A Day in Seward

Happy Labor Day! In honor of the three day weekend, we decided to go on a new (to me) adventure.  We hopped in the car early and headed out to Seward, which is about a two hour drive south of Anchorage.  I was about to say east because that seemed right to me, but I just looked at a map and quickly remembered that the geography here is really weird and it's amazing I can make it to and from work every day without getting lost.  Anyway! Back to Seward.  

About 10 minutes from Seward is the Exit Glacier.  It's part of the Kenai Fjords National Park, and is actually the only portion of the national park that is accessible by road (there are a lot of really popular boat tours that go to the park...something we've put on the to-do list).  When we got there, Ripley got an important lesson in disappointment:

Yes, that sign says no pets.  He enjoyed the rest of this portion of the trip from the car. 

 We headed out sans dog on the roughly 1.5 mile trek to the glacier.

Glacier!

You can actually get pretty close to the glacier.  Along the way were lots of signs showing where the glacier was in years past and how you used to be able to walk on it.  Now there's a big cliff in front of the glacier, so no touching!

This place was pretty tourist-filled and we were able to get photographic evidence that we were both actually in the same place at the same time.

The view from the glacier was great.  Apparently, in the 1800s the glacier covered pretty much all of that green part you see.

From the pictures it's hard to get an idea of just how huge the glacier is.  I took this picture a few hundred yards from the glacier:

And here's the view of it from the road:

After we told Ripley about all the awesome smells he missed out on, we headed into Seward.  Actually, we decided to be nice to the dog and drove through town and headed straight to the "beach."

People were out in the water enjoying the last moments of fishing season.  We were on the beach for about a half hour and didn't see anyone catch anything.  But I'm sure the water was extra warm and fun for them to stand in.

Yes, it is technically September.  In other parts of the world, that's still summer.  Here, we're in the thick of fall already.

Ripley didn't mind that the water was cold and the sun wasn't shining.  He got to swim!

And pose.

And swim some more!

Despite the gray day, the scenery was unbeatable.  So far, Seward has my vote for prettiest town in Alaska.  That isn't really saying much since I've probably only seen .0001% of the state.

All the houses on the beach were on stilts.  Cute!

On the way back into the little town we saw a friend in the water:

Otter!

Back in town, we had lunch at Ray's (delicious fish and chips!) and enjoyed a beautiful view of the harbor.  It was an excellent day.

We'll definitely be back.  Seward is "famous" for a race they hold every 4th of July.  It's called the Mount Marathon race and, essentially, it involves a bunch of crazy people starting in town and then running UP a shale-covered mountain, and then sliding back down the mountain and finishing back in town.  The race is 3.1 miles (essentially a 5k), but it entails running 3,022 feet uphill (and then, again, sliding at terrifying speeds downwards).  Apparently the record is just over 43 minutes.  This year, one person was seriously injured and another person actually DIED running the race.  Even still, it's a really popular thing and is a popular spectator event.  I think next year we'll have to go check it out.