and the Bears and onto Seward

The first two days at Brooks Falls was absolutely gorgeous, blue skies, bright sunshine from morning to night.  It was even warm!  The day that we left the sky was a little overcast, giving us a different perspective of the falls.  That last morning only one bear was at the falls.  We saw more salmon jumping in the two hours that we were at the falls that day than the entire time we were there.  The salmon definitely knew the bear were elsewhere and they took advantage of that. 

After saying goodbye to new acquaintances, we departed in float planes from the beach. 

 

We had a larger plane for the trip back, everyone on this flight had flown to Katmai the same day as the plane accident.  Everyone was happy about the larger plane, especially us! 

 

We met a lot of nice people at Katmai.  There was  Dick from the San Francisco who would make sure I got a space on the lower viewing platform

 

 and Carla who was by herself camping and was going further to camp at the remote Lake Clark NP.

Tony and Carla on the trip back

It’s such a small world, we met Dr. Luzuriaga a dentist from Westminster and his family.  He went to school with our dentist, Dr. Necciai.   We arrived at the same time as a group traveling from Natural Habitat led by Eric Rock, their head naturalist.  They were winding up a two week wildlife photo tour, which sounded like a wonderful tour.  As we recognized that Eric knew the ropes, when things were going bad at King Salmon on the way over, we followed him! 

 

Another new friend, Jose was camping and we kept running into him at the lodge charging batteries.  Crissy and I spent a couple hours with him, the three of us with our laptops looking through our respective pictures, showing each other our “greatest shots” as we discovered them.  He shared this one with me, of the bear stalking him on the trail. 

The flight back to Anchorage via King Salmon was eventless, thank god!  In Anchorage we finally got some “wheels” to finish out our Alaskan adventure.  On our own schedule now, we had a full day planned for the trip to Seward to pack in as much as possible.  With a quick stop at Potter’s Marsh, we looked for birds and moose, but only saw a train. 

  With little luck, we then moved down to Girdwood where Crissy crossed panning for gold off her bucket list at the Crow Creek Mine.  It was the most picturesque mine I have ever seen.  Much different than the Porcupine Creek Mine I had seen on Discovery Channel.  Crissy and Tony panned for gold and I took pictures.  I was hoping they would find enough gold to pay for our trip.  No such luck!

 

 

 



Crissy with the only flakes she found at the training session

We headed down the Seward Scenic Highway towards Portage Glacier.  The highway was aptly named, with lush green lowlands, lakes lined with fireweed and beautiful mountains all the way to Seward.  A quick stop at a popular roadside lookout, Beluga Point to look for Beluga Whales.  In this area where the Turnagain Arm narrows, Beluga Whales and the tidal bore are both visible at times.  No luck there either, so off to Portage for the boat cruise to the glacier. 

The tide is coming in and no whales.  Ugly grey water, but the perfect spawning grounds for the Beluga Whales.

We arrived at the visitor center and purchased tickets.  We were just in time for the 1:30 cruise, so we boarded the two leveled boat, opting for the open air deck. 

 

It was a beautiful day; brilliant sunshine and blue skies.  The Portage Glacier sat on a small lake and required a boat to get close to the face of the glacier.  The area around the lake was surrounded by mountains with beautiful and topped with glaciers higher on those mountains. 

Evidently the glacial ice there supported life; ice worms.  These small worms lived in the ice their entire life and resemble a thin black thread about ½ inch long.  I wouldn’t have know it was a worm unless they told us.  Evidently they are in a lot of glaciers, so why did  they try to get us to drink the melted glacial water in Skagway!  If exposed to temperatures higher than 32 degrees, they dissolve. 

 A nice short cruise, a calving or two , a few pictures of us and blue ice and we are off again. 

 

 

 

That blue ice I was looking for!

We stopped at the park headquarters for Portage Glacier and Chugash State Park, which surrounded the area of Portage Glacier.  Chugash State Park is 5 million acres, bigger than Yellowstone, Yosemite and Glacier NP combined.  It is huge and beautiful with many glaciers and glacial lakes!  Too bad we didn’t have more time to explore, just time for a National Parks Passport stamp.

 

On our way to Seward we stopped for ice cream at the cutest little complex with lots of carved bears incorporated into the cabins.

I was having bear withdrawal, hadn't seen a bear in 24 hours!

On the train heading to Denali I had seen some Trumpeter Swans, which are fairly rare in the lower 48.  They are beautiful birds and would have babies at this time of year.  I inquired if Eric from Natural Habitat knew of any areas where there were swans on our trip to Seward.  He referred us to a wetlands area on the way.  We found the area and pulled over to investigate.  Not too far from the boardwalk we saw a pair of swans with 4 babies or cygnets.   They were so cute and the area was just beautiful. 

We pulled into Seward late in the day.  Tony and I took a walk into town and found the marina.  There were many boats of all sizes, from small personal boats to cruise ships. 

Seward is supported by tourism, fishing and fish processing.  Seward is a huge sportsman fishing area and the marina is the jump off point for some of the best Halibut, Salmon, Rockfish and Lingcod fishing in the world.  At $300 a pop, there are more than enough fisherman and charters to keep the port being one of the top three in Alaska.  Add a cruise ship or two and the wealth of wildlife that has vacationers taking Glacier, Whale and Wildlife Watching tours and this town is hopping.

While the dock area was permeated with the smell of fish, my favorite thing to do there was to stop by when the dock area after the fishing boats returned with their catches.  Crews would unload huge hauls of salmon and halibut into plastic tubs and push them up the plank to the dock.  On each dock before the fish were taken to be cleaned, they would dump all the fish out on the deck by the trophy rack and the first mate would carefully take each fish and arrange them for the official photo. 

With the skill of an artist, they would creatively arrange the catch on the trophy hooks, sorting by size and variety.  I actually found the process as interesting as the final product; it appeared to be their creative outlet!  Once arranged and hung, the fish were rinsed off and the proud fisherman would stand by their catch, getting their photos to commemorate the day. 

 

We were able to get pictures of two catches, but don’t wait too long, as soon as they say cheese, the fish start coming down.  Then the fish were carted off to the fish cleaners who prepped the fish for freezing and shipping. 

The whole process reminded me of when I was a kid at Bethany Beach, Delaware.  We fished at Indian River for flounder when on vacation there.  My Dad would take pictures of us with the largest fish we caught too! 

Brother Bob with his catch on my famous little green fishing rod. 

 

Jo Ann with her catch of the day

We also liked walking the path that followed the water’s edge.  We occasionally saw an eagle or sea otters and tons of sea gulls.  The mountains that surrounded the bay were covered with snow or glaciers and made for beautiful scenery. 

 

Seward is a RV paradise with a large portion of the town along the water front set up as RV campsites, complete with fire pits for each along the water.  Great views along the shore and a nice place to warm up with marshmallows, suddenly I missed our little camper. 

Finally liberated from tours and public transportation, we had a full day behind us.  I was in heaven, being able to stop wherever we wanted, being able to eat and drink whatever and whenever and beautiful weather; it was a great day!  Seward is the end of the road from Anchorage.  It was interesting, and much more diverse and beautiful than I imagined it would be.  We were looking forward to exploring the area in the days to come and as Frank Sinatra would say “and do it my way”.