Chapter 9: The Many Seasons of a Day in Alaska
Wednesday, July 7 was a transition day for us. We didn’t have anything huge on the agenda—we just needed to make sure we ended up in the town of Seward by the end of the day. This was about a 4.5 hour drive from Talkeetna, so it wasn’t necessary for us to be in a great hurry.
Job #1: Find something for breakfast. By this time, we’d been subsisting on Pop Tarts for breakfast (if the hotel wasn’t providing anything) and PB&J sandwiches for lunch for an entire week, and we all needed a break. I did a quick Google search of Talkeetna to see if there were any coffee shops serving pastries or breakfast sandwiches where we could have a little morning treat. As luck would have it, we found the
Flying Squirrel Bakery and Café on the spur road leading into town.
This was a little mom-and-pop shop serving all sorts of overpriced coffee drinks (just like Starbucks, only with better coffee) and homemade pastries. It was pricy, but in this case we were willing to spend in order to avoid Pop Tarts again.
Don’t these look better than a Pop Tart?
After careful consideration, I asked about the chocolate-almond croissants. I don’t care for almonds, but I figured if they were just crusted on the outside, I could brush them off and be left with an ooey, gooey, flaky chocolate-filled croissant, which would be right up my alley. And man, did they look good.
Everyone got their treats and coffee and we piled back into the van to start the drive south. I bit into my chocolate, croissant, newly freed from its almond cocoon.
It tasted of disappointment and sadness.
I don’t know about you, but I like to have some chocolate in my chocolate croissants. Is that just me?
This was just a hunk of bread. Once again, I was victimized by Alaskan False Menu Advertising, which feels like it should be a felony.
We meandered our way down to Anchorage and did better with our lunch stop, mostly because we banked on a sure thing. Since we’d liked
Moose’s Tooth Pizza so much the first time around, we called in an order for a couple of pies and picked them up for lunch. This was a resounding success, especially if you judge a success as “better than a PB&J sandwich”.
We also got another slice of their peanut butter pie to share, which was a bit of a challenge in the van, but we managed to pull through. When it comes to eating pie, we don’t give up easily.
To this point, it had been overcast with mild temperatures. The afternoon’s drive would take us south of Anchorage around a fjord known as Turnagain Arm on state route 1, which is generally known as one of the most scenic drives in the state. The road hugs the coast and goes around the entire inlet, providing mile after mile of water views with a mountain backdrop.
Naturally, this was when the rain and fog moved in.
Now, I really can’t complain. This was the only heavy period of rain we experienced during our entire Alaska vacation, which really is a minor miracle when you consider how things could have gone. But it was a bit disappointing not to be able to enjoy this drive in all its beauty. Most of the clouds were hanging low and covering the mountains, so we only got glimpses here and there. We stopped at an overlook or two, but the temperature had dropped and the winds were up along the water, so we needed to put on our sweatshirts and didn’t stay out very long.
Here is one of the better views we got along the way:
Turnagain Arm is very shallow and affected greatly by the tides. It’s one of the locations in the world where you can witness a
bore tide rolling in if you happen to be there at the right time (sadly, we did not).
We continued south, turning away from the inlet and driving up and over several mountain passes. The rest of the family was extremely impressed with the way I made use of the passing lanes when they were available to get around slow-moving vehicles.
In mid-afternoon, we reached the limits of the town of Seward, which is located on the southern coast of Alaska, at the mouth of Resurrection Bay, which leads to the Pacific Ocean.
We made a right turn just at the edge of town and drove about 8-10 miles west, where we found our fourth national park of the trip:
Kenai Fjords National Park.
This is the Exit Glacier area, which is the only portion of the park that is reachable by automobile. There’s a visitor center and a short uphill hike, about a mile, up to a viewpoint of the glacier.
By this time of the day, the rain had completely moved on and it was sunny outside. Not only that, but it was considerably warmer. We lost the sweatshirts in a hurry.
The glacier flows down from the Harding Icefield, but it has been in retreat for decades. When we started our hike up the hill, we noticed that every so often there would be a sign posted next to the trail with a number on it, like “1859” or “1912”, and so on. Eventually we realized that these were marking the location of the end of the glacier in that particular year.
Not only were the temperatures much warmer here, but we had to hike through a forested area. The trees blocked most of the wind, so this had the effect of making it feel even hotter. It was hard to believe we’d been scrambling for sweatshirts earlier in the afternoon. The lack of wind also made this the one and only time when the famous mosquitoes and other bugs of Alaska became a problem. It wasn’t unbearable, but it was definitely a nuisance.
Once we broke through the treeline, the breezes returned and all was well again. The glacier, while still impressive, had retreated far up the mountain.
It’s sobering when you look at the historical markers.
You know what’s really sobering? Finding out you missed out on seeing Bigfoot.
Dinner turned out to be a bit of an adventure. The night before, I’d looked up the place I had originally planned to check out: the
Seward Brewing Company. Having been burned by modified schedules and COVID staffing issues, I didn’t want to be caught again. And, wouldn’t you know it—their website announced they were closed on Wednesdays. Just our luck.
This caused a mad scramble to see what other places were a) available and b) open, and the pickings were slim. My first alternate was also closed on Wednesdays. We called the restaurant at our hotel, and they were completely full up with reservations (although they did promise to make accommodations for us since we were guests at the hotel, which was nice). We ended up driving into town without a solid plan. In the time it took to drive into town, it became overcast, rainy and cold again. The sweatshirts and jackets went back on.
