Date: 18 June 2001 (Monday)

Start: Black Spruce Travel Camp, Ft Richardson AK

End: Seward Recreation Center (USAF), Seward AK (123 miles)

It was 54f and mostly cloudy when we got up. It looks like our beautiful weather has deserted us.

We ate, hooked up, and headed downtown by going through Elmendorf AFB. Just as we were leaving Elmendorf, we saw a flash of reddish-brown in the grass to our right; in a moment, a fox came out of the grass and laid down a small animal so he could devour it.

At A&M Motors (RV place), I bought a new pair of scissors jacks to replace those we have on the rear end of the trailer to stabilize the rear corners. The ones on the trailer were original equipment and just weren’t able to handle the frequent and heavy use I put them to. These new ones are by the same outfit but sturdier.

We continued south through town on AK-1 (now the Seward Highway) and out the south side, along Turnagain Arm. The arm carries that name because Captain Cook, the explorer, searching for the northwest passage, always needed to "turn again" to continue up the arm. The road winds along the arm (as does the railroad to Seward) and has many pullouts for photography or just observation. One pullout is famous for being able to see whales (none today).

Dolores did see the north end of a southbound sheep along this stretch. It stayed cloudy, and the wind picked up out of the east, so we skipped the pullouts and kept going.

There are a couple of low passes on this road, one before you come to the turnoff for Homer, and one (Moose Pass) near Seward. Just after Moose Pass (pop 187), we hit a construction zone in a narrow valley leading down into Seward.

Seward is on Resurrection Bay, a narrow bay opening to the south, with low mountains on each side extending down the bay. The clouds stayed just below the tops of these mountains (all have snow on them) all day, making it rather gloomy. Later, a little bit of blue sky came out and made it look better. The temperature never got above 60f, though.

We checked in at the USAF resort here and parked the little house. Dolores checked out the (nearly adjacent) Chamber of Commerce Visitor Center while I installed the new scissors jacks. These jacks are nearly identical to the old ones, but have an improved socket-wrench style method of turning the shaft to raise/lower the jack. I saved the old ones just in case.

We wandered around downtown Seward, finding things to do later, and doing some shopping. I found a computer item I needed, Dolores found a photo album that looks nice, and we got couple of grocery items.

Back at the camp, we went next door to the Army resort (a nicer facility, except that the RV parking area has a really odd layout) and bought tickets for tomorrow’s six-hour cruise to glaciers and wildlife. We also bought tickets to the Alaska Sealife Center here for use Wednesday.

The P&O line’s "Sun Princess" is tied up at the cruise ship dock today. We saw many Princess busses carrying people toward Anchorage as we came down, and there were a bunch in line with us coming down here, carrying people for the return cruise to wherever (Vancouver, I suppose).

We went to "Chinooks" for dinner. We both had salmon, mine covered with pepper much like steak au poivre and served with a dill sauce. Dolores’ was grilled. Both were very nice. Their ale is good, too.

We took a walk on the floating piers in the small boat harbor to work off some of the calories. This is the area that suffered most in Seward from the 1964 earthquake. All the piers, the harbor, and the ferry terminal were wiped out. The railroad tracks were kinked and twisted for miles due to the earth shifting.

We came back to the campground and hiked around some more there. Then we returned to the little house in the Air Force parking lot to rest up for tomorrow. At 10 pm, the Sun Princess got underway as her three shorts whistle signal ("I am backing.") echoed off the mountains.