The Seward Trip: The Drive, the Cruise, and the Portage Glacier Visitor's Center.


Created: 9/6/98


We continued our voyage, with the addition of the Florida Hoys, by venturing down to Seward and taking a Glacier Cruise from Resurrection Bay.

NOTE: Most of the pictures are links to a larger version of that picture, so click away!


The drive down to Seward was mostly fog and rain. However, the fog did clear from time to time, and allowed a few spectacular photo opportunities. A few side trips were necessary to catch some of the photos, as the fog kept toying with our view and we had to run around a little to get good shots.


As we departed the following morning on our cruise, we looked back on Seward, which is a very nice harbor town on Resurrection Bay. The mountain shown on the left is where the annual mountain race is held, in which people run up (then back down) the mountain as fast as possible. There are rarely fatalities during this race, but a lot of people get injured trying to run back down (many racers strap their ankles, knees, and elbows in padding and duct tape to try and prevent injury).


The main point of the cruise, of course, was to see Glaciers, and quite a few were seen from the ship.


In fact, the weather was nice enough that the Captain was able to take us to see a glacier that was a little further out than normal, but was larger than the Glacier the cruise normally visited. This is a view of the glacier as we approached it.

The following 3 pictures are an attempt at capturing all of the glacier in some detail. If you look carefully, the middle picture shows some "calving", which is ice falling off the glacier. Actually, the picture shows the water splashing when the ice hit.


In addition to glaciers, there was quite a bit of wildlife to be seen. Unfortunately, no whales were encountered during this cruise (which disappointed many people on board), but puffins, seals, and other various species were seen. There was even a brief visit from some porpoises, although the visit was much too brief to get a photo.


Of course, there was no shortage of stunning scenery during the trip, as well.