Sunday, July 17, 2011 Seward, Alaska

What do I wear???? A cloudy and overcast day - not a good start to the day. We will be touring inside and taking a boat trip - humm - such a dilema!!

 
We drove into town and started off on a behind the scenes tour of The Alaska Sea Life Center.  They take in injured small seal life or babies that have been abandoned by their Mom's.  Their intention is to make them better and put them back in the wilds.  If that isn't possible, they will give them to other facilities, such as zoo's.  They explained how they purify the water w/these huge tanks, etc.  Very interesting.  Even how they operated on a fish that couldn't hatch it's eggs.  They even did an MRI on a fish - go figure!!!   The facility was absolutely beautiful and a lot of it was supported by the money that they got from the Valdez Oil spill that affected Seward.

We took a Major Marine Tour in Resurrection Bay, going through Eldorado Narrows to the Bear Glacier and back again.  It was a five hour cruise w/an all you can east Salmon and Prime Rib lunch.  Very very good.  Again, I tried the Salmon - it was pretty good - and I did eat it.  Squeezed a couple lemon slices on it but it went down just fine. 

We saw a lot of wildlife:  Mountain goats, Humpback and Orca Whales, Steller Seal Lions, Dall's Porpoise's, Puffins (cute little bird), Bald Eagles, Sea Otter's, Cormorant's and of course, Sea Gulls.  Everyone's camera's were flashing but the whales didn't make it easy to get a shot of them.  Had a very good Captain as he stopped whenever we saw a whale
so we could get pictures. 

We had a National Forest Ranger narrating the trip.





This is a distant picture of the glacier.  6 miles long.













Close up of the glacier ice all piled up.  We were surprised we didn't get closer but I'm sure the Captain had a reason for that.













On our way back to the RV, Bruce spotted a bear walking in a small creek trying to get at some salmon.  I think if you double click on the picture,it will open up bigger - not sure!  He was quite large and Bruce was only 25' away from him.











Bruce likes his trains - Alaska colors, blue and gold.

It started raining towards the end of our cruise and hasn't stopped yet.  Hopefully, tomorrow will be a nice day as we are taking a boat out to go Salmon Fishing.  Heaven help me!!!