May 19
May 20-21
May 22
May 23
May 24
May 25-26
May 27
May 28
May 29
May 30
May 31-June 1
June 2-3
June 4
June 5
June 6-8
Our ship pulled into Seward, our northermost point, a little before 6. We watched most of the people get off the ship while we ate breakfast.
It turns out this is really two cruises back-to-back. About 80% of the first week's passengers got off to take the train into Anchorage and, eventually, the airport for the lower 48. The rest of us stayed with the ship. About the same number of people then got onto the ship later this afternoon. That sounds like a lot of people, but this ship hold just under 500 passengers.
After breakfast, we walked onto the pier and took a shuttle into town. The city provided shuttle was a very hard to see out of schoolbus...
On our second pass through town, we got off in the middle of downtown and walked around a while, including a nice park dedicated to mile 0 of the original Iditarod. We wound up walking all the way back to the ship as the shuttle never really appeared again... It was a very, very windy day.
Seward prides itself in its many building murals. These were the only three we really saw during our walk around town. The photo on the left is a painting of iris. The center photo has some whales swimming across a building. The one on the right shows a fishing scene.
The photo on the left above shows Carl with a statue commemorating Mile 0 of the original Iditarod Trail. He's hatless because of the wind! The center photo shows the view looking down Resurrection Bay from the most seaward point of Seward. The photo on the right shows Mt. Alice looming over Seward. Most of Seward was destroyed during a tsunami in 1964 and has been rebuilt (further inland) since then.
The photo on the left and the one in the center show two sides of a railroad weather vane. The cairn was erected at the site of the former railroad terminus, which was destroyed by the tsunami. The photo on the right is a mermaid on the side of a house!
We then got the laundry started and ate lunch. I paid two bills and checked email. It was a slow, lazy afternoon.
Since this was officially the start of another cruise, they held another emergency drill later this afternoon.
And another good dinner and an early evening.