July 28th - Our trip to Seward

We made the drive to Seward with the whole family! The drive is just gorgeously full of picture perfect views. Of course isn't that Alaska? The first part cuts along the Turnagain Arm (fun name huh?) with the mountains to one side and water on the other. Here we saw dall sheep MUCH closer than in Denali. They were easy to spot because of all the cars pulled off on the side with people pointing. :) It's also said that you can often find Belugas here, but we weren't so lucky.

As you get closer to Seward, the mountains start to surround you again, but the views are no less startling.

Our main draw for going to Seward was to take a boat trip into Resurrection Bay to view wildlife and alpine glaciers. It would have been nice to go into Kenai Fjords National Park (pronounced KEE-nye, but we were worried about seasickness, time and money. Oh well, on our list for next time!!


The first things we saw on the trip were tufted puffins! I was so excited to see them because puffins are just adorably clumsy little birds. They are much smaller than they seem in photos.


A short time later we saw horned puffins, which I find even cuter. Their bones are more dense than usual for a bird to better allow for diving. As a result, watching them take off for flight was very interesting. :)

Along with the puffins, were lots of common murres up in cliffs. Though they are capable of flight, I've heard murres referred to as the penguins of the north.

We also saw the huge stellar sea lions. It was so funny to hear so many of them vocalizing at once. This was the "young adult" population. The rookery is farther out.

The last boat photo we have is of the kittiwake colony farther out in the bay. We didn't see any babies, but it was cool to see even a small colony of cliff nesting birds.

As we were looking for birds, our captain caught a blow from a whale. On the second blow we saw it too! It was a young humpback doing "sounding dives" according to the captain. We had one good view of his flukes and back, but he never came up out of the water. We saw one other young humpack doing the same thing. Even though they didn't breach, it was still so cool to see them. We didn't manage to catch it on film though.

When we headed back toward the dock I was a little bummed. We hadn't seen any sea otters. So I scoured the waters in the hopes of catching a glimpse. At the last minute, I saw a body floating on the top of the water. It was the otter! We actually saw two on the way in. We didn't see them close because there were too many boats, but man were they cute! A harbor seal also popped its head up on the way in to see what was going on. She was so close I could see her big dark eyes. It was very exciting.

When we got in, my aunt steered us toward the fish filet table. Ron was in his element. We saw salmon, rockfish and halibut. The halibut were SO huge! I had never realized how big they were! It may sound silly, but I also hadn't realized they were built like flounder. You can see them here in the big cart.

OK, I know, I know, this is a huge post, but I have to close with this shot of the cousins.
I only have one more Alaska post to tell you about the SeaLife Center and Exit glacier. It's been hard to get to it with our house closing coming up tomorrow!