Kenai Fjords National Park

Our main purpose for visiting Seward was a boat trip. We signed up for a boat tour into Kenai Fjords National Park. This National Park was established in 1980, and most of its land is covered by the Harding Icefield. There is only one road in the park (which gets you very close to Exit Glacier). Your only other choices are visiting the park by foot or boat.

Several boat tours operate out of Seward. We elected to go with the aptly named Kenai Fjords Tours. They offered an 8.5 hour excursion with the chance to see lots of wildlife and several glaciers, and provided a couple of meals. They delivered on all counts, and I have no complaints. The target glacier for the trip was Aialik Glacier. My home-grown Google map shows where that is relative to Seward.

Neither Tammy and I have much experience on boats. I had previously taken a pelagic trip while in Maine for the 2006 ABA Convention. And Tammy had taken some type of boat trip into the ocean off of the coast of North Carolina at some point before we met. But that was about it. We are landlubbers. So we were just a tad nervous about this particular boat trip.

We knew we needed to dress for cold and wind and possible rain, and we were successful on that point. There were others on the boat that stayed on the inside, where it was warm and dry, because they did not come prepared. I am sure their experience was just fine, but I am glad that we had prepared such that we could stay outside the entire time (even when there was a light rain).

Also, neither of us were sure we would not get seasick. We fretted a bit over what to eat in the morning, and we even took a non-drowsy Dramamine before we got on the boat (if you take them after you feel ill, it is too late). We ended up being fine and did not feel ill. In hindsight, we probably did not even need the Dramamine.

My next several posts will share pictures from this boat trip. For this post, I wanted to share a picture of the boat we were on, but I did not take any pictures of it. Sheesh. Apparently, all my photos were of things away from the boat. I did, however, find this photo of Aialik Glacier that I took as the boat approached. You can kind of see the side of the boat, but one of our fellow tourists is there too. I needed a nice warm hat. He seemed to be fine with just the hair. Hmmm...maybe I should have cropped this photo...

But never mind him! check out that glacier!