Nugget – pure gold

This adorable little (157-pound) walrus lives at Seward’s SeaLife Center. He was rescued in Nome when he was only two weeks old, sick and half-starved, wandering around town rummaging through trash cans–not for food but for shelter. Apparently his mom is gone, so he was transported to the SeaLife Center where he will be taken care of for the rest of his life. Unfortunately he will never be able to be released into the wild; he was abandoned at too young an age.

Although the Center hasn’t named him (his official name is OR1701), people are starting to call him Nugget. We think that’s very appropriate, as he hails from Nome–site of one of the major gold discoveries in Alaska. And he looks like a little golden nugget.

Nugget with his “hugger”

Until he is two years old, Nugget will have round-the-clock, dedicated “huggers” working in four-hour shifts. He’s on walrus formula, 1.4 liters every three hours. He misses the warm jacuzzis he had when he first arrived at the Center, and now his caretakers have to coax him into his 57-degree “bay.” So sad to consider that Nugget will grow up without a natural mother, but the SeaLife Center is giving him a life as close to nature as is humanly possible. And he’s alive.

Thank you, Seward SeaLife Center, for all your hard work on Nugget’s behalf.

“C’mon, Nugget. Let’s go for a swim.”

tufted puffin in flight

humpback whale feeding

sea otter

Aialik Glacier

Aialik from a quarter mile away. The face rises approx. 400 feet above water level.

harbor seal welcome

harbor seal - sorry, were you sleeping?

the Chiswell Islands in the Gulf of Alaska

lazy, good-for-nothing Stellar sea lions

Cape Aialik

After approaching the national park from the east by land yesterday (Exit Glacier), we took the much touted boat tour to explore the southern glacier-cut fjords. When you see photos of humpback whales breaching in Alaska, they are often taken around Kenai Fjords. Well, we weren’t lucky enough to see them breaching, but we did see several backs of whales and a few flukes–and other wildlife as well.

We spent 7.5 hours traveling 130 miles along the coast, visiting two tidewater glaciers. Most exciting was Aialik (I-al-ik). Check out the two videos. In the first you can hear the melting glacier creaking and popping (sounded like gun shots) as it melts.

In the second, you can see a small part of the glacier calving (icebergs breaking off of the glacier).

Our bike ride took us along the Resurrection River, the result of glacier melt.

If Mendenhall Glacier, outside of Juneau, is a “drive-up” glacier, then Exit Glacier, just outside of Seward, is a “walk-up” glacier. We rented bikes and rode 12 miles out of Seward to the Kenai Fjords National Park visitors center. Then we hiked another six-tenths of a mile to overlook the foot of the glacier. I have never been this close to a glacier, and it was literally awesome.

the lower moraine field, with Exit Glacier in the background

There she is!

Don from Minnesota providing me with a stepping stone

Now I can cross the stream into the upper moraine field. Thanks, Don!

beautiful patterns in the silt

Don retrieving a growler from the stream

growler released back into the wild

the hike to the glacier–the people in the photo give you some perspective!

…and there’s the foot!

mural commemorating the historic Iditarod Trail

The Iditarod Trail began as a discontinuous series of native trails that ran roughly from the south coast of Alaska to Anchorage and points north. Once gold was discovered along the Yukon River and on the beaches of Nome in the late 1800s, the trail was better defined so that dog mushers could transport supplies and mail from Seward, where the steamer ships pulled in, to the gold mining camp of Iditarod and beyond to Nome on the Bering Sea–over 1100 miles–in winter.

By the 1920s, the trail fell into disuse. Many of the gold mining camps had dried up, and men called to serve in the first World War never returned. The Anchorage-to-Nome part of the trail was revived in the 1970s for use as a sled dog race course, and it’s still going strong.

Here I am in Seward at Mile 0 of the Iditarod National Historic Trail.

Sled dog racing is once again a big deal in Seward (above), but I think this guy (below) has opted for a more updated mode of transportation. Smart!

Seward, Alaska

The town of Seward is named for William H. Seward, President Andrew Johnson’s Secretary of State who negotiated the purchase of Alaska from Russia in 1867. You may recall that Alaska was once nicknamed “Seward’s Folly,” as many residents of the Lower 48 wondered why Seward would advocate the purchase of 425 million acres of wilderness when the country was still financially devastated from the recent War Between the States. But Russia, worried about overextending themselves, made the offer, and Seward recognized the importance of getting Russia out of North America. He persuaded Congress to snap it up for a cool $7.2 million (less than 2 cents an acre). The purchase was also a convenient political distraction from Johnson’s contentious presidency.

