Rob and I travel great together. We like to have a plan, but just because we have one doesn’t mean we’re tied to it. That’s exactly what happened last week. We call it a pivot, and now we’ve done it twice in one week.
While Alaska is literally ginormous, with 665K square miles, the drivable portion is actually very small. We’re hanging out on the northern end of the Kenai Peninsula this week, touring around while Jon & Lynn are home.
We had planned to leave the MatSu valley north of Anchorage and spend a few days at Bird Creek, exploring the Girdwood/Alyeska area. After reading some reviews about the road noise, and realizing this campground was right off the main highway between the Kenai Peninsula and all points north, we decided it was a no go. We checked the city campgrounds in Seward and found a spot for the weekend. And since it was only 3 hours away, off we went.
We found a good spot at Moose Pass to stop and have lunch along the way (although once again, no moose were to be seen), then we were in Seward.
The City of Seward has done a great job at lining up all the RVs on the waterfront and making some serious bank during the summer months. It totally worked for us, backing in to this little spot near the marina with a panoramic view of the beautiful waterfront and mountains across the bay.
Funny thing about our spot – look at the grass right behind the trailer all mashed down from a moose (or something very large) sleeping on it. It was not that way when we pulled in, so once again another missed moose sighting. Sigh. UPDATE: Apparently this is from otters. That’s either a lotta otters or a very busy few.
There was a huge cruise ship in town, and the weather was fantastic (relatively), so we hopped on our bikes and rode way out of town. Until we came upon this adorable cafe with delicious fish and chips.
While the weather was still nice we took a drive up to Kenai Fjords National Park and walked up to see Exit Glacier. It was a nice walk and another scratch-off on my National Park map.
We finished the Seward pivot and headed back north across Moose Pass again, to our continued exploration of the northern Kenai Peninsula, into the Portage Valley. We had reservations at a lovely campsite in the Chugach National Forest.
At the head of Portage Valley is the 2.5 mile tunnel to Whittier. This was built during the war for trains, then modified in the 50’s to accommodate vehicle traffic. It’s one way, long, dark, and honestly kind of creepy and a little scary. But since we were there we thought we should give it a go.
Whittier proved to be much like other coastal Alaska towns. It had beautiful waterfalls, waterfront, mountains and marinas. What makes Whittier different is the sparse amount of buildable land, so most everyone lives in one huge building. The multi story building is unique for any small town, but this one is a condo that houses most of the residents. For $175K you can buy a nice one bedroom condo. There was previously another building for living quarters that was damaged by the 1964 earthquake and never repaired.
Our last day in Portage Valley we found a really nice bike trail and took two excellent bike rides. One was interrupted by Rob’s brakes failing and an emergency trip to Girdwood to get repair parts, then the afternoon was a longer ride to Moose Flats (with again, NO moose).
We brought camp chairs and had a lovely happy hour watching and waiting for wildlife. How could there possibly NOT be moose here?
This morning we decided we wanted something different for a couple of days, instead of another National Park campsite 20 minutes away on another lovely little creek. So we headed into Cooper Landing and called the Princess Lodge RV park. The park manager had one overflow site for one night that we took, and when we came back from lunch and a walk she had decided to put us into the spot that an employee had left vacant for the weekend. It’s the Kenai Peninsula on a prime fishing weekend in July, so we’re grateful to have anywhere to land. For a second pivot in two weeks I think we did pretty darn good!
Pix from this leg are here