Day 48: Dog Sledding & Exit Glacier

On the training sled

Today is our first day on the tour of Seward, the sun is out, the day is young and we have a full day planned. First up is dog sledding at Seavy's Ididaride dog sledding training grounds just outside of Seward on the way to Exit Glacier. We ride a summer sled with 14 dogs and get to pet puppies. After the dog fix, we head up to Exit glacier for a short hike to the view point to see Exit glacier. Un knowing to me, wearing shorts I rub across some wild parsnip and later develop a dark red itching rash just above my left angle above the sock line. We snap some great pictures and head back down to camp to meet up with some camping friends Joanne and Charlie that are in town with family. We also get another walk in on the bay as a really nice paved trail is right in front of the camp site along the bay for a couple miles between downtown and the marina where the tour boats park. We make the walk to a restaurant called Chinooks where we meet up with Charlie and Joanne and family for a great dinner on the bay.

Yoli and Nan love on some dogs

Sled Dogs in Training

Exit Glacier

Dinner with friends

Day 47: Seward

It is Friday July 21 and we spend the day getting organized in the RV while Tom & Nan go on a 4 hour wildlife boat tour. We make a trip to the grocery store to stock up, walk downtown Seward and finish the day with a bonfire on the bay. Our camp spot is site #473 on the water at Ressurection Bay South campground. There are at least 4 campgrounds along Ressurection bay south of the marina all managed by the city of Seward. $40 a night gets you a nice spot on the bay but no hookups at the site. We do have access to water and a dump station across the street. We typically can last a week before we dump, with two more people on board it will be a stretch.

Hot Dog Roast

Camp Seward

Resurrection Bay

Camp #473 Resurrection Bay South

Day 46: Alyeska & Whittier

Beluga Point on Cook Inlet

Today, we did some quick shopping at Cabela's and then hit the road. It was raining most the day yesterday and this morning, the sun appeared for our drive to Seward. Its only a 2-3 hour drive but we made stops at Alyeska Resort and Whittier on the way. Alyeska resort was very beautiful and we took advantage of the sunshine and hopped on the Ski tram to the top of the mountain for a view of Cook inlet. The town is called Girdwood and is located on Turnagain Arm just south of Anchorage. The view from top of the tram lift was awesome. We ate lunch with a view and downed a couple margaritas to boot. After spending a couple hours on the mountain, we headed down and continued our journey to Seward. Next stop was Whittier through the 2.5 mile train tunnel. lt was going to cost $38 to drive the RV through the tunnel so we disconnected the Jeep and drove the Jeep through the tunnel for $13, a much better deal for sure. We spent less than an hour through the tunnel and in Whitter as we wanted to catch the 4pm tunnel opening as each direction is on the hour or half hour, so one hour instead of two was fine for our quick visit to Whittier. We make the 4pm tunnel trip, hook up the jeep and continue on towards Seward around 4:30pm. We make a stop at what I call swan lake as their are two swans and some baby swans that hang out there. I saw them 5 years ago here and sure enough, they were here again. After a quick photo stop, we push on to Seward to arrive at the campground on Resurrection Bay round 6pm. We setup camp, and now its wine down time. Hello Tom & Nan, welcome to Alaska, let the fun begin.

Alyeska Resort Tram Mountain Vista

Alyeska Resort

Tram View

Portage Lake

Whittier Harbor

Whittier Inlet

Swan Lake

Portage Lake

Alyeska Resort

Day 45: Tom & Nan

We drove from Matanuska Glacier to Anchorage today. As soon as we came into town, we made our provisioning rounds at the grocery store, gas station for Fuel and Propane, and dumped/filled our tanks. We made our way to Cabela's sporting goods where we plan to spend the night in the parking lot. We dropped the Jeep and went to the airport to pick up Tom and Nancy around 8pm. We finally get back to the RV around 9 pm, get all their gear stowed and call it a night. Tomorrow we head to the Kenai Pennisula for the week.
Miles: 102 / 4513

Day 44: Matanuska Glacier

Today we left Valdez and headed up Thompson pass past Blueberry lake. We stopped at Worthington Glacier for a quick photo op. We skipped the hike as weather was still not the best. On our way to Matanuska Glacier we go through GlenAllen and hang a left to exit off the Richardson highway onto the Glenn Highway. We go past no less than three glaciers before arriving at the Mantanuska Glacier recreation area. We decide to skip the tree covered campground for $20/night and park in the open rest area with no trees and open sky for better solar and skylink not to mention a better view. We pop the slides, throw out the starlink have some dinner after a nice hike to the viewpoint. We did unhook the Jeep to drive down to the glacier. But, the glacier was closed to public access and could only be accessed by tour. The tour was 2 hours and $150 each so we passed as the weather was not that great still with some cloud cover. We called it a night and binged watched Madam Secretary on Netflix instead until 1am.

Miles: 204 / 4410

Typical Alaska Road Repair

Matanuska Glacier

Worthington Glacier

Mantanuska Glacier

Day: 38-43 Valdez, AK

We were in Valdez for 6 days and I think it rained four out of 6 days and was only partly sunny one day. Luckily the day we went out on the Lulu Belle wildlife and glacier tour it did not rain and was our best day. We saw lots of wildlife and plenty of floating ice and glacier face. The whales were the only think lacking on this trip. We did have the most wonderful fish and chips and we have had some bad ones in the past. These were light, fluffy, thick, and very tasty. We were not able to kayak the Valdez glacier as planned due to weather. We did get a good hike to Duck point near the campground. We also go some good trips around town on the E-Bikes. By far this was the least fun week due to rain. We got our laundry done, ate and drank way more than we should have.

Miles: 28 / 4206