Sunday July 6, 2014 Seward, Alaska

We slept in this morning.  After I made coffee and caught up on computer activities we tried to tune into the net cast from Church.  There were problems and we couldn't get it to come in..
I went out and found a nearby geocache.  This one had a twist.  The coordinates took you to a point of interest and then you had to follow directions to the cache.  I drove around awhile trying to find my way to another cache,  the closest I could get was a trailhead with about 1/4 mile to walk.  I didn't go for it.

I forgot to mention that a couple in our celebrated their 40th wedding anniversary yesterday.  At that celebration one of our talented group members, Dale Christie, sang.  He has done this for birthdays and back in Lake Louise he sang Oh Canada.  What a voice!

In the early afternoon we drove into town to see the sights.  We visited the Alaska Sealife Center.  It is a large center, kind of like an aquarium but also has underwater viewing of seals, sea lions and diving birds.

After we had lunch I tried to find a nearby cache with no luck, although someone else had logged it today.  I did find another that was supposed to be a travel bug hotel which showed 15 travel bugs present.  When I found it there were none.  Some of the travel bugs had been missing nearly two years.  Some people just don't know how the game is played.

The cruise ship is in the harbor

There was a Holland America cruise ship in port and we had seen their buses on the highway yesterday.  Today we also saw a Princess cruise line bus, but no ship.

A puffin at the Sealife Center

We got back to the RV Park in plenty of time to catch the shuttle to the harbor for our tour and dinner. It is about 6 miles into town.  We waited in a light rain for the boat to arrive.  After boarding we traveled down Resurrection Bay to a small island with a sheltered cove with a lodge and disembarked for a buffet

I got to ride a wild Orca

dinner featuring salmon and prime rib.  Gerri also had a 1/2 pound order of King Crab legs.  Resurrection Bay was named by a Russian sea captain who was driven into the bay by a storm in the Gulf of Alaska.  The storm abated on Easter Sunday, so he named the bay Resurrection Bay.

Behind the lodge where we ate, my first panoramic shot with the iPhone

On the cruise to dinner we saw an eagle and some seabirds.  The Captain of the boat gave us some history of the area.  Seward was for many years the main seaport for inland Alaska.  The tsunamis from the 1964 earthquake changed all that and many businesses didn't recover or started back up in Anchorage.  Seward now has only 2500 year around residents.  On the way back from dinner we saw Sealions, Puffins, two Humpback whales and Black-legged Kittiwakes.

Behind the lodge where we ate

The boat ride back to Seward and then the shuttle ride brought us back to the coach at 9 PM.  Gerri started a load of wash.  Since it was raining beyond a drizzle, I decided to wait until in the morning to unhook the utilities and hook up the Jeep.  I am willing to take the chance it will be nicer in the morning because the clouds are high and thin.

Puffins in the wild, picture by Dave Johnson.

Tomorrow we drive to Homer, a little over 160 miles.  About 60 miles is a backtrack of our drive from Palmer to Seward.

This was another good day, Not the weather but the scenery, the company and the food.