Travel Rabble: Day Four Alaska! Hope

Tuesday Day Four in Alaska Hope to Seward

We woke up this morning to finish our ride down to Seward.

We didn't stop too much on the way down. We got out at the top of the Turnigan Arm Pass but mostly we just cruised on down to Seward. We started by picking up an old Ice friend at his work, the Roadhouse. He's the executive chef there and is setting things up for the coming summer. No employees (and certainly no guests) other than the managers and caretakers so he was free to come and hang out with us! We cruised the mile downtown to look at Resurrection Bay where we promptly saw some otters and then was told by the guy with Binoculars that we JUST missed the sea lion. We saw the memorial for the Railroad as Seward is the end of the line and there was a fun memorial for a man I'd not yet heard of in my Alaska Research. Jujiro Wada, a Japanese American expert musher who was hired to improve the mail trail up to Nome, proving that Seward was a viable option for commerce. His work and improvement on the trail helped to concertize Seward as the gateway for trade and transportation. See how helpful monuments are?!

After walking along the waterfront for a bit we went over to a little Greek restaurant for lunch. Jamie got the equivalent of a Fisherman's Basket but here, they called it a Gold Mine. It was mostly the same. No clams but yes on shrimp and scallops and the white fish was halibut. Pretty good! I like to check out libraries in new towns so we walked over to the library and lo and behold! It was rainbow tiled! The tiles were all blue and purple and green and shimmery! Kinda like a mermaid. It was spectacular! I got a lot of free magazines there (some new yorkers-score!).

After all our wandering around we were finally ready to head over to Millers Landing where we were going to be staying in a dry cabin. When we arrived, there were 17 bald eagles sitting on the shore eating a HUGE fish they caught. And that wasn't a typo. Seventeen bald eagles. It was SO INCREDIBLE! (they're like pigeons here) Our cabin was called (still is, infact) the "rocket ship cabin" because it has a cute little belfry on top. It had two old train cars near by that we went to scope out and then, as we were right by the shore, we walked down to look at the water where we watched a seal play along the shoreline. After a bit, we got organized to go have dinner (pizza) and then head up to visit some friends of Jams who built their cute little house and are living off the grid. Check out their blog if you are interested and you should be interested because their blog title is pretty adorable. They are really rustic. 5 gallon recyclable toilet, heating water on the woodstove and using a water pump for the shower which is really just one of those big plastic bins that they stand in. They are pretty spectacularly committed. https://alaskabode.wordpress.com/

After our visit we went back to our little cabin, KC took the truck and went to sleep in his heated and cozy bed and we settled in for a night listening to the rain and the crackle of our wood stove.

View from our little cabin -you can see the train cars too!