A Beautiful Weekend at Home

My blogs this weekend were all about traveling in Alaska— and there are still at least 4 more to come— but that's blog backlog. We got home from Alaska Wednesday night. Thursday and Friday were work days, then the weekend we spent doing almost nothing. Gloriously nothing.

A week earlier we'd talked about planning a trip for this past weekend. Nothing huge; just a "Friday Night Halfway" thing that'd have us out all day Saturday and home Saturday night in time to relax on Sunday. Instead we pushed that plan to next weekend, figuring we'd want this weekend to rest up. Oh, how right we were.



The weather cooperated this weekend, giving us a couple slightly-warmer-than-normal days. That made it beautiful weather to hang out by the pool. Well, not just hang out by the pool but also spend time in the pool. It's great when we can just... walk into the water... without taking a moment or three to adjust to the temperature. And then, when we're tired of swimming, floating, and whatever, we get out, towel off, and relax in the shade. Well, I relax in the shade. Hawk relaxes in the sun.

And that's it. That's pretty much all we did this weekend. What a glorious way to not do much else.

Rolling on the River. Bald Eagle Nest.

Alaska Travelog #22
Outside Seward - Tue, 18 Jun 2024, 2:30pm

On our drive out of Kenai Fjords National Park after hiking there today we took a slight side trip to visit the Resurrection River. The park road runs along the glacial outwash stream until where the state highway crosses it a bit above the head of Resurrection Bay. In a few places the embankments along the side of the flood plain are low enough that vehicle trails have been made through them. We drove out on the rocky wash.



In the photo above we're actually a fair distance, as far as 4x4 situations in riverbeds go, from the bank. Out here the surface is fairly flat, and the rocks are fairly uniform in size and rounded smooth from the action of the glacier that's now retreated several miles upstream. Yes, this is the outflow from Exit glacier which we visited earlier today and also yesterday (different hikes each day).

After we got back on the road we stopped another mile or two downstream when we saw a large nest high up in a tall tree— with a bald eagle in it!

Watch on YouTube

Bald eagles are native to this habitat. They tolerate the cold weather well, and there's abundant fishing nearby. We see them occasionally near our home (where there's not cold weather) though only a few sightings a year. Out here in Alaska you can see bald eagles a few times a day.

Fourth of July Beach and Creek in Alaska

Alaska Travelog #23
Outside Seward - Tue, 18 Jun 2024, 4:30pm

Today's been a day of shorter hikes and visits around Seward. We started with a milder hike to an overlook of the Exit Glacier ("milder" being in comparison to our butt-kicker of a hike partway above the glacier on Monday), followed by a bit of gentle 4x4ing on the river bed. Now we've driven around the far side of the bay to Fourth of July Beach.



From here we're actually looking across Resurrection Bay to Seward on the opposite shore. We're technically still in Seward, though. In Alaska city limits seem to stretch miles away. For example, when we were in Anchorage we stopped in places 100 miles apart that were all called "Anchorage".

But hey, it's a beach! Er, gravelly shoreline. And the high temperature today is... 57° F. And there's a blustery wind. So, not exactly what you think of when you think "beach" in the summer. Oh, and it's next to an industrial site. In fact I had to employ some creative direction-finding to find public roads around the industrial complex and its many "No Trespassing" and "No Parking Beyond This Sign" signs to get to this public beach.

Back on the road— "road" being generous here, as named streets in this part of the city are gravel—I drove inland a bit to try seeing Fourth of July Creek. There's a gravel road that parallels it for a bit. When I saw a dirt two-track going off through the hedges toward the creek I tried exploring it in our SUV.

I marveled to myself at how there was such solitude here... until I rounded a bend and saw a truck parked in the path ahead of us. Then, as we got closer, I noticed that the truck was abandoned... and wrecked. 😰 "Well, that's a little bit scary," I said aloud.

We didn't let the wreck deter us from exploring further on foot. ...Yeah, that's exactly how horror movies start. 🤣



The wreck was about as far as we'd have been able to drive on the trail anyway, so it didn't cost us anything in terms of access. We picked our way around it then across the tumbled river rocks. If this creek looks like the glacial outflow from Exit Glacier it's because it is a glacial outflow. Above us in those mountains is Godwin Glacier.