As we neared the edge of the harbor, we were stopped by a man directing traffic. There were barricades along some of the streets, and suddenly I was unsure of where to go or what was going on. I rolled down my window and asked if I could continue on into town. He said yes, but I had to wait for some runners to pass.
It was marathon day in Seward.
Mount Marathon, to be exact. And it’s actually a 5K race.
See the mountain on the left side of this photo? That’s Mount Marathon.
As legend would have it, one day two local residents were having a…shall we say, spirited discussion over beer. Or perhaps several beers. Drunken Fool #1 declared that he thought it was possible to climb up and back down the mountain (3,022 ft in elevation, or 0.92 km) in one hour. Drunken Fool #2 said he was nuts. So they placed a wager on it, and Drunken Fool #1 was the loser, as according to my hasty internet research the first runner took one hour and 2 minutes.
The race has become more of an organized affair since then, and the record was set in 2013 by a man named Eric Strabel with a time of 42 minutes, 55 seconds.
(Map from alaskatrekker.com)
We had no idea this would be happening, so we did the best we could to avoid driving on the race course and managed to find a parking space downtown. Immediately, we found a key benefit to being there on race day: the Seward Brewing Company was actually open for business. I guess they figured the race would bring enough people downtown that it would be worth opening up on a Wednesday (I believe they swapped out another day on the schedule). Remember, this was before cruises were running again, so a large portion of Seward’s business was still unavailable as of this point in time.
We gave our name to the receptionist and were told it was a 45-minute wait for a table. Not great, but it was better than trying to find something from a hotel vending machine. When it comes to vending machines, you and I both know that Dinty Moore beef stew has been in there for 4 years now.
We wandered the town for a bit down by the waterfront, and found the old train station (now a café)…
…and the
Alaska Sea Life Center, which is a local aquarium/science center that cares for rescued marine life.
We wandered a bit in there (mostly in the gift shop), and although we hadn’t planned on visiting, we decided it may warrant a visit before we left the area. More to come on that later.
We also noticed signs and stickers posted all around the town on various buildings and storefronts saying something to the effect of, “Let’s go Lydia!” Since googling curiosities like these are a great way to pass the time during a 45-minute wait for a table, we looked it up and found out that this was a big show of support for Lydia Jacoby, a swimmer on the US Olympic Team. She’d trained for years in town at whatever pool she could get time in, and there is no regulation Olympic-size pool in Seward. Nevertheless, she was good enough at the breaststroke to make the team. She qualified for the finals of the 100-meter breaststroke but was not considered the favorite in the race.
On the night of the race, the town held a watch party in the Alaska Railroad terminal building. 400 Seward residents gathered to watch her race. She was running in 3rd place or so when she made the turn, and then…well, check it out:
Lydia Jacoby Olympic Race/Town of Seward reaction
Big mom points to Mrs. Jacoby for filming the whole thing on an iPad, which will never not look awkward. I love that Lydia looks as surprised as everyone else.
Anyway, watching that and seeing the town’s reaction brought a tear to my eye. We felt like Lydia was one of our own, since she was from Seward and we had once visited Seward.
Anyway, back to July 7.
We moseyed back over to the restaurant and waited outside, where we could see runners finishing the race. You’re allowed to come down the mountain however you want, so many of the runners were covered in mud, bleeding, etc. They had a water station near the finish line where runners could hose themselves off. These guys were hardcore.
And no one was tougher than the man who appeared to be in his 70’s who came jogging down the street to a wave of applause. He was one of the last finishers (which is to be expected), but was greeted with warm cheers and a news crew ready to interview him on his feat. I can only hope I have that much energy when I’m that age.
We finally got called for a table and were led upstairs to the second floor, where we were seated on a dais that I can only assume is normally reserved for royalty. Or maybe it was a penalty box.
Sadly, I failed you, my faithful readers, by being so hungry I forgot to take food photos. I will go sit in a corner and think about what I’ve done (or not done, as the case may be). Suffice it to say I ordered a cheeseburger, and it was excellent. I also ordered a pint of a beer with the incredibly creative name “Just Beer”. The description said it was supposed to be nothing fancy, just a regular old lager for people who just wanted a regular old beer. And it was really good! Oddly enough, Julie liked it a lot, too. And she normally hates beer. I had to keep her from stealing too many sips.
I did rally and manage to get a photo of dessert, which was an ice cream sandwich. But not just any ice cream sandwich. This one had peanut butter cookies and cocoa puffs.
Darned if that wasn’t really tasty, too.
This was one of my favorite dinners in Alaska, so we’ll be awarding the Seward Brewing Company a coveted Drooling Homer Award for Excellence in Unpretentious Dining.
Once dinner was over, we drove to our hotel to check in. We were staying at the
Seward Windsong Lodge, another property of the Pursuit Alaska group where that Black Friday 40% off sale had come in handy. I’d gotten a package deal through them for the room and a boat tour of Kenai Fjords the following day.
This is one of the best deals on a room I’ve ever gotten. It was listed as a suite that could sleep 5 (what? I only have 5 people in this family as near as I can recall). But this ended up rivaling the family suite in Yosemite as one of the biggest rooms we’ve ever had for our family. It was perfect. At 40% off, it was a steal.
This would be our home for the next two nights.
Coming Up Next: That boat tour I mentioned. Trying to resist repeating the Gilligan’s Island joke here.
Andy! It's great to have you back on the boards. We'll see if I'm still saying that after you make fun of my TR.
