Alaska - I helped buy Alaska and all I got was a town named after me

After breakfast on our first full day here in Kenai, we met up with our tour guide and two ladies who were the only ones from their friend group that wanted to take this tour today. The tour is known as the Explore Historic Seward and is described on the website as a 7.25 hour tour currently retailing for $49.95 per person. The tour is basically a shuttle ride into the small town of Seward with optional side stops to Exit Glacier and/or a ride on an Iditarod dog sled at extra cost. Your guide will provide tips on places to check out while in town but otherwise this would be a ride into town, choose stuff to do on your own, and meet back up to get a ride back to the lodge at a certain time scenario. Anything that costs admission is your responsibility as well.

Given our small group, our guide treated it like a private tour and her a hired driver promising to take us wherever we felt like going and pick us up whenever and from wherever in town when we called her. Our guide was full of great stories and tips so it was like chatting with a new old friend during the drive.

Our tour companions for today. The young lady in the blue jacket and glasses is our tour guide.

We all agreed to our guide's offer to stop at a beautiful lake.

Then it was on to the Benny Benson Memorial. John Ben "Benny" Benson was the 13 year old student who designed the state flag of Alaska. His design won a contest held back in 1927 even though Alaska was still only a territory until 1959. He described his design choice as blue for the Alaska sky and the forget-me-not flower, the North Star for the future of Alaska, and the Big Dipper for the Great Bear which represented strength and power. 

Once in the center of town, the other two women in our group chose to visit a grocery store while we opted for the aquarium known as The Alaska SeaLife Center. Our guide dropped us off first and drove off with the other two women. We purchased two general admission tickets which according to my picture cost around $20 each then for adults. The small print says that Alaska residents, AAA members, seniors, and military discounts are available. 

Now the website lists ticket price breakdowns as $29.95 for an adult and that is considered age 13 and above. Military discounted price is $25.95 and a child aged 3-12 is $17.95. 

Just in case you have trouble telling your entrances from your exits, they have helpful signs when you walk up to the first exhibit just past the ticket lines.

Do you ever just look at a warning on a product label and wonder the story behind why the company had to put that on there? I.E. a tube of Preparation H says "Not to be taken orally." What aquarium visitor tried to smuggle out some salmon in their pants to inspire this sign?

The SeaLife Center is quite extensive for such a small town and you easily spend a couple hours wandering among the tanks. The harbor seals were really in the mood to put on a show for us.

Swimming forward on his belly and floating the other way on his back makes for one tired harbor seal

Next up was one of my favorite exhibits - the Seabirds:

Can a puffin have a bad feather day?

This guy looked like he was living his best life:

Time for some more tank life:

Our cruise tour guide Lori taught us the 5 finger method for remembering the different types of salmon. Your thumb rhymes with chum, your pointer finger stands for sockeye (as in poke someone's eye out), your middle finger stands for King (because it is the tallest/biggest), your ring finger stands for Silver and lastly Pink for your pinkie.

There's also a back patio viewing area where you can step outside and view Resurrection Bay with a couple signs referencing what you're seeing.

Back inside to make our way down to the lower levels brings us to a tank of Manatees! Friends of Chessie perhaps?

Doesn't this make you want to climb in there and rub his belly?

I don't know what you were called sir so I shall dub thee  - the stink eye fish:

Same fish - now swimming up and away from me - that's not an air bubble by his mouth:

Hey, who told this guy I chose the King Crab legs for dinner the other night?

I'd also like to apologize 4 years in advance for choosing your fellow man as my new food to try on the last RCL sailing. Is he waving and flipping me off at the same time? 

This guy was dabbing before dabbing was a thing:

Someone (not us) decided to share their displeasure at finding the otter tank empty:

Seems all the otters were away at Hogwarts:

Our guide/driver had suggested her favorite place for lunch in town so we sauntered that way after the aquarium. It turns out that she was also there getting lunch so we offered to have her join us. The place was called Zudy's Café and we enjoyed a meal of warm paninis and chips. Service was a little slow though but the company for our meal was delightful. It was great asking her questions about living in Alaska and working for Princess.

Next up - a walk along the waterfront and an earthquake.

