DrewE's Alaska Trip Travelogue
I returned about a week ago from a marvelous ten-week trip to and through Alaska (and back) with my dear mother. I went in a 32' class C, actually about 35' overall with a bicycle rack on the back, w...
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August 14th -- We started out the day at the Portage Lake (and Glacier) area, including looking through the visitor's center. We did not take the little cruise to the glacier, as I recall partly due to poor meshing of our schedule with the cruise times. The visitor's center complex is nicely done, and has a magnificent setting among the mountains and glaciers, even though the Portage glacier itself is no longer visible from the visitor's center.
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Many of the various park visitor's centers have three dimensional topographic maps of the area. This is the one here, and it gives a handy overview of the general area...
Click For Full-Size Image.
...and a fair distance beyond.
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A view from just outside the visitor's center
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Looking across Portage Lake
There is somewhat of a view of the glacier from a big turnoff just before the tunnel to Whittier. The edge where it meets the water is not visible, though.
Click For Full-Size Image.
Looking across the lake from this turnoff. I think this glacier is not the Portage Glacier.
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I think the one on the left is the Portage Glacier; my memory on that detail is a little foggy, though.
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Looking back down the road from the turnoff.
After Portage, we continued down the Seward Highway all the way to Seward. On the way, we stopped briefly at Canyon Creek, where a short walk down a trail (a segment of a longer bike trail) leads to and over the former highway bridge over Canyon Creek. This has a quite pretty view and, as I recall, a couple benches from which to enjoy it.
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Canyon Creek (upstream)
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Canyon Creek (downstream, towards its confluence with Sixmile Creek, just beyond the new highway bridge)
Seward is situated at the end of Resurrection Bay, in an impressive setting among the mountains. It's a main access point to the Kenai Fjords National Park, which is inaccessible by road; cruises and flights are available, however. The city runs a number of campgrounds, the larger portion of which all sort of merge together along the waterfront. We stayed in Resurrection South, which is one of these waterside campgrounds. It's really more of a big parking lot with tables and fire pits, but it is convenient and the views across the water are fun. A bit further inland is a municipal tent camping area that looked pretty nice with decently sized sites and trees and so forth.
Click For Full-Size Image.
A portion of the large small boat harbor at Seward. (The boats are small; the harbor is large.)
Click For Full-Size Image.
RVs making use of the camping area; DrewE's is not really visible.
Click For Full-Size Image.
Besides a number of other RVers, we were sharing Seward with the Crystal Serenity cruise ship. In spite of what one may imagine, the crowds were actually not unmanageable. Seward has a convenient free circulator shuttle bus that runs during the day.
We stayed two nights at Seward. On the 15th, we took a glacier cruise with Kenai Fjords Tours that proved to be exceptional; there will be much more about that in the next installment. Seward is also home to the Alaska SeaLife Center, which we did not see but seems to be quite highly regarded. (We both felt that there were other things we'd prefer to spend our limited time in Alaska seeing. I do have a world-class aquarium within reasonable driving distance from my house, the New England Aquarium in Boston.)
Many of the various park visitor's centers have three dimensional topographic maps of the area. This is the one here, and it gives a handy overview of the general area...
...and a fair distance beyond.
A view from just outside the visitor's center
Looking across Portage Lake
There is somewhat of a view of the glacier from a big turnoff just before the tunnel to Whittier. The edge where it meets the water is not visible, though.
Looking across the lake from this turnoff. I think this glacier is not the Portage Glacier.
I think the one on the left is the Portage Glacier; my memory on that detail is a little foggy, though.
Looking back down the road from the turnoff.
After Portage, we continued down the Seward Highway all the way to Seward. On the way, we stopped briefly at Canyon Creek, where a short walk down a trail (a segment of a longer bike trail) leads to and over the former highway bridge over Canyon Creek. This has a quite pretty view and, as I recall, a couple benches from which to enjoy it.
Canyon Creek (upstream)
Canyon Creek (downstream, towards its confluence with Sixmile Creek, just beyond the new highway bridge)
Seward is situated at the end of Resurrection Bay, in an impressive setting among the mountains. It's a main access point to the Kenai Fjords National Park, which is inaccessible by road; cruises and flights are available, however. The city runs a number of campgrounds, the larger portion of which all sort of merge together along the waterfront. We stayed in Resurrection South, which is one of these waterside campgrounds. It's really more of a big parking lot with tables and fire pits, but it is convenient and the views across the water are fun. A bit further inland is a municipal tent camping area that looked pretty nice with decently sized sites and trees and so forth.
A portion of the large small boat harbor at Seward. (The boats are small; the harbor is large.)
RVs making use of the camping area; DrewE's is not really visible.
Besides a number of other RVers, we were sharing Seward with the Crystal Serenity cruise ship. In spite of what one may imagine, the crowds were actually not unmanageable. Seward has a convenient free circulator shuttle bus that runs during the day.
We stayed two nights at Seward. On the 15th, we took a glacier cruise with Kenai Fjords Tours that proved to be exceptional; there will be much more about that in the next installment. Seward is also home to the Alaska SeaLife Center, which we did not see but seems to be quite highly regarded. (We both felt that there were other things we'd prefer to spend our limited time in Alaska seeing. I do have a world-class aquarium within reasonable driving distance from my house, the New England Aquarium in Boston.)
