Seward to Anchorage

9/4
This morning we began the land portion of the trip. We woke up in Seward to light rain, but decided to get off the ship and wander the town anyway. There wasn’t too much to see—it’s quite tourist-y, and many of the shops were closed. But there was some character to the town—the funny names of some of the establishments (Once in a Blue Moose, A Bucket of Butt—Halibut, that is), and the many, varied murals—some beautiful and others more informational. (Shiri, the last photo in this set is for you...)

After enjoying our last lunch on the ship, we were on our way by about 1:00, on the 2 ½ hour bus ride to Anchorage. The rain had stopped and the scenery was so beautiful, especially huge patches of a plant called “fireweed”, which has a purple blossom that works its way up the stalk in the summer and then turns bright red in the fall. We actually saw a small strand at the rest stop that had one with the last flower on top and the other a full vibrant red.

The leaves were beginning to turn as well, but I hear there will be more of those as we travel north. We rode for a very long time along the “Turnagain Arm” of the Pacific where Cook kept sailing in the hopes of finding a Northwest Passage, only to be disappointed. We did see glimpses of 2 Beluga whales, but really short glimpses—not the wildlife we were hoping to see, but the sight was so beautiful, as we traveled through the forest and along the water. We reached Anchorage at about 4:00and got settled in the hotel. We wandered the city a bit—a “Farmer’s Market” which was more of a Swap Meet, a pretty little park near the Visitors Center, but there wasn’t too much to see so we bought some groceries for the train ride and then went back to the hotel to enjoy the gym and the free wifi to reconnect with the outside world.