Sean's Online Journal: Glacier Wind

Well settled in the oceanside RV park in central Seward, we putzed around on Saturday morning. I spent a lot of time trying to get our AC generator working, but was never able to. Calling the rental place (Great Alaskan Holidays) and talking to a mechanic, we basically figured our generator has crapped out. Though we were in a “dry” site – no water or power – it wasn’t as much of a hardship as we first thought. We could run everything in the RV except

The 120V AC outlets – which means the coffeemaker and other devices that use them. Our main hardship: no recharging computer and camera batteries without bothering a neighbor. Connor was in serious withdrawal because he had no DC adapter to charge his phone and can’t text his friends.
The microwave.
The coach air conditioner.

We realized it would have been nice to have unlimited water though; we figured that our showers, even the Navy shower style where you get wet, turn the shower off, soap, rinse off, still used about one-third of our fresh water supply. So, because we were doing active things like hiking and biking, we’ve been showering and therefore visiting the fresh water station pretty much every day. It’s a bit of a pain, but we liked our small but clean shower over the campground showers. Plus it’s much closer to the bedroom.

Fortunately, we didn’t have a lot planned for the day; our main excursion was to the only driveable entrance to Kenai Fjords National Park: Exit Glacier. Exit Glacier is one of 35 glaciers that come out of the Harding Icefield. Its unromantic name comes from the fact that the party that first crossed the icefield used it to exit.

There are several hikes of different difficulties around Exit. We were coming up late in the day (well, at least by down south standards where the sun actually goes down) so we were looking for a short hike. We took the Glacier Edge trail, which is the longest of the trails at the glacier’s base and took us up alongside one edge (obviously). It was a buggy in the woods, but well worth it at the end! The glacier was beautiful, but there was a side benefit I hadn’t planned for. A katabatic wind blows down the glacier from the icefield, cooling off all the hikers with a fresh breeze. It was amazingly invigorating to me after the warm and fly-infested hike up to the edge. I literally had extra spring in my step.

We had an Alaska-style surprise this afternoon while getting water and gas. We’re standing at the pump at the local gas station, watching our 401K disappear into the tank, when we realize there are eagles literally across the street! Not just one, but five! We drove across the street to a park where we uh, parked, the RV and I ran over to take some more exposures. It looks like the eagles “commute” from these trees on one side of the road about 200 yards to the waterfront. I have to say I never expected to take wildlife photos bracing on top of a gas pump! I took a LOAD of photos; due to the grey skies and low light combined with a relatively slow zoom lens, unfortunately most of them didn’t turn out. But there are a few good ones.

We spent probably an hour and a half situating ourselves to a waterfront spot that opened up, but wasn’t level enough for us to be able to run the propane refrigerator. We ended up driving to the only lumberyard in the area, only to find it just closing. A fellow that happened to be picking up his friend that worked there offered to give us some scrap wood from his backyard, so we drove the RV up to his place, played with his dog (a stick-and-ball obsessed German Shepherd like our own) and left with a good assortment of wood. With this we were able to drive up onto about 8” of boards and get ourselves set up. It turns out our new next-door neighbors, Adam and Hania, are professional pianists from Canada and Poland respectively, living in Miami, so we hit it off big time that evening! Among other things, we got to introduce them to their first campfire-cooked s’mores. You can judge their reaction for yourself :).