Seward, AK10 Aug 2010
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| This was our travel day to Seward, AK. It was listed as 135 miles and 5 hours including a side trip to the Portage Glacier and Lake. Evelyn and I decided there was also enough time for another side trip to the village of Hope, AK. We got up at 6:00 and were on the road by 7:00. We took a shorter way out of town than was recommended to the larger units. We hit a little commuter traffic but it didn’t slow us down. We stopped for coffee to go with the toast and peanut butter that Evelyn had made. I stopped along side the Turnagain Arm of Cook Inlet to take photos. The name comes from the fact that Cook did not find the Northwest Passage inside the inlet and had to turn around again and go back to sea and head north. This area reminded us of Milford Sound in New Zealand and of the fiord on South Georgia Island. The weather was heavy overcast and the mountains rising straight out of the water looked gray and foreboding. They were really forested but you couldn’t tell it from a distance. As I was ready to pull back on the highway our wagon-master when whizzing by. I ended up at the tail end of a long line of cars following him. At the turnoff for the Portage Glacier we went left and I saw Chuck pull over on the right. I suppose he was taking a cigarette break because I didn’t see him again. When we reached the visitors’ center at the glacier we were disappointed to find that we were too early. The center didn’t open until 9:00 AM, so we just took photos and left. On the way out we stopped at a pull out that happened to have a sign showing all the local mountains and glaciers. We found out that we had seen Portage Lake but not Portage Glacier. It was a nice ride but I wish we had stayed until the center opened and we could get more information. We drove on down the highway to the turn off for Hope. The village was 16 miles back in the woods on a dead end road and yet it was hard to find. It turns out that most of the old town was destroyed in the big Alaska earthquake [1964?]. The land dropped from 6 to 9 feet. The tsunami waves wiped out many buildings. The water from Cook Inlet flooded what was left of the town at every high tide. Everyone had to evacuate. Many build new homes on higher ground. These homes are hard to see today because they are surrounded by woods. Now, for some reason unknown to science, the land has risen again. Once we found the old town site we found lots of descriptive signs with photos of the old town, etc. On the way to Main St. we went by the old Hope School House which now houses the town library. It didn’t open until noon, but a woman was in there working and Evelyn had gone in to ask for information. She was told that nothing in town opened until noon but that we could wander around the museum grounds on our own. Thus we went there next. While we were wandering around an old codger in a wreck of a pickup truck drove in. It turned out that he was the custodian and worker bee for the museum. He went and got the keys and showed us through all of the old buildings that have been moved to the site. He had had a hand in restoring or rebuilding most of them. It was all interesting. Since it was still not noon, we decided to stop at the one business that we had seen open – a café. We went in for a cup of coffee and ended up with breakfast sandwiches. They were made with a fried egg, bacon, and cheese on a bagel. They were delicious. After that we headed back to the highway and turned south again. We arrived at our RV park before 2:00 and we were not the last ones in. We had a wagon-master’s briefing at 4:00 where he told us about points of interest in Seward and talked about the trip to Homer. Other than that we were on our own. I spent the time writing again. |
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