{"id":6814,"date":"2019-08-06T17:00:40","date_gmt":"2019-08-07T00:00:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/cowlesmountain.com\/Travels\/?p=6814"},"modified":"2019-08-05T15:54:20","modified_gmt":"2019-08-05T22:54:20","slug":"seward-alaska","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cowlesmountain.com\/Travels\/2019\/08\/06\/seward-alaska\/","title":{"rendered":"Seward Alaska"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>Scored a great site right on Resurrection Bay for our time in Seward.\u00a0\u00a0 Kathy says it’s the prettiest view ever.\u00a0\u00a0 \"\"<\/a>We got here around 2 pm and there were plenty of open waterfront spaces.\u00a0 We picked one and pulled in, set up shop and put our chairs out in front by the large metal fire pit.<\/p>\n

Later in the afternoon I noticed the batteries were discharging more than I would have expected with the amount of sun then.\u00a0\u00a0 I checked out the solar and saw it wasn’t really charging.\u00a0\u00a0 I made a note of that so I could run the genny later.\u00a0\u00a0 Of course I didn’t remember to start the genny till 5 minutes before quiet time, so the next morning our batteries were lower than I had gotten them before.\u00a0 Nothing drastic, but we were down about 240 AH; so it was going to be interesting to see if we could get them back to 100% that day.<\/p>\n

In the morning I immediately deployed the solar suitcase to supplement the charge, which worked out well as we were at 100% by 5pm.\u00a0\u00a0 Solar is awesome!\u00a0 Having to run the genny… not so much.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Wednesday we got to sit out on the waterfront and drink our coffee on a glorious morning and did so each morning afterward.<\/p>\n

We drove over to Lowell Point, which was just a bit further south from town along a narrow gravel road along the bay.\u00a0 As we \"\"<\/a>drove out of Seward, there was a waterfall with a lot of water coming down right beside the road.\u00a0 It looked like it was coming off a concrete spillway.\u00a0\u00a0 They probably had to do that to prevent the road from getting washed out all the time.\u00a0\u00a0 Once we got to the Point, there were lots of homes and what looked to be vacation rentals and a campground of sorts.\u00a0\u00a0 Definitely not as nice as our waterfront spot.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a> \"\"<\/a> \"\"<\/a> \"\"<\/a> \"\"<\/a> \"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Then<\/p>\n

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\"\"<\/a>The next morning we drove out to the Exit Glacier along a smooth paved road.\u00a0 (I only mention that as most roads in Alaska are pretty rough)\u00a0 There were \"\"<\/a> signs along the road marking where the glacier’s toe was over the years.\u00a0 It has receded, like all the others, quite a lot.\u00a0\u00a0 In the not to distant future the fresh water situation may become a problem to a lot of folks.\u00a0 I’m sure that’s further away in Alaska, but it made me think of all the people that live near Glacier NP.\u00a0\u00a0 Those glaciers will be gone next summer. \u00a0 Water might become \"\"<\/a>an expensive commodity around there sooner than we might think.<\/p>\n

Prior to heading over the Exit Glacier, we searched \"\"<\/a>and found what we thought was a fish hatchery, but what we found was not as expected.\u00a0 It was an odd little place sort of sandwiched in the corner of a lot on the way into a small wooded residential area.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 It almost looked abandoned, especially due to a sign near the door that it wasn’t opening till July,\u00a0 and we were there the last day of July.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Being in a huge fishing community, I wanted some halibut fish & chips. Ray’s on the Waterfront had \"\"<\/a>reasonable reviews so we headed over.\u00a0 It was a nice place right on a boat marina, but my fish were very dry and way overcooked.\u00a0 Luckily for me a buddy called about our visit to Valdez and reminded me of the Bucket ‘O Butt at Thorn’s.\u00a0 The next evening we went there.\u00a0 Very good halibut fish and chips!<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>We had been seeing buildings across the bay the whole time at the campground, so one afternoon we decided to find a \"\"<\/a>way over there.\u00a0\u00a0 It turns out it really wasn’t very far.\u00a0 We have found that sometimes here in Alaska somewhere that looks really close is a very long drive due to the lack of roads.<\/p>\n

We got over there in just a few minutes and it was mainly shipyards.\u00a0 I had seen \"\"<\/a>a coast guard cutter on the bay a couple days prior, and now I saw it up on land being worked on.\u00a0\u00a0 Just past that was a guy remotely\"\"<\/a> driving a huge mobile boat lift.\u00a0\u00a0 I had seen much smaller ones in the past, but this one looked like it had picked up that very large coast guard cutter and placed it where it was.\u00a0\u00a0 He was driving it from a joystick mounted on a harness he was wearing.\u00a0 I was surprised it was wireless.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>From the other side of the bay I could just see a green roofed building that turned out to be a lot of 40′ containers stacked up in a U shape with a large metal green roof spanning the opening containers, making a huge building open on the south side.\u00a0 That was something I had not seen prior to now.<\/p>\n

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On the way back we tried to drive into a so-called campground that was \"\"<\/a>probably the ugliest place I had ever seen.\u00a0 It was so potholed, we turned around only a few feet into it.\u00a0 And it was more expensive than the beautiful spot we had!\u00a0 \u00a0Instead of going there, I would just camp in a turnout somewhere.<\/p>\n

We stopped along the route back and snapped a few pics of the town and our campground along the water.\u00a0 It was pretty far away, but one of the cruise ships at the dock is easy to see.\u00a0\u00a0 Our campground was\u00a0 about 1,000 yards to the left of that ship.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a> \"\"<\/a> \"\"<\/a> \"\"<\/a> \"\"<\/a> \"\"<\/a> \"\"<\/a> \"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

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\"\"<\/a>We heard about this gadget that sounds perfect for being off grid in Canada and Alaska.\u00a0 The Spot Gen 3 GPS satellite notifier,<\/a> so I have one being shipped to our campground in Tolsona to pick up when we leave Valdez next week.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Scored a great site right on Resurrection Bay for our time in Seward.\u00a0\u00a0 Kathy says it’s the prettiest view ever.\u00a0\u00a0 We got here around 2 pm and there were plenty of open waterfront spaces.\u00a0 We picked one and pulled in, set up shop and put our chairs out in front by the large metal fire … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “Seward Alaska”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6814","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-venturing-out-and-about"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cowlesmountain.com\/Travels\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6814","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cowlesmountain.com\/Travels\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cowlesmountain.com\/Travels\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cowlesmountain.com\/Travels\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cowlesmountain.com\/Travels\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6814"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/cowlesmountain.com\/Travels\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6814\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cowlesmountain.com\/Travels\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6814"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cowlesmountain.com\/Travels\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6814"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cowlesmountain.com\/Travels\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6814"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}