Life Is Good Today!: Coastal Tour

Valdez was the start of our "coastal tour" which consisted of additional stops in Seward and Homer. All three towns are essentially quaint fishing towns but at this time of the year swell with the hords of (us) tourists. We left Valdez headed toward Seward but made an overnight stop at the Matanuska State recreation Area. The highlight of this stretch of the Glenn Highway is the area around the Matanuska SRA. This particular CG has a great view of the Matanuska Glacier but unfortunately there is no way to access the glacier from the park. There is access via a private road/CG but the cost is quite expensive. So we settled for these views instead.

Pano of the Matanuska Glacier (far left) and valley

Matanuska Glacier

Another short day on the road brought us to the town of Seward, AK which is home to the Kenai Fjord National Park. The city of Seward allows Rvers and tent campers to stay on city owned property (for a fee) right on the shores of Resurrection Bay. The views are (as usaul) quite spectacular but your neighbors are very close and in many cases not very considerate. But it was a good cheap place for a couple of nights. Since we had already done a boat trip and sea kayaking was somewhat out of the budget, we decided to go to the Kenai Fjords NP and hike the Exit Glacier trail. This trail is an 8 (ish) mile RT hike that is quite steep at ~1,000 ft incline per mile. Very doable but slow going. We began our hike and got a little over two miles up when the fog settled in and the rain began to come down. After a quick lunch we decided to head back down as at this point we could no longer see the glacier, nor did it look promising further up. Despite the shortened hike we were still on the trail about 5 hours. Good days work, indeed! We spent some time in town then after a couple of days began to head toward Homer.

View across Resurrection Bay

"Camping" in Seward

View of Exit Glacier

Part way up

Fogged in

Halibut catch

Our next stop was Homer, AK. Homer is a (somewhat) larger town with two parts: the main(land) section of town and the "spit" which is a slender peninsula about 4-5 miles that most of the summer tourist activities take place. Again we stayed in a city owned CG right on Kachemak Bay. As in Seward this is a cheap, no services CG where you are packed in like sardines but nonetheless an easy stay. The great thing about this place is watching the eagles which are everywhere. The amazing thing in this area is the tide change. Homer is considered to have a 25 ft. tide, which really translates to several hundred feet of beach at each change. For someone used to the TX coast tide changes this is really quite spectacular.