July 24: Next Stop, Seward

Saturday July 24, Next Stop, Seward: This morning we motored on down the Seward Highway with lots of other traffic, to the salmon and halibut fishing Mecca of Seward. On the east side of the Kenai, Seward is the jumping off spot for nearby Kenai Fjords National Park. It’s a cruise ship destination, and it has a superb Alaska Sealife Center that looks out over Resurrection Bay. There’s a city owned campground along the waterfront, created after the destruction of the city in the 1964 Good Friday earthquake. The magnitude 9.2 quake flattened most the city and then tsunamis and fires took care of the rest. Town is now a couple of blocks up and away from the shoreline. Campers are more expendible…

Nowadays, you’d never know there was a huge earthquake. Seward’s a thriving small town full of summer tourists, and we loved being able to camp right next to the bay. Bald eagles flew low over the water looking for fish, and sea otters dove for shellfish and floated in the waves just off shore. For dinner, we went to an ocean front restaurant and took full-on advantage of all the fresh fish! Too bad it rained non-stop for the 2 days we were there – what the locals call the “Seward drip”.