Seward Alaska – Too Much Love Boat?

Today marks our eighth day in Seward, and we have seen four cruise boats now.  Today it was the Norwegian Sun, operated by Norwegian Cruise Line.    This boat can also carry over 2,000 passengers, and nearly 1,000 crew members.  One thing about when these large cruise ships come into port…our Internet through Verizon is shot to heck because the passengers and crew use up the cell towers on us.

For the second time I found a young couple embracing as the cruise ship goes by…perhaps they were reminiscing about when they once were on a cruise ship, perhaps dreaming about a time they want to be on a cruise ship, or perhaps they just saw too many episodes of the “Love Boat”.  (If you don’t know what the Love Boat is, click here) 

My fascination with them is strictly photogenic…they make for a great picture.  Finding the right shot as it passes in front of the scenic landscape…and this boat by far is the most colorful, and reflected in the waters more than the others.

This ship also snuck in early in the morning, backing into the harbor.  Why some back in, while others go face first and back out is anyone’s guess.  With this one, the schedule said it was to dock at 7 am, but when the sun is up at 4 am, and it is light all night long, 7 am feels like it does all night…no darkness equals less sleep, so you get up when you decide to get up. 

 

A bit of perspective…got this little boat passing the big boat.  It is like a mosquito in size.

By 9:30 it was down at the entry to Resurrection Bay.  Looks like it is headed for that mountain shore, but it is staying in the deep channel of the bay, slowly turning to the right and headed out to the Pacific Ocean.

Previously showed a picture of Mount Marathon where the Mount Marathon Race will be held on July 4th, bringing around 30,000 people to this small community.  (We will be long gone, over in Homer by then.)  Well, thought I would bring a bit of perspective to this too. 

The hikers are up where the green just starts to disappear along the trail on the left side of the mountain.  One heck of a mountain...and the record is like 44 minutes!

At precisely midnight, the start of the longest day of the year, the moon starts to peek its full head over the mountain top.

Welcome to the first day of summer…what a way to start our summer.

Sometimes timing is everything…yes, that is a small boat between the moon and the moon’s reflection.

Just sitting in the motorhome, enjoying the view, waiting for my laptop to charge up so that I could finish the blog.  I look up and see this white reflection in the water and think, “Where is this coming from???”  Then, “Oh Marcia, look at what we get!!!”   I grab the camera and run out.  Came in to show Marcia the first batch of shots, got Skruffy and we went out for the latter bunch, getting the picture of boat crossing the reflection.  All of the previous nights we had put the cover over the front window by 11:30.  Not tonight…thank goodness.

Who'll Stop The Rain – Seward Alaska

The rain got a bit heavy last night, and lasted well into this afternoon.  Around 4 pm it stopped, there were patches of blue skies, and the rain stopped, and the ground dried up.  Around 3 pm I headed over to the library to download some more movies to our kindles.  Without power, we don’t have TV, and have been watching a few movies on our kindles.  Watched “My Cousin Vinny”, which we had to rent (not on Amazon Prime) while we had the generator on, otherwise, we watched everything else on one of our two kindles.  Without solar power due to clouds, we had the generator on for about 6+ hours today, instead of 2+.  (We always have it on in the morning for coffee, for about 30 minutes, then about 90 minutes in the evening.) 

Got a picture of the Cruise Ship that came in Sunday morning sometime…did not hear it over the rain.  This one “backed in” to the harbor…now that is different.  I guess it wants to make a quick get-a-way later in the evening.   This is an eleven deck, 2,000 passenger cruise ship MS Noordam of the Holland America Line.   Noordam is named for the northern compass point, and the other ships like it are the Oosterdam, Westerdam, and Zuiderdam.

Around 8:30 I heard a whistle blow, and the ship had left the harbor and started down Resurrection Bay toward the Pacific Ocean.   Kind of like it when it has to turn around, but sure did not want to get up that early to watch it back into harbor at who knows what time this morning, especially in the rain.

