On day 7 of our Alaska trip we went to Seward, its another southern costal town...
Seward seems to be best known for it's fishing, cruises of the Prince William Sound, Kenai Fjord National Park and Exit Glacier (well all of the glaciers in the Harding IceField really, but Exit in particular) and the Sea Life center. I think of all of the towns, Seward was our favorite.
This is a beautiful view of some of the many glaciers that surround Seward.. It was a little rainy again, so it's a little hard to see just how breathtaking it was. Seward was basically surrounded by mountains like this, some call it "chlosterphobic" but Jeremy and I both thought it was awesome!
We stopped at the visitors center to get some info and couldn't help get a picture with this guy!.. glad it's stuffed!! :-)
We walked around town a little, then decided that becasue it was a rainy day we'd check out the Sea Life Center
Cool bottom feeder fish covered in algae :-)
More sea erchants.. we got to touch one like this... was very weird, but cool
They had some very fun birds to view.
Connor enjoyed watching the birds play in the water
A PUFFIN!! COOL :-) I was litterally like 4 feet away from her~!
This guy was strutting his stuff... it was hilarious!~
Jeremy and Connor with a seal doing a "swim by" :-) Connor was enthralled with the color and lights!
Connor and I as another, much larger seal swims by! We sat and watched him do this over and over.. fun now that Connor is so much more aware!
The campground we planned to stay at was about 10 miles back out of town and on our way there was the park to view Exit Glacier. We had just planned to drive there and leave because of the ugly weather.. but when we got there we got lucky, there was a break in the clouds.. so we put on our hiking gear and went for the 3 mile hike to get within touching distance of the glacier (found out later they no longer allow you close enough to touch for safety reasons, but it was still a beautiful hike, and still extremely close to the massive 'dieing' Exit Glacier.
The view of Exit Glacier from a distance.. the water in the foreground is the runoff.. Exit Glacier, like most of the glaciers in Alaska are melting and growing smaller every day ("dieing..".)
The runoff streams.. I can imagine this water is FREEZING COLD!!! :-)
(Notice the glacier in the background). Along the hiking trail there were markers that show a year representing where the glacier was during that timeframe. This one shows that in 1926 the glacier was this far down the valley... that's a lot of melting in less than 100 years!
Jeremy and Connor with the beautiful scenery in the background.
Connor and mom with Exit Glacier in the background! He is such a happy boy when he is outdoors!~ :-)
All of us! We were so glad we did this hike.. TOTALLY worth it :-)
The glacier up close.. to get a feel for how massive it is.. there are some tiny white specs in the center of the picture on the right.. those are people on the trail... amazing!!
Tomorrow morning we will get up and come back to Seward to catch a day cruise of the Prince William Sound and Kenai Fjords National Wildlife Preserve, then if the weather permits we'll go to Whittier.
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