Summer Travel Map

Thursday, July 2, 2009

A quick tour of Seward

July 2, 2009
Seward, AK

Today, we did a little driving around in Seward, which is about all you can do since it's a very small and compact little town. It's named for the Secretary of State who engineered the purchase of Alaska from Russia (not a contraction of the word "seaward", although it's only 17 miles out Resurrection Bay to the sea). We took a drive south of town to a spot called Miller's Landing, where there's a small neighborhood of houses. Geri found one that had patterns molded into the wooden siding of the house. Most of the residents in this area have some sort of clever sign hanging outside. "Penny" has a thing for confinement, and Geri got a photo of the "inmates" as well.












Just outside town, we passed a nice waterfall right on the side of the road, so we had to stop for pictures there. It was about 100' high, and had a pretty strong flow for this late in the snow-melt season. Once we were done touring, we headed for the harbor area to check out day cruises in the Kenai Fjords National Park, which is mostly accessible only by boat or plane. We liked the itinerary of the full-day cruise but not the duration (having to leave the pups in the coach too long), so we were thinking about a half-day version. The staff at the office told me to check with one of the other companies that had a 6-hour version of the full-day route (it would be nice to think they would recommend "the competition" until you find out that all the tour companies are under common ownership), which was great for us. With a two-for-one coupon from the Alaska Toursaver discount book (no, I didn't find the one I'd bought before we left AZ, so I had to buy another - we'll still be ahead by the end of the trip), we were quickly ticketed for tomorrow's sailing.

To celebrate, we decided that it was a good time to plan a dinner out. While I checked the fire hydrants for Albertville labels, Geri scoped out the menus and prices at the two most promising candidates in terms of restaurants, and we decided on Chinook's Waterfront. I had grilled salmon with a chipotle-mango-pomegranate sauce (yes, salmon again - I'm not a huge fan but try to indulge when I can get fresh Pacific salmon) that was excellent, and Geri had a pound of king crab that was wonderful. With a nice bottle of Simi Chardonnay, we were happy campers.

1 comment:

Dave Thompson said...

Complaining about the salmon are we ... If the salmon is cooked "dry", a little olive oil, salt and pepper and grilled, the meat just flakes apart but often it's cooked in a sauce of some sort and it comes across as greasy ... like Atlantic Salmon.

... and it's good for ya too !

In the box below I have to type in a "word verification" to ensure that it's not some bot sending this message. Beside the box is a wheelchair sign -- if I'm in a wheelchair I get a different word ? I'll have to try that sometime.