Wilderness Wandering

Day 8, July 30, 2025

We got up a little before 5:00 AM and got dressed. Our Lyft driver gave us a ride to the train station. We got our seats and boarded the train. 

The train was very enjoyable! They kind of narrated the trip pointing out eagles and historic points of interest. We left Anchorage at 6:45 AM and arrived in Seward at 11:00 AM. We had internet service part of the way. I noticed on Instagram that Brian, a young guy we met on The Southern Tier, was in Alaska. I messaged him and he was in Seward. We invited him to join us for dinner. 

Tim and I were planning on carrying our backpacks around all day. 

On the way to Seward, I looked up to see if there was a luggage service we could use. There’s a guy who will deliver your bags to your accommodation for $5 each. I emailed him and he said he’d meet us at the train station. We disembarked and found him. Then we walked into Seward and went to Kenai Fjords VC. We took our photo and stamped our passport and watched the movie. We asked the Ranger how we could get to Exit Glacier for the 2:30 Ranger led hike and he told us about a shuttle we can get. We walked over to reserve spots and walked around town until it was time to go. We arrived at Exit Glacier. At 2:30 PM a young Ranger named Naomi led us on a really informative hike. Naomi had a very cool story. Her parents were some of the original Rangers at Kenai Fjords in the 1980s when the park was created. She had a photo of herself by Exit Glacier when she was 6 or 7. Kenai Fjords has a version of the Jr. Ranger program for older kids called the Explorer Journal. It’s really amazing! We had to wait a while for our van to pick us up. A Backroads van pulled in. Tim went and talked to them. 

We chose to have dinner at at Resurrection Roadhouse which was close to where we are staying. We had seafood chowder, halibut!, and blueberry crisp with birch syrup which was to die for!

We were walking .7 miles to our hotel from dinner when we walked by people picking salmon berries. The woman looked at Tim and said “Tim?” It was the woman he’d been talking to about Backroads! Lol. Salmon berries are yum.

We made it to our hotel. Our luggage was in our room. The room is very nice! We had a relaxing night. 

Day 9, July 31, 2025

We couldn’t get an Uber to come to Steller Inn at 7:00 AM, so we walked the 2.5 miles to town and got breakfast sandwiches before we checked in for our marine tour of Kenai Fjords. We were on the Spirit of Adventure with Major Marine for a 7.5 hour tour.  The Spirit of Adventure is a large boat with two enclosed floors and three outdoor viewing areas. The day started with gray skies and started to mist as we boarded Major Marine’s cruise. 

Kenai Fjords is unusual because the majority of the park isn’t land or water, but ice. We saw a bald eagle before we even left the dock. The tour begins in Resurrection Bay, which is the northernmost ice free deep water harbor. It is why Seward developed into a town. We saw several sea otters floating as we went by. 

We visited two glaciers up close. We first visited Holgate Glacier. Holgate advances two inches per day from the Harding Ice Field. Next we visited the Aialik Glacier. It is a more “active” glacier in terms of calving. We saw several pieces of glacier break off that the tour guide estimated were as tall as a one story house.

Both glaciers were beautiful and very impressive. The crew fished a chunk of glacier out of the water and brought it on board and chipped it into beautiful chunks and declared a special on margaritas over glacier ice. We fell for the marketing ploy. The glacier ice was gorgeous! They told us the ice was probably around 700 years old! 

Continuing on, we saw sea lions lounging on rocks and puffins. We also saw Common Murre that resemble little penguins. They can drive up to 590 feet!!  We had fun when a school of Dall’s porpoises played along side the boat for a while. We saw one or two humpback whales spout. But all of a sudden our captain told us to hang on because he  was going to show us something cool. We approached a huge circle of birds flying right above the water. All of a sudden, 5-7 humpback whales were surfacing in a circle! It’s called bubble net feeding and they only do it for a few weeks in the summer. They cooperatively blow bubbles to corral schools of fish or krill into a tight vertical space, then lunge through the “net” with open mouths to feed. It is such an amazing sight to see them working cooperatively! The birds were an indicator of where the whales would surface.  

The bubble net feeding and glacier calving were the highlights of the day for us (and possibly the warm brownies they served as an afternoon treat). I am super disappointed we didn’t get to see any orca whales though.

We called a cab after the boat ride to take us to Salmon Bake Restaurant for dinner. Salmon Bake claims to have cheap beer and lousy food. We didn’t have a beer but the food was NOT lousy.  We had the salmon bake meal which is broiled sockeye salmon with a baked potato. The portion was huge and very flavorful!

We both left stuffed and very happy. We walked the 1/2 mile back to our room where we took hot showers to shake off the chill from the cold rainy day.