Alaska - Waves Over Seward

Now that we've explored what's under the water, we ventured out to take in the views along the waterfront. Where's a good place to start this exploration? Well at the beginning of course:

Now I can say I've visited Mile Marker 0 (in Key West) and Mile Marker 0 here in Alaska. One's for a highway and one is for the Iditarod race. This marker is essentially at the other end of the street from the aquarium. 

Next up was a monument commemorating the city's founding by the Alaskan Central Railway Company as the spot where the ocean ends and the railroad tracks begin to travel into the interior of Alaska. 

Our next stop was to walk back past the aquarium and further back up the road to the Seward Community Library and Museum. Dad was really interested in seeing the movie "Waves Over Seward" about the catastrophic 9.2 earthquake that hit the town in 1964. The movie combines storytelling and interviews with footage from that day. The earthquake caused the entire contents of Resurrection Bay to come up and over the town. First from the waves caused by the earthquake and then hit again by a 30 foot Tsunami that followed the quake 25 minutes later.

You know how they say you shouldn't stare at a screen for too long or it will hurt your eyes? This picture is the outside paint job of the library. It takes walking up a small but steep hill on the paved road to reach it from the aquarium but when you reach the top of that hill and see the sun gleaming off those metallic blues and purples, you'll be reaching for your sunglasses.

The movie theater space is on your right when you walk in to the building but you go into the museum portion on your left to purchase tickets to see the movie. We had arrived about 15 minutes before the next movie showing so after paying for our tickets (current price $4 for ages 13+) we chose to browse the basically one room museum dedicated to the history of Seward. There was no flash photography allowed and the ladies at the library/museum desk admitted they got a chuckle out of watching everyone have to figure out how to turn the flash off on their cameras. We had each just picked up bottles of water only to be told they weren't allowed in the museum. The ladies agreed to let us leave them at the desk (which was really just 10 feet away from the artifacts) until we were done. 

A few examples of the artifacts we saw in the museum:

The bulk of the display was dedicated to a recreation of the Peel house. I'm not sure it was intentional but some of the mannequins used in this museum looked like they were extras in the latest horror movie.

Back out in the hallway, I stopped to admire the wall of donators. Didn't find a spot dedicated to Princess but the group of cruise lines under the Royal Caribbean umbrella was well represented.

The movie theater is essentially a big screen mounted on the front wall and rows of folding chairs lined up in front of it. There was a small crowd that showed up for the movie that we never saw join us in checking out the museum. The movie itself was quite riveting and kept my attention. It was very interesting to learn about all that had happened to this sleepy little town and see real footage from that day described in a way to make you feel like you were there in real time. 

With those images fresh in our minds, we returned to the waterfront and this time walked further past those monuments and around the perimeter of the large trailer/camping park along the water. The park was jam packed with tents, pop up campers, and full size RVs. 

And of course being the cruise nerd I am - I spotted a Silversea ship at the far end of the waterfront.

By now we'd satisfied all we had in mind for Seward so we called our guide to come pick us up. Surprisingly she had no trouble understanding our "edge of the trailer park" directions. When she arrived, our chariot was empty sans the grocery bags in the back and we learned that the other ladies had opted to be dropped off after shopping for lunch in town. We rode along as she headed back to the restaurant to pick them up. It was nice to swap stories about our separate adventures once we were back together again.

Everyone was still feeling energetic so we agreed to our guide's suggestion of stopping at Exit Glacier on the way back to Kenai. The glacier is visible on the side of a mountain so we got out for a view from the road. 

And what you get when you're giddy over having a new 200m zoom lens - taken from the same spot as the above pictures.

And a little perspective:

Once back on the road, we were all just enjoying chatting with each other and hearing about life in Alaska from our guide (including her lack of indoor plumbing) when our guide suddenly yells "Moose!" She asks if any of us saw the same moose she apparently did down in the valley we had just passed. None of us had even been paying attention to anything besides our conversations. She asked if we minded taking the time to backtrack in hopes of seeing it and we were all for it. Another great result of only having a small group on this tour. As soon as she reached a place to turn around we headed back and stopped on the side of the road. I don't know how in the world she ever spotted this creature deep in the valley but we were soon rewarded with the sight of not only one moose but a mom moose with her baby. We all stood there quietly watching the baby wander through the field with mom keeping watch from a distance. One of those beautiful fleeting moments that you just have to stop and enjoy, not worrying about getting the perfect picture or selfie.