Seward, Nebraska (Oops, Alaska)!

The picture above is a beautiful church, which looked so quaint nestled against a backdrop of cloud covered mountains, pine trees and snow. Last weekend we traveled to Seward, which is 125 miles south of Anchorage. We had a 6 hour drive to Anchorage where we stopped to wander the mall and browse at the bookstore for a couple of hours. We ate dinner at the Sourdough Mining Company. The picture below is a white-faced sea otter who was floating on his back as

our cruise boat motored past him. Please click to enlarge the picture - he is cute.





Garth and Nick enjoyed breakfast at this restaurant, famous for it's made-from-scratch breakfasts.



Before going to Seward, I logged onto Map Quest to check mileage and motels. I was so happy to see a Super 8 Motel in Seward (thinking prices would be somewhat reasonable there). I gave Garth the phone number (funny, it was a 402 area code) and he called, asking to make sure this was Seward he was calling. He booked a room for two nights and we relaxed knowing we had a place to sleep. We didn't see a Super 8 as we drove through town, so Garth pulled up here at the Hotel Seward to ask directions. The very nice young woman at the counter said there wasn't a Super 8 in town, she called the number we had and we all were surprised to find out we had reservations in Seward, Nebraska! (Sounds like Alaska) They were kind enough to cancel our reservations, without penalty. We had a lovely room at the Hotel Seward for a very reasonable price - we highly recommend them if you are in the area. Be aware, however, that our two queen beds room for $69 in April is $200 a night from May-September.




We booked a 4 hour Wildlife Cruise on the View Finder. It was a cold, snowy day but there were 30 adventurous people on our cruise. We enjoyed visiting with Don & Gay - longtime Alaska residents who had lots of stories to tell.

We saw black and white porpoises (look closely, he's down there somewhere).

We passed several large rocks with sea lions enjoying the snowy day. There were lots of birds on the rocks, too.

Here are two bald eagles perched on this rock. We passed one a little earlier high in a tree, just watching us drifting by.

I didn't get pictures of the hump back whales we saw - well, we saw the hump back and the tail as he dove back down into the water. It was a very fun trip. We drove back up to Anchorage and spent Saturday night at Fort Richardson. Driving was a little hazardous on the way home because I insisted we take the snow tires off the car. We had had such lovely weather in Fairbanks that it seemed silly to keep snow tires on to get chopped up from the rocks still left on the road. We could have won the dirtiest car award when we got home!