Pandemonium by the Sea

ALASKA! Part 12: Seward and Hope

OK, I’m fudging this a bit, because some of these photos were taken from Day 11.   We got into Seward in the late afternoon after having fished all day in the semi-rain on the Russian River, and we were really ready to be cozy and dry. You drive into Seward from the North, and we were distressed that to get to our bed and breakfast we had to drive through town and south, onto a rough road, past a trailer park and an abandoned railcar. How far do we have to go? We were cold and wet. But the Paddle Inn was adorable, and the room was my favorite of all the places we stayed in Alaska. “Inn” is a big stretch: There are two rooms: High Tide and Low Tide. The owners live in a house next door.   I would have been content to stay here for a couple of nights and explore the Kenai Peninsula and Resurrection Bay, but this was our last night in Alaska.

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The interesting thing about that Paddle Inn was that it looked handmade. Perhaps the owners had built it themselves? I wish we had had time to ask about it. But whoever made it did it right, and we enjoyed the huge picture window overlooking Resurrection Bay, the gas fireplace, the big bed, and the large tile shower. We took hot showers and warmed up by the fire, then went into town for dinner. Here is the town of Seward – reminiscent of a ski town, but on the water:

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We ate dinner at a seafood restaurant on the harbor. Seward has one of the prettiest harbors I’ve seen, with mountains jutting up on the other side of the bay. It’s less pretty when there’s a giant cruise ship in dock – I’ve come to think of these big boats as the scourge of Alaska.   Here is my not-very-good panorama of the harbor minus cruise ship:

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After a good seafood dinner we watched the spectacle on the dock, where the day’s catch is cut up:

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Then back to our cozy room as dusk settled over Resurrection Bay at about 10 p.m.

 

The next day was our last in Alaska. We had no particular plans but thought we would hike somewhere. It was raining, however, and we just couldn’t bear to get wet again, because whatever we were wearing would stay on us through the red-eye back to the East Coast. So we opted just to drive around.

 

First stop was Exit Glacier. Love this sign from the Visitors’ Center, which was dead serious:

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Exit Glacier is receding rapidly; there are paths in front of it that show the somewhat slow receding for a hundred years (since they started measuring) then the really rapid retreat more recently.

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Our plan was to drive slowly back toward Anchorage. Riding shotgun with all the guidebooks out, I decided we should detour to Hope, Alaska. I’m glad we did. This little spot was certainly off the beaten path.  Here are some photos from Hope:

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This is a lousy picture, but it’s the only one I have from inside the town’s only eating and drinking establishment, where we ate some fine shrimp and Dave had a good beer.

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Next we drove back toward Turnagain Arm. Thirty-six hours earlier we had done this famous drive in the dark, rain, and fog and couldn’t appreciate the scenic views. Maybe we would even see the famous Bore Tide if we timed it right!  This is Turnagain Arm from near Hope:

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The tides across the mud flats are dramatic, and the Bore Tide, if you catch it, is apparently the tide coming in in one big wave.  The tide tables showed that if we timed it right we might see a moderately good Bore Tide.

It was not to be. Perhaps it was a mysterious plan to start easing us back into real life. Things just started going wrong.   I started getting text messages: Our 8 pm flight from Anchorage would be departing 10 minutes late. 15. 45. An hour and a half. Pretty soon it was clear that we would miss our connection in Chicago. The whole point of the redeye was that Dave needed to be home in time for an important call at mid-day the next day. Now that was in jeopardy. Meanwhile, our son called, about as distraught as he ever gets. The 800 photos he had taken while hiking in Yosemite the week before were no longer appearing on his computer, and he had already deleted them from his camera. He was too hysterical to be reasoned with.

 

Suffice it to say, we did not enjoy the views at Turnagain Arm. I wanted to stop at the ski area, Alyeska, and check it out, but Dave was too worried about our flight. So we headed straight to the airport. Eventually things were straightened out. Our son found his photos with help from Apple Support, and we caught a just slightly later flight out of Chicago. It was a less-than -reat way to end a fabulous trip. But that’s the thing about traveling – things sometimes go wrong. Very little went wrong on this trip, and those last few stressful hours don’t mar any of my memories.

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