The town, poised on Alaska’s southern coast, is the perfect gateway to America’s final frontier.

stunning Resurrection Bay

cirque glaciers in the Kenai Mountains

eagle flying over Resurrection Bay

quintessential Alaska

Mount Marathon, site of a grueling Fourth of July mountain foot race

mural of a runner scaling Mount Marathon

Ship Creek

Anchorage may be the big city, but that doesn’t stop the residents from dropping everything and donning hip waders when the salmon are running. The hotel we stayed in on our brief overnight in Anchorage was right on Ship Creek, and the salmon started running just a day or two before we arrived.

big city angler

fresh catch

dinner tonight

It’s all about the fish, even at the public restrooms. Note: Dollys are Dolly Vardens, a type of char. Chums are one of the five types of Alaskan salmon.

tourist information in Anchorage

Everyone I talked to–Alaskans and friends who have visited–had only one thing to say when I threw out the possibility of spending a week in Anchorage on our tour of Alaska: Why?

Anchorage is the big city. Over 40% of the state’s population lives in the metropolitan area. It should probably be the state’s capital. In the late ’70s, they actually looked into moving the capital from Juneau (in the remote Southeast) to either Anchorage, Fairbanks, or some neutral location (there’s a fierce rivalry between Anchorage and Fairbanks), but nixed the idea as too expensive.

the almighty bear

Well, we got a brief preview of Anchorage after we disembarked the ship in Seward. The cost of a one-way car rental out of Seward with a drop-off in Anchorage was science-fictional, so we hopped on a bus, rode the 127 miles to Anchorage, spent the night in a hotel, picked up a round-trip rental car, and returned to Seward to begin our exploration of the Kenai Peninsula.

We liked Anchorage. With a population of just over 400,000, it’s a big city in a small-city kind of way. It’s clean, the people are friendly, and it doesn’t look at all like the Disneyland of cruise-ship Alaska. They actually have stores here that sell something other than souvenirs. Breath of fresh air!

reindeer sausage and ground elk pizza, it’s called “Not Your Lower 48” pizza.

Note: There appears to be a rivalry between Alaska and Texas over the size thing, although Texans are conspicuously quiet on the subject from what I’ve observed. I think Texas deserves to be razzed a bit about being #2, especially given that Texas congressmen (Lyndon Johnson was one of them) did not want to cede Texas’s claim as the largest state and voted against statehood for Alaska in the 1950s.

Dissin’ Texas

Awww!

approaching Hubbard Glacier through Yakutat Bay

blue wall of ice

approximately 5 miles from the glacier face

iceberg with bergy bits and growlers

beautiful Coast Mountains

On our last day of the cruise we sailed into Yakutat Bay to view Hubbard Glacier.

Note: Pieces of ice that have broken off the glacier and are floating in the water are categorized by size. Those that rise 16 or more feet above the surface of the water are called icebergs. Those that rise 3-16 feet above the water are called bergy bits. (No kidding!) And those that rise less than 3 feet are called growlers.

some of the many islets in Sitka Sound

Governor's Totem Pole with a likeness of Baranov at the top

Russian Orthodox church of St. Michael

Mount Edgecumbe with its head in the clouds

a hike through the rainforest

Old Sitka, Baranov's original settlement, at the north end of the island's only road (6 miles long)

Was very much looking forward to seeing Sitka, the capital of Russian America, after reading James Michener’s Alaska. He told such an engaging story of Alexander Baranov, the real-life manager of the Russian-American fur trading company who came from Siberia to establish some sense of order amongst the Russian sea otter hunters, most of whom were convicts serving life sentences in one of the most formidable environments on Earth. Baranov, a business genius who turned the Company into a Pacific powerhouse, did not do so well by the Tlingit (KLIN-kit) natives. Eventually he took the prized hilltop on the island from them by force, naming it Castle Hill and building his rustic “castle” at the top with spectacular views of Mount Edgecumbe volcano on Kruzof Island across Sitka Sound.

We climbed Castle Hill, now just a paved hilltop, and looked out across the Sound, but views of Edgecumbe eluded us. Even on this sunny day, its head was in the only clouds to be seen.

As we departed Sitka by ship that evening, we happened to dine in the Italian restaurant in the aft end of the ship. As we rounded Kruzof Island and looked up from our antipasti and prosecco, there was the volcano peeking out from behind the clouds. Farewell, Sitka!

Mount Edgecumbe bidding us farewell

It’s one thing to see a still photo of a stream full of salmon, but it’s something else to see them in motion. We were blown away with how full of fish the Taiya River was. And the water was so shallow that you wonder how they can swim through it. These salmon–pink salmon, also called humpies for the humps on their backs–were barely swimming, more like maintaining their positions in the stream without making any headway. As they approach the end of their life cycle, they can barely make their way to the lake or stream where they hatched to begin the next generation. They never really readjust to the fresh water after living in the Pacific Ocean for years. They stop eating and use what energy they have left to swim–or flop–upstream. Some of them were pretty ragged looking, and the males were already starting to challenge each other for dominance. Sea gulls, not strong enough to go after younger, more robust salmon, were taking advantage of their weakness by swooping down and pecking at them.

Salmon spawning is one of nature’s many interesting phenomena. There are so many people and wildlife in Alaska that depend on it. So exciting to witness it first hand.