Not very much to take pictures of today due to the rain, and frankly, it was fairly cool until the wind stopped about the time the ship pulled out.   Tomorrow should be a bit better, and much better starting on Tuesday.  Not sure when we are headed over to Homer, might hang around for the warm weather coming in on Tuesday for a few days.  Nice not having a set schedule…

Now I know what it is like when the bluest sky of the day is at 10 pm at night.   Wish I knew how to stop the rain that falls on my daughter…  She went into the ER today with pains in her right side.  After a number of hours and a number of test, they released her without knowing what causes the pain.  It “could” be the appendix, but the test have not confirmed a bad appendix.  Sometimes it rains and pours, and you just can’t stop it…no matter how much you want things to change…

Exit Glacier – Seward Alaska

Taken exactly 11 pm, June 16th, Seward Alaska.  Kids still walking up and down the sidewalk, though the noise they were making at 10 pm was long gone…although Maxine said that she could hear the “girls” talking in the tent set up outside between her little trailer and the camper talking till after midnight.   Imagine this…we see this camper, the type that sits on top of the bed of a truck, pull in yesterday around noon.  To our astonishment, there were four kids, ranging from 8-13, two adults, both teachers and the parents of two of the four kids, and a dog…not a small dog, a good size dog.  Wondered how they all were going to sleep in that thing, but they set up a tent for the girls, not sure about the boys, perhaps they slept in the truck!  Anyway, they pulled out this morning, though I saw the camper up at Exit Glacier later in the day.

I took this picture last night around 10 pm…the sun just keeps people out late.  There is enough of a breeze that we have had zero mosquito problems while here.  One or two in the motorhome when we got here, but we think they hitched a ride from the Portage Glacier area.

    

Another cruise ship in the harbor today…heard this one come in at 6 am.  It is the Millennium, the flagship of the Millennium-class cruise ships, operated by Celebrity Cruises line, part of the Royal Caribbean Cruises Ltd.  It has eleven passenger decks, and can carry over 2,100 passengers.  Not sure how full it is, but there are a lot more people here than yesterday when the Silver Shadow was in dock…it holds less than 400 passengers because it is a “luxury liner”…where as the Millennium is a “crowded liner”.   

Today Marcia and Skruffy and I hiked up to Exit Glacier, what is considered the “end” of the Harding Icefield.  The Icefield measures in at over 1,100 square miles, and spawns up to 40 glaciers, including Exit Glacier...we see less than 2% of the entire Icefield by seeing Exit Glacier.  This Glacier has retreated, on average, about 35-40 feet each year since 1815 when it first started to be measured.  It largest loss was from 1914 to 1917 with a whopping 302 feet per year.  The average rate of retreat for the glacier from 1973 to 2013 was just over 30 feet per year, although it had another major loss in 2014 of 187 feet.  It seems that every few decades, there is a huge loss, proceeded by little to no loss before and/or after. 

The two girls led the way along the path.  I had talked with a Ranger and she said that the GoGo should make it fine, and as a Service Dog, Skruffy could go too, just keep her close.  I inquired about bears, and she said that with this crowd (cruise ship crowd), the bears are long gone by now.  It is about a half mile in to the viewpoint, which means it is a half mile back out.  Skruffy walked about 1/4 of it, which was good for her.  I walked it all, well, crawled a little at the end might be more like it.  The GoGo did real well.

This is my favorite view of the glacier…only because I am sitting down on the bench.  

We always like the find the many waterfalls running off of the snow/ice laden mountains.  There were many of them today.

On the way back to the car I let them get a good head start … didn’t want her to feel rushed by my heavy breathing down her neck…very heavy breathing, must be the high elevation (about 600 feet).   

     

All kidding aside, it was a nice hike, and nice views.  On our way down we stopped to get a few pictures of Resurrection River coming down off the mountain, it runs through Seward and into Resurrection Bay. 

Here is the river as it comes into Seward.  These glacial rivers are full of rocks, very wide, and frankly, not as pretty as other rivers…but they are what they are.

    

It was an overcast morning, then partly cloudy during the early afternoon, and by 5 it started to cover up again.

    

By 6:30 the people were all buttoned up inside somewhere.  Normally there are many folks eating their dinner enjoying the warm sun, cool breeze and the boats coming back into the harbor.

Then the guy who cuts fish every evening set up his table, started to cut the fish, and he really drew a crowd.  It went from hardly a bird in the sky, to a flock of birds all around him.  This picture only shows about half the birds he attracted. 

    

The Cruise Ship started backing out at 8 pm.  At first I could find no one on its decks…only one crew person.  Then there was an announcement from the Captain, time for a life boat drill, and hundreds of people come out on deck.

    

With that, it finished its turn, and sailed out of the bay shrouded in foggy clouds. 

