24 June

Drat, rain found us again so we decided to forgo outdoor activities and got back on the road.  We continued to head south to the Kenai Peninsula.  Our first stop was to Whittier AK to see if the picturesque city was beyond the gray rain.  No such luck.  So we spent a whole 10 minutes driving through the town and headed back to the tunnel.  The tunnel is a one lane shared with the railroad tunnel, that is 2.5 miles long.  Every 15 minutes the traffic switches directions, with 15 minutes given to any transiting trains.  Alaska railroad is the way almost all inland goods are transported.  Semi-trucks are a rarity on the roads, since the train runs from Anchorage to Fairbanks and throughout the port towns. 

Seward was our ultimate destination for the day.  The town of Seward was named after John Seward, who was instrumental in coordinating the purchase of Alaska, “Seward’s Folly.”  (Secretary of State Seward was also wounded by John Wilkes Booth during the Lincoln assassination.)  Seward is the gateway to Kenai Fjords National Park.  We checked into Seward Military Resort and got ourselves a very nice campsite, at an Army funded RnR site.  The resort has lots of folks in the cabins, but still had plenty of campsites available.  We then headed to town, where the only parking was pay parking for $10, regardless of how short you were going to be parking.  Roger groused and paid, not knowing or being able to figure out if Sunday was a fee day or not.  We walked around Seward and talked with a couple of fishermen.  The first guy we talked to said he caught 4 red salmon in a little over an hour, the limit is 6 per day. 

The second group was off a charter fishing boat and they caught several rock fish and halibut.  They hadn’t weighed their catch and were waiting for the boat skipper to get that done.  We didn’t hang around to find out how much they caught, but it looked to us like a good day.  The same group was going out tomorrow.  The boy I talked with as a member of the group said he had fun fishing, but the halibut were creepy to him.  I didn’t know that their eyes moved to one side of their head as they aged.

We then went to Exit Glacier, which is about 15 miles from Seward.  We did the glacier loop and it was interesting to note the retreat of the glacier.  The drive to the glacier is through what Roger and I have decided is sub-arctic swampland.  The snowmelt is everywhere and the ground plants are submerged with water running off.  It is curious to me how mosquitoes can survive the Alaskan winter, only to be out in full force in the summertime.  This was the first time we have been attacked by fierce mosquitoes.  Fortunately it was chilly, so we had on long pants and shirts.  Roger used Off on his head and I used my Off fan hooked to the back of my neck collar.  Exit Glacier wasn’t as impressive to us as Mendenhal Glacier.  This could have been because the weather was gray and dreary, and when we saw Mendenhal it was sunny.  Regardless the crevices were still the aqua blue color, as a result of light absorption.  It was difficult to get a good picture to give a size context, but there are people in the picture.  The other picture is taken across the Resurrection River and the glacial outwash plain with braided water.

 
Tomorrow we’re going to take a 6.5 hour cruise in Kenai National Park.  Unfortunately the weather is predicted to be 80% chance of rain, with a high of 59.  We’re not complaining, as it can’t be any worse than Doubtful Sound in New Zealand.