Four years ago, in 2006, we took a cruise that gave us our first exposure to Alaska. We've wanted to come back and explore other parts of the 49th state, and this year, we got our chance. We had applied for summer jobs with several employers, and our first response came from Seward Windsong Lodge in mid-January. This lodge, as well as many seasonal employers, advertise jobs on the website coolworks.com, which is how we also got our work at Grand Teton National Park in 2008. We will be here until September 12, when the last cruise ship of the season sails from Seward and the lodge closes until next May.
Seward is about 125 miles south of Anchorage, on the Kenai Peninsula. We knew from our initial research that this was a beautiful area, and its proximity to Anchorage gave it a big edge over other tourist destinations in the state. The lodge is on the edge of Kenai Fjords National Park. We quickly said “yes” to Windsong's offer, and spent the next four months planning our Alaskan adventure.
On May 7, we flew from Los Angeles to Seattle, and then on to Anchorage, arriving in mid-afternoon. We expected much of the Seattle-Anchorage flight to be over open ocean, but in fact most of it was along the coasts of Vancouver Island, mainland British Columbia, and Alaska itself. That, plus a mostly sunny day, made for a beautiful three hours of sightseeing, given the hundreds of islands, and the many water channels separating them, along this rugged coastline.
About half an hour before reaching Anchorage, Mount St. Elias, the second-highest mountain in the United States (at 18.009 feet) came into view.
And during the last 15 minutes of the flight we flew over the Chugach Mountains east of Anchorage.
We checked into the Marriott in downtown Anchorage and immediately started exploring the city on foot. To those of us accustomed to the urban centers of the U.S. east and west coasts, Anchorage is a different type of city. The downtown is relatively compact. It has few residential properties and lots of parking lots, perhaps to provide places to dump snow in winter. This view looks north from our hotel room, toward Cook Inlet, with the towers of the Captain Cook Hotel on the left.
The stores and restaurants downtown cater more to tourists and other visitors than they do to locals, although we did find some places that seemed to have a strong local following. Since we were just ahead of the tourist season, some stores had limited hours, or were not yet open for the season.
We did manage to stock up on rain gear, since the forecast for our first week in Seward held the promise of one rainy day after another. We also had a chance to attend the first Anchorage Market and Festival of the season, a large open-air craft fair that operates every weekend through early September. Our takeaway from this was that Alaskan artists and craftspeople spend the coldest and darkest eight months of the year making things and the warmest four months selling them. We also got our first taste of Alaskan salmon, halibut and crab, all of which we intend to be eating much more of in the coming months.
And we ran across some interesting, only-in-Alaska places, like the native art gallery where we learned about the seal-gut parkas we had seen on display in the lobby of an Anchorage hotel. They're waterproof and lightweight, and are handsewn with a type of grass. They look like they're made of parchment. We also found a well-stocked sweater shop run by a Finnish woman named Pia, where Marcia bought sheepskin innersoles, a merino/possum wool collar and pair of gloves.
We spent the morning of Mother's Day, May 9, in a van traveling from Anchorage to Seward. Our driver, Eddie, now works for one of Seward Windsong's sister companies, but in his prior life he was a train dispatcher for the Alaska Railroad. He and Tom had lots to talk about. About 45 minutes out of Anchorage, we stopped at the Bird Point turnout. The body of water in these photos is Turnagain Arm, a branch of Cook Inlet known for its tidal extremes.
This would be the last day of bright sun we would see for a while, but we were grateful for the nice weather. Near Portage, at the south end of Turnagain Arm, we saw the remains of many trees that had been killed by the infusion of salt water into the ground that followed the magnitude 9.2 earthquake of March 27, 1964.
At Portage, the road began to climb the eastern slope of the Kenai Mountains, which separate the sea-level areas near Anchorage from the Kenai Peninsula. As we got close to Seward, our driver spotted the nest of a bald eagle, and slowed down so we could take a picture of it.
By late morning we were approaching Seward, the destination of several passengers on the van who would be taking tours of the nearby fjords that day. Before going to Windsong Lodge we spent a while walking around the small boat harbor, which has mountains flanking it on both east and west, along Resurrection Bay. The bay was named by Alexander Baranov, a Russian fur trader, in 1792. According to one source, Baranov “was forced to retreat into the bay during a bad storm in the Gulf of Alaska. When the storm settled it was Easter Sunday, so the bay and nearby Resurrection River were named in honor of it.”
Soon we found ourselves unloading our luggage at Seward Windsong, and being greeted by general manager Nick Hammond. The lodge is on the road to Exit Glacier, the only road-accessible portion of Kenai Fjords National Park (much of which consists of glaciers and icefields).
This photo shows the Resurrection Peaks rising behind one of Seward Windsong's 15 lodging buildings.
Nick drove us to the cabin that will serve as our home for the next four months. It was slightly larger (about 11 x 13 feet) than the 8 x 12 unit we had expected – Nick, who's about our age, had kindly given us an upgrade in our accommodations. Our “cottage” is a bit removed from the other employee housing and has wall-to-wall carpeting, with natural wood walls and ceilings. Our