A young couple hug in the bottom right as they watch their dream ship sail off…

That’s it from Seward today, other than to say thanks for all the well wishes for Skruffy, who is getting better each day.  Today she ate and entire bowl of food, over half of it dry food, with some water added, and a half of a container of Little Caesar dog food…and these are small containers, so she mainly had her normal food with this stuff added as an incentive.   That then creates another problem…Bubba stuck his nose up in the air to his dry dog food for 24 hours…so I added just a bit of beef broth to his as we went out the door to visit Exit Glacier.  When we got back, it was gone…but we had a mess of torn paper towels and Kleenex that were between the front seats, which he left all over the floor in the driver / passenger area of motorhome.   And here all along we thought Skruffy was doing this… BUBBA is MISSING ARNY!   As for us, looks like we are in for rain on Saturday, Sunday and Monday...not necessarily all day, but it could be all day.

Seward Alaska, Doggie Sees Vet

Resurrection Bay, looking out to the Kenai mountains.  This is the view we get from our motorhome each and every part of the day.  Nighttime too?  Well, yes, but it is dimmer, not dark at night.  The town of Seward runs along this side of Resurrection Bay…to the left is the port (out of view), to the right is the opening to the Pacific Ocean.  We cannot, nor will we, get a full view of the Pacific Ocean from up here.  Of course we have seen the Pacific in Washington, Oregon and California…and I have seen it in Mexico…but up here, the inlets are so long and narrow that a full view is out of the question, and one cannot drive far enough, due to lack of roads, to get a view of it.

    

    

    

Above are some of the views we had from Williwaw Campground to Seward yesterday.  It was another pretty drive.  One thing about these drives…you drive in towards these port cities, and you also get to drive back out over the same pretty roads.  Speaking of roads, since we got south of Anchorage, the shape of the roads have been marvelous.  No rocking and rolling and bouncing and shaking. 

       

Now we get to sit back and enjoy all the boats going to and fro along the bay.  In a few days another cruise ship will come into the bay and anchor at the harbor.  Our neighbor, Maxine (a nice lady from Ontario Canada who comes to Seward every year for nearly 20 years now) says that the ships are in harbor for about 18 hours.  Only one ship at a time, which is good.’'

 

 

 

Maxine says that every day the otters play just off shore up and down the bay.  The first picture, of two otters looking like they are trying out to become mermaid swimmers back home in Florida, was taken about 40 yards down towards the docks.  The others were taken right in front of our motorhome.  The last one looks like it is saying “Goodbye…”.   But first, I need to tell you about Skruffy.

Skruffy is sick... When we were over at Portage Lake area yesterday I thought she might have been stung by a bee in her, well, there is no nice way of saying it, so, in her BUTT area. It had turned red and swollen on the right side of her, umm, you know what. Yesterday afternoon it was worse, even after applying ointment on the area, and I got online and looked up dog butt bee sting, and saw a picture that looked like her butt...but it was not a bee sting, it was a infected anal gland. OMG, my baby dog has an infected anal gland. Call the vet, no answer. The one and only vet in Seward.

By 9:30 pm it is now twice as large, her tummy is hot, her butt is hot. I am not positive that the vet is even still in existence because phone has a crazy message, and I cannot located his office on Google Maps...so I go out to look for it, and sure enough, 3 miles away from where Google says it is, there is his office. Now, if he is in his office in the morning, I won't have to drive 125 miles to Anchorage.

Sure enough, 9 am this morning, he is in his office. Matthew Hall, DVM, is the lone vet in Seward. I say, "You must have a primo vet job here", he says, "Not a very busy practice...", I reply, "But look at the area you get to work in, wow!"

He weighs Skruffy, she is down to 14 pounds....our vet wanted her down to 14 pounds, so that is good. He looks at her butt...over night she licked it so much it popped, he said that was good. She had cleaned it out real good, but he snipped a few bad tissue areas away.
She got a shot of Penicillin, enough pills for 20 days and he wants her on them for 10, wants her area cleaned out with Hydrogen Peroxide. Give her a baby aspirin twice a day, three if she is really hurting. Let her lick if she want to lick. Give her time to heal. Oh yea, the bill. Want to guess how much this cost up here in Seward Alaska????

BTW, he was from Indiana, had one of his first vet jobs in Gary Indiana where Marcia grew up (he only saw the rougher side of Gary, had his truck stolen there...they had an armed guard at the entrance to the Vet Office, armed with a shotgun.)

Ready for the price??? If you guessed $62, you are right! Now for this same thing in Florida, we figured it would have cost us twice that much. He was so nice, so friendly, and right before we were leaving and paying our bill, a large dog walks in with its mother and a small child, Skruffy growls, and he says, "Skruffy girl, you need to learn to pick your fights...you would lose that one for sure."

Thank you Dr. Hall, I hope you thrive in this small community, and I hope they realize that they have a very special Vet. Anyone who wants to see the infected area, just send me an email and will be glad to provide you a picture...for only $60 per picture by the way.