Seward and Talkeetna

Seward is a small fishing town on the Kenai Peninsula. There is a fairly large harbor to accommodate all sorts of boats including, small powerboats and sailboats as well as cruise ships and shipping ships.

Seward is also home to the Alaska Sea Life Center which is a superb aquarium. They also had a large enclosure for marine birds.

The main reason people go to Seward is to see the Exit Glacier, a glacier that is part of the Harding Ice Field. The Harding Ice Field is over 4000 feet thick in some places and is home to 30 plus glaciers. The Exit Glacier is only a short hike from the Kenai Fjords National Park Center.

After two days in Seward, we took the train to Talkeetna. Here we are standing in front of the Talkeetna River, a partly glacial river (which explains all the silt in the river).

We went salmon fishing and both of us caught a bunch of silver salmon. Lila caught more fish than I did and here she is with probably the nicest salmon of the day! (Which she caught, she also caught the second nicest of the day) The guy next to her is the fishing guide, Danny.

After fishing we got to raft down the river. In a few minutes we are going to leave for the train to take us to Fairbanks. It is an eight hour train ride that will take us through Denali National Park.

Glacier Bay

We spent a day on this fairly large sized boat going into Glacier Bay. We visited three glaciers, saw sea lions, bears, eagles, puffins, and great scenery.

This is an island that had a lot of birds flying on it. It was very fun to watch the puffins.

A great photo that lila took of the marjorie glacier. It was the largest of the three glaciers we visted. While we were looking at it, small parts of it were calving off. You could hear the ice cracking. Overall, it was really impressive.

Some sea lions we saw early on during the boat trip. Can you spot the bull?

Some people were nice enough to offer to take a picture of me and lila. We were really lucky to have blue skys the whole day.

A final view of the majorie glacier was we sailed away from it.

Glacier Bay was one of the most impressive places I've ever seen. Although the trip was a little touristy and kitchy, it was amazing.

Gustavus Part 2

We spent a day in Gustavus with no real plan. So we went golfing!

Yes Gustavus, town of about 400 people has a 9 hole golf course and a driving range. You just walk up to this unattended shed, put some money in, grab some clubs and go. Needless to say, Lila and I are terrible at golf, we did the driving range, and it was fun.

We spent a fair amount of time at the pier watching fishing boats come in. Does anyone notice that southeast alaska looks a lot like coastal maine?

Its a long pier....

Gustavus Part 1

Gustavus is a little town right outside of Glacier Bay National Park. It was about 400 year round residents and it reminds me a lot of small towns in Coastal Maine. The only way to get to Gustavus is to fly in, and the easier way is to fly on these little four seater planes. We went with a company called Air Excursions. The pilot was this young guy who never spoke to aircraft control (no need) and informed us that we were free to leave our cell phones on.

The Homestead Bed and Breakfast was one of our most favorite places we've ever stayed. They had bikes for us (a great way to get around a flat island). Here is Lila standing in front of their sign.

This is the "mall" in Gustavus, two businesses, one of which is the Homeshore Cafe. Homeshore is really the only restaurant in town, there are others attached to inns but they have set menus and are kind of pricey. Homeshore has sandwiches, salads, and pizzas and we ate there four times!

Catty Corner to the Homeshore cafe is THE gas station/museum. It looks cute from the outside but since it was never open while we were there, we can't comment on the inside.

This is a view of Lila and the dock in Gustavus. Everyday several fishing boats and whale watching boats go out. We came down to the beach a lot. Lila found lots of old fish guts but you don't have to see those pictures.

These last two pictures are from when we rented sea kayaking in Bartlett Cove, right at the southern end of the park. While kayaking we saw sea otters, sea lions, and a black bear. It was really nice to do some sort of outdoor activity.



We had great weather in Gustavus. The southerners on the island complained about the weather but clearly they hadn't been to New England in the winter, or any other time of year. Southeast Alaska really does look a lot like the Maine Coast, just there are mountains. I really liked it in Gustavus and so did Lila.

There are more gustavus photos coming, largely pictures from our day long cruise to the tidewater glaciers in glacier bay. I haven't offloaded those yet though.

Juneau

After a little excitement getting to Alaska (cancelled flights that we weren't notified about) we arrived in Juneau to a very nice little inn called the Beachside Villa. Here is lila standing in front of the hot tub!


We ate breakfast twice at this place:

The Sliverbow Bakery. It was really good. We had the reddest lox I've ever seen. It was delicious.


Lila and I hiking Mt. Roberts. Mt Roberts is one of the mountains that overlook the city of Juneau. It was a beautiful day, according to some locals it was like the third sunny day that summer. It was really fun to go up from sea level to about 3500 feet.


This is the view of Juneau from most of the way up Mt. Roberts. You can see the city of Juneau on the right side of the photo, the island on the left is Douglas. That is were we stayed, it was about a 20 minute walk into downtown from there - it was nice to be away from the cruise ships.

This is the place that we stayed in Juneau. Its the building to the right of the long aluminum barn thingy. It was a really great place to kick off our honeymoon.

A panoramic photo that Lila took of the mountains from Mt. Roberts.

More pictures will come, we've been having trouble uploading photos. Right now we are in Anchorage and have a solid wi-fi connection. More to come!

Married

Thank you to everyone who helped us have a successful wedding!