2024-08-15: Trains and Boats

We woke up at an ungodly hour this morning. The alarm went off at 5:00am. We got up, finished our packing, and checked out of the hotel by 5:30am. We walked the block over to the Alaska Railroad Depot to board our train to Seward. We had to check in an hour before our 6:45am train. We met up with Tim outside the depot and get checked in for the train. We booked seats in the Gold Star cars which gave us domed roof seats and included breakfast. Gold Star was sold out by the time Tim booked so he was in the Adventure Class cars. We said goodbye to Tim for the 4 hour train ride to Seward and boarded the train.

The train departed on time at 6:45am. The views along the way were stunning. We saw lakes, mountains, tundra, and glaciers. We saw a few different birds such as swans, bald eagles, and a condor, but that was about it for wildlife unfortunately. They had guides giving some commentary on the areas we passed through along the way. We arrived in Seward just before 11:00am.

Our suitcases were picked up from the rail depot by the hotel which was convenient. Tim left us to drop his bag off at the AirBnB he had rented. While he was gone, we found a restaurant for lunch. We ended up at a restaurant called Ray’s Waterfront. The food was delicious! We ordered calamari as an appetizer and it was probably the best calamari we’ve ever had. It’s definitely a place we’d go back to.

After lunch, we headed to the hotel to see if we could check in early. We had booked a room at the Harbor 360 hotel. The hotel attendant initially told us our room wasn’t ready yet since check-in isn’t until 4:00pm. We explained that we were going on a dinner cruise from 3:00pm – 8:00pm so wouldn’t be able to check-in until later that evening and asked if we could access our suitcases to re-arrange our bags a bit. As he was about to get ours suitcases for us, he checked again and our room had just become available. We grabbed our suitcases and dropped them off in the room. We had about 30 minutes to kill before we had to check in for our dinner cruise. We got acquainted with the room and re-arranged our gear.

Just before 2:00pm we headed down the block to the Kenai Fjords tour office and got checked in for our glacier dinner cruise. Our cruise wasn’t until 3:00pm but we had to check-in an hour prior. Tim rejoined us at the check-in desk for the tour. We had about 30 minutes to kill until they called us to board the boat. We explored the gift shop at the tour office and hung out on the pier boardwalk until they were ready. At 2:30pm they called us to board the tour boat. We walked down the pier and boarded the Orca Explorer.

At 3:00pm we headed into Resolution Bay. The tour took us through Resolution Bay and into Aialik Bay. The weather wasn’t awesome unfortunately. It started as overcast but turned to showers about an hour into the tour. The tour was still great though. We saw a bunch of sea life including starfish, seagulls, puffins, eagles, a humpback whale, sea otters, seals, cliff goats, and dall’s porpoise. The humpback whale was feeding near the shore. It was creating circles of bubbles to gather fish in and then would come from below and swallow up the fish in the circle. It was cool to watch. The dall’s porpoise were running under the front of the boat as we cut through the water. We also sailed up to the Aialik glaicer and admired the colors of the glacier. The glacier was calving into the ocean as well which was fun to watch.

We returned to the harbor at 8:00pm. After purchasing a couple of items in the gift shop, we said goodnight to Tim and returned to the hotel. We relaxed for a bit and then called it a night.