We woke up in the morning. Wimbledon was happening, and we caught some match play. Margie, the innkeeper, was busy preparing breakfast in the kitchen upstairs and the fragrance of food made the best alarm clock ever . During our stay, we had fresh-oven baked bread pudding, waffle, and egg pudding as our breakfast.
After the MICA-led glacier tracking the day before and a long drive, we took it easy for the day. We had time to socialize with the host, Pat, about her ice cream truck business. Pat showed us the inside of the ice cream truck, and I was so intrigued with the meticulous design, with the cleanness, subtlety and complexity that demonstrated the kind of effort required to run a business.
There was a salmon weir, where the salmon spawned before its end of life, on the same street as our lodge.
So many salmon were swimming upstream, that at the beginning, it was not easy to spot. When our eyes got used to their colors and patterns, it was quite a scene, to see the salmon lining up, and swimming against each other side by side upstream towards the weir. There were some that did not make it and there were some that clearly had wounds over its body. A local alaskan warned us to also watch out for bears and said that she ran into bears almost everyday. That gave us a good scare. Bears eating salmon were something on our itinerary later, but we definitely did not want bears to be within striking distance.
The weir was across the road, so we walked across to see the salmon spawning. Many salmon did not make it up the first trials, some made it only to be pushed back down by the strong current, a few hit the poles heads-on. Their perseverance and hardwork was simply humbling to watch. Up the weir, two volunteers caught a portion of the salmon from the weir to sell them to recover the cost of the research. Can you believe that there are roughly 5 millions of sockeye salmon around the area? That was like tens of millions of pounds of meat supply for the world every year. Simply amazing.
Seward, located in the south end of Alaska, is the south terminus of the Alaskan railways. It was an important military port during world war II, and was damaged by the great 1964 earthquake. It is now a beautiful marina with a range of boat cruises. Its downtown is lined with restaurants and shops, only that most restaurants are closed on Monday and Tuesday. For a foodie, Monday and Tuesday are days to avoid in the Kenai peninsula.
The Tokyo Olympics have been delayed for almost a year, and are about to take place in a month’s time. The poster of Lydia Jacoby, the home-grown Olympian, was seen everywhere. Our host went to the only indoor swimming pool in the city to swim and it was not even an olympic-sized pool. When Lydia won the gold medal in the weeks to follow, we shared that happiness. That jumping up and down celebration of the Alaskans was just so telling (check out this short video that went viral on social media).
We headed back to our beautiful lodging earlier, and did an hour of kayaking in Bear Lake. It felt so good on the calm lake water, enjoying the forests and the mountains surrounding the lake, appreciating more and more the beauty of living in this place. And our host Dennis told us tons of stories about fishing salmon, hunting and flying.
We took advantage of the fully equipped kitchen and had a simple dinner of instant noodles and chicken nuggets to finish the day.
Coming up : glacier boat tour and kayaking
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