Alaska 2024 RVing in Alaska- Part 3-Day 6, 7, 8

view from KOA campground-Resurrection River

KOA playground

Day 6... We moved from the Seward municipal city campground over to the KOA outside of the town of Seward, AK at midday. The Resurrection River runs right along the front side of the campground, just across the street. What a campground! Lots of amenities--a wonderful ship playground for kids, a gaga ball pit (a hot Indiana kids' game played at all the schools, kind of like a contained, low throw dodge ball game where you have to smack the ball with your hand and try to hit a player with the ball, below the knees. The ball bounces off a hexagonal wall pit adding geometry angles and a bit of strategy. It's a little bit like handball only in a very small contained area. Lots of action in a small space, and the kids love it.) The hot showers are AMAZING, and the shower floors are heated! The bathrooms are super clean and modern.

KOA patio deck for all campers

The sites are beautiful, level and gravel....some have Adirondack chairs with artificial turf, and they are improving sites with laying cement pads with bricked in fire pits. There is a very complete RV store with all kinds of goodies in it, the staff is amazing, and concierge services are provided if you want to try a lot of different activities in the area like: dog sledding, kayaking to the Aialik Glacier and lots more. AND--there is an active eagle's nest near the front of the RV park. We really enjoyed watching the eagles take turns watching over an egg. It was determined that there was one egg due to a fellow RVer who had a drone, and who very respectfully kept its distance as to not alarm the eagles.

Sparky walked the town in the afternoon and visited a quilt shop. She bought two quilting kits as souvenirs to make later. She really wanted a moose one, but there weren't any as attractive as the bear and the whales. These patterns are from Alaska quilt designers, so truly representative of the state.

She went looking for more murals and here is another one...They are all over town. The whale mural used to be three painted blue whales. The winter weather did a number on them, so the store owner wanted them replaced with something very similar so here is the updated, more weather resistant newest addition.

Later in the afternoon, we paid a visit to Exit Glacier at the Kenai Fjords National Park, which was just five minutes down the road. Sparky tried to hike the Harding Fields Ice Trail. That is an amazing trail with 40 glaciers in the immense ice fields. She managed only a couple of miles with her knees because all the boulder and rock scrambling was just too much for these 73 year old knees. It's an 8.2 round trip if you go all the way to the ice fields, and there are some shorter hikes that lead to beautiful views along the way, like Marmot Meadows. The visitor's center warned of a mama bear and her cub spotted in the area just three days before, so there is a chance you might see wildlife, but there were lots of people on the trails today, so mama has probably moved on....

Sparky did sign in at the Harding Ice Fields trailhead, just in case problems arose later. You never know....a bear or a moose might be in the area! Sparky documented her knees for posterity, lol...They will be officially 74 years old next month, haha. So much for posterity, they throw those sheets away, but it was fun to say she was there!

It's a bitter pill to swallow when you realize that you can't do what you used to do, not mentally, because you think you can, but physically because the body is telling you NOPE! Even with all the cycling Sparky had been doing beforehand, all that steep climbing was just too much for the knees! She could barely walk the next day....Sigh....

Tonsina Creek hike

Day 7...After some painkillers and ice the night before, Sparky thought maybe she'd try a hike right outside Seward, called the Tonsina Trail, a very popular trail with the locals. The drive to get to the trail starts right outside the Marine Museum in Seward along the Resurrection Bay heading towards Caine's Head State Park and goes a few miles before getting to Lowell trailhead. The moderate 3.4 mile out and back trail starts out on a vehicle shared road with hikers (minimal traffic from residences), then ventures off into the woods with a lot of switchbacks. Trailhead parking is 5.00 because it is part of a state park, but Eldo had driven the rig and dropped Sparky off and went and parked elsewhere, so off she went. It had rained a lot, so the trail was muddy and slippery, but beautiful, with views of the mountains on the left through spruce and hemlock trees. 

You had to cross the Tonsina Creek early on, to keep going on the trail. It was fun to watch families coming through and how they navigated the rocks and rushing water.

Sparky did not do the entire hike, due to incoming tides near the end of the trail where it comes out on the bay, but crossed two bridges on the way there, for two miles in and two miles back out. The views were spectacular once you got through all the muddy switchbacks. It was perfect temperatures for hiking, in the mid fifties and overcast a bit. She met families, dogs and quite a few people along the way, it's a popular trail. 

For dinner that night, we decided to try the Seasalt Grill, downtown Seward, which we mentioned earlier, was excellent, but expensive. Sparky would like to mention that the hamburger was weird. Weird, as in a different kind of meat. It was listed as a hamburger, but had the most different taste to it. There was a lot of mention of reindeer meat on the menu, perhaps it was a reindeer burger, but we'll never know, because she didn't ask. Fourteen dollars for onion rings, and they were good, but not THAT good!

Day 8...Sparky's knees were all fired up again, after all those switchbacks yesterday, so after watching the eagles fly back and forth from the nest in the morning, we decided to drive back to Exit Glacier one more time and Sparky would hike the easy handicap accessible Exit Glacier trail. It's a one mile paved/compressed gravel loop and FLAT. It was misting enough rain that a raincoat was warranted. Nice easy trail and great views. (Thank you! said the knees.) Not sure which hike these guys were going to do, but fantastic that they are going to do it.  There's also another Exit Glacier hike that is a little more of a challenge, only because of slick rock surfaces, but very little elevation change and great views as well. 

Note: It's more than a half mile paved walk to get to any of the trails before you are actually on one of them, so figure a mile in and out just to get to and from the parking lot. This is the view from the regular Exit Glacier hike, the most common one people usually pick.

Here you can see visitors walking the glacier trail towards Exit Glacier.

Sparky saw PLENTY of moose poop on both trails--some old, some fresh, so they are definitely around. And just for the record, here is what moose poop looks like, haha. Bear scat is smaller, darker, and rounder in case you were wondering. (They weren't, laughs E.)

In the afternoon, we decided to go for a drive looking for moose as we had not seen enough and Sparky was seeing more moose poop than moose! We decided to drive 20 miles north on the Seward Highway and if we didn't see any, we would turn around and head back to camp. About 17 miles out, we look to the left in a marsh, and there was a mama moose and one baby. They were super close in the marsh next to the highway, just getting out of the water, but headed for the woods. Eldo parked right away just past where we saw them, Sparky hopped out and jogged over to the marsh, and they were gone. But we both got to see them very close by and were super happy!

Tomorrow we leave for Anchorage to fly back home. One more Alaskan blog and then we will be in summer mode back home in Indiana.   See you down the road....

                               

                                 Eldo and Sparky