Jax Stumpes: Alaska Cruise: Seward (8/5/2019)

Monday, August 5, 2019

Alaska Cruise: Seward (8/5/2019)

Monday, August 5, 2019
Alas, we arrived in Seward, and the cruise portion of our vacation is over.
Breakfast at Garden Café.
Dragged our luggage off the ship and through the terminal. Fortunately there was a free shuttle bus around town, and we took it to the next stop at the Alaska Railroad Depot. Dropped off the suitcases, received our boarding passes, left backpacks in the station, and headed into town.
Kent and I had been to Seward in 2017 (two posts).
Seward is the "Mural Capital of Alaska" and we had missed a few of them. There also seems to be some new ones?

Xtra Puffs (Tufted and Horned Puffins) (2016-2017,
by Liza McElroy) on Harbor 360 Hotel

Wildlife Mural (2016-2017, by Liza McElroy) is also on Harbor 360 Hotel

Kent, Erich, Dylan, and Pete with a fabricated orca dorsal fin
at the Kenai Fjords National Park Visitor Center

Pete pets a plastic puffin

Apologies to Rockwell Kent (2001,
by members of the Seward Mural Society)

Pete with a gift from Seward's sister city,
Kushiro, Japan (presented in 1973)

Erich and Dylan on the beach, with lots of kelp;
they had found eels under rocks

Kent's beachcombing finds (KSS)

The Quilt Mural appears to be gone; instead this is
Salmon Double Take (2013, by Kwangsook Schaefermeyer)

Huge fog bank "blocks" Resurrection Bay;
there were otters nearby

Jellyfish mural (2012?) on the skate park restroom

Mount Marathon Climbing Wall
(2008, by Dot Bardarson)

Mount Marathon with the visible paths used by runners
for the annual marathon; up and down record is 41 minutes 26 seconds

Colorful façade of the Seward Community Library and Museum (2013)

Founders' Monument marks the spot where
the John Ballaine and his crew landed in 1903
to establish the ocean terminus of the
Alaska Central Railway Company

We visited the Alaska Sealife Center, an aquarium and Alaska's only permanent marine mammal rehabilitation facility.

Fratercula cirrhata/Tufted Puffin

This is my rock! (Eumetopias jubatus/Steller Sea Lions)

Kent and Pete at the Touch Pool

Ophelia (2012, by students of Kodiak High School
using debris from a coastal clean-up)

Dylan, Tamiko with glasses, and Pete with his
baseball cap pulled over his face, on the heat sensor monitor

Phoca vitulina/Harbor Seal headstand

Sea Lions Chasing Herring Mural in the Alaska Sealife Center

Dylan and Pete play a video game trying to fish without overfishing

Van Gilder Hotel (1916 as office building,
becoming a hotel in 1921)

St Peter's Episcopal Church (1904-1905) was
locked up, so we still haven't seen its mural

It's one of those German monster campers!

Bust (2003, by Dennis Treadwell) of
William H Seward, U.S. Secretary of State
from 1860 to 1868

William Seward was a major force in the purchase of Alaska from Russia in 1867. When Seward was asked what was the most significant act of his career, he replied, "The purchase of Alaska! But it will take a generation to find out."

Wooden sculpture (2014, by Austin Chapman)
of a fireman as a memorial to Ted Hamm

Peking Restaurant Totem Pole

House of antlers; moose and unicorn?

Norwegian Jewel in Seward

Interesting lamps?

Benny Benson Memorial to the 13-year old orphan who in 1926
submitted the winning design for the Alaska Territorial flag,
later to become the state flag