Alaska -- Day 75

It has been another cool, cloudy day in Seward, Alaska. The high temp was 54 degrees. Last winter Alaska saw all-time record amounts of snow. July has been the coolest on record. The state is having a summer that they call a "little winter." We love to see sunshine, and we have seen it every day it was really important to our plans. However, we would rather be here in this chilly summer than in the lower 48 with your record-breaking heat and drought.

Today, sunshine didn't matter. We used our Alaska Toursaver book to visit the Alaska SeaLife Center here in Seward. Entrance for two cost one single ticket price of $20. We hadn't really known if we would visit this place or not when we first came here. But the more we heard about it, the more we realized we wanted to go. And are we ever glad we did. These two folks from Colorado saw sea life like we hadn't even imagined existed. But first, we saw more beautiful flowers here in town.







The SeaLife Center has numerous tanks of fish and other sea life, as well as facilities for birds and seals. They have some exhibits where you can touch some sea life, like sea stars and sea anemone. The facility rescues and cares for animals. This week they took in a six-week-old walrus calf, stranded near Barrow. We didn't get to see it, but facilities that care for creatures like that are certainly great.

We did learn a lot about the life-cycle of salmon, the various fish and other sea life that are harvested in the Bearing Sea,



and about the Exxon Valdez oil spill. The most startling facts I learned about the spill is it was not even among the 50 biggest oil spills in the world and that every 9 months, more oil goes into US marine waters from run-off from roads and parking lots and incidental land oil spills than came from the Exxon Valdez spill.

We saw numerous birds that were new to us. We had seen puffins on our cruise earlier this week and today, John finally got a really good photo of one. I have wanted to see and photograph puffins for at least 8 years, when we were first in Alaska. Finally!  It is a tufted puffin.




This is a parakeet auklet.



I'm pretty sure this is a king eider.



I know there were red-legged kittiwakes.  I don't know what this one is.



The bird on the left is a long-tailed duck and the bird on the right is a pigeon guillemot.



This is a black scoter.


We were able to watch stellar sea lions from above the water and also below. They moved too fast underwater to be able to photograph them.



The invertebrates are as beautiful as the flowers we had seen earlier.

Sea anemone.



A sea urchin.



Sea star.



I don't know what this is.



We were both fascinated by all we saw and learned so much. We know we will visit other aquariums in the future. It was a great experience.

Alaska -- Day 72

We took a 7 1/2 hour cruise out of Seward to Kenai Fjords National Park with Major Marine Cruises. Other than driving to Exit Glacier here in Seward, the only way to access the park is by boat. It was a wonderful day. Everyone has assigned seating at tables inside the heated cabin, so you have somewhere to spend the day, or somewhere to store your stuff while you go outside to watch the scenery.



Even most of the young children on board were interested most of the day.



It was a beautiful, sunny day. However, the wind off of Resurrection Bay and the Gulf of Alaska is cold, so we were really bundled up.



There was some fog. It obscured our view for a short while, but since that was while we were enjoying our salmon and prime rib, all-you-can-eat buffet, that was OK. At other times, the fog just made for pretty views.



We saw a number of humpback whales, sometimes 2 or 3 together. They flipped their tails for us.





Blew air spouts.





Look at close we came to one of them. I don't think my camera was even zoomed for this shot. It was really cool.



We also saw sea otters. At one point, Dan, the US Park Service ranger who was our interpreter for the trip, called this group of 24 or more otters a "raft." He said it was unusual to see so many at one time.



We also saw this pair of adults with a baby sitting on one of them.



This old fellow (Eskimos called the aging, white-faced sea otters, "old men") posed for us, rolling over several times.



We also saw a number of glaciers. This is Bear glacier, the largest in Kenai Fjords NP.



Look at the towering face of Holbrook glacier. We sat in front of it for some time, listening to the ice crack and watching a few small calving events.



We sat for a long time in front of Aialik glacier. Look at how still the water was. We had great reflections of the ice.



Aialik is a very noisy glacier. We heard lots of cracks, often sounding like gun shots. We saw numerous calving events (when a chunk of ice breaks off the glacier). Notice all the chunks of ice floating on the water surface.



The splash would settle down.



We weren't the only boat load of tourists out, enjoying the glacier action. This boat was a little smaller than the one we were on. There were also other, even smaller, boats out there.



Then the waves from the calving would make our boat roll. It is really dramatic.

We also were treated to harbor seals sunning on the rocks.



Stellar sea lions and birds, as well.



Last, but not least, a jelly fish.