How long should one stare at a Puffin?
It’s a question we all ask ourselves. Personally all the Puffin time I need is two minutes. For my husband it is at least an hour, so in Seward he was in Puffin heaven.
It was the first weekend in October and we were in Seward for my daughter’s high school swim meet at Seward High. The school is surrounded by such spectacular mountain peaks that for a moment I decided there was no way the students there could ever stop noticing them. But I know that’s wrong, of course they have stopped noticing. They’re teenagers. I actually felt the need to take a photo of the school’s football field. When my son asked me what I was doing, I said “can you imagine seeing a football game here with those mountains as the back drop?” He looked at the field confused, then responded, “mom you’re so weird. Can we go now?”
Since we had never been to Seward, we decided to stay overnight and do a little sightseeing. Seward is located on Resurrection Bay and is known as the “Gateway to the Kenai Fjords.” There are multiple adventure outfitters running kayak tours and fishing charters out in the summer but we had missed the season by a few weeks. Most of the recreation businesses and the adjacent restaurants were located in the harbor area and had already shut down for the season. My husband loves the quiet, locals only feel of any place in the off season. I do too, but this time I had a feeling like we had arrived too late to a party where the only people left are a couple making out and one guy passed out on the couch with a loose hold on a soggy box of crackers. Oh great, now the couple is grabbing their jackets and heading out.
Making a note to come back next summer to do the Kayak tour. If kayaking in Kenai Fjords National Park is anything like kayaking in Antarctica, the kids need to experience it. And yes, Antarctica, here is my sister in front of me, you can’t hear it in this mini video, but in the distance we’d hear glaciers collapsing (see end of this post about Obama visiting Seward to review the effects global warming)
On this October weekend what was still open was the Alaska Sealife Center.
The Sealife Center is located by Resurrection bay, and inside there is, well, sea life. I assume we all know what a seal looks like which is good because I wasn’t able to get a good photo of one. My sister (in video above) is an amazing professional photographer check out marlarutherford.com, she has shown me the camera settings one needs to get a clear action shot, but despite this all my seal shots were blurry.
Left: I was able to get a great clear photo of this Tiger Rockfish though!
The Seward Sealife Center isn’t exactly the Atlanta Aquarium, but then Seward isn’t Atlanta. So there’s that. It’s pretty small, and each ticket was $30. I knew my husband Mark was going to struggle to make this one cost effective. When it comes to the price of admissions for any aquarium or museum my husband determines the return on investment based on duration of visit. Me, I’m happy to pop in and out and maybe learn a few things on the way before hitting the gift shop. The Sealife Center gift shop is quite nice.
To draw out the time, Mark read and re-read every plaque in the center, and quizzed Tatum and Anders on the two different types of Puffins (answer: tufted and horned) and various fish species until they started to hide from him. I knew it was time to ditch my family when Tatum came running to me to announce, “dad is being inappropriate in the touch tank!” Of course he is. I looked over to see Mark was cracking himself up/embarrassing our son by loudly “oohing and ahhing” as he fondled an anemone.
Did you know Seward is the “Mural Capital of Alaska?” You did? Oh. I didn’t.
I snuck out of the Center and wandered Seward’s cute downtown. That’s when I noticed all the murals. My favorite is this one downtown by Byron Birdsall.
A 360 View
My second favorite mural is one of two puffins (left: tufted, right: horned) on the side of our hotel in the harbor. Hotel 360 is the perfect hotel to stay at. If you want a water/glacier view, make sure to request one. Early this morning I opened our blackout curtains to see this sunrise.
Doesn’t matter the season, Seward is always stunning.
I miss the Obamas
There is a confections shop called Sweet Dreams in Seward and in the two days we were there we visited it twice. If we had been there a day more it would have been thrice. There is a photo in the shop taken when Obama came to visit Seward in 2015. When I spotted it I felt nostalgic.
Obama was there to climb and view Exit Glacier and see firsthand how the effects of global warming. It has been dramatic. When it comes to the glaciers in the area, what we are seeing today is just a little ice peeking out compared to the mass it once was. It’s unnerving.
Still feeling the Obamas, on the ride back to Soldatna we listened to Michelle Obama on the podcast, “Conan Needs a Friend.” Every once in a while we find an episode on a show that the whole family loves listening to. This one was both funny and inspirational, making me feel like a good mom for exactly 56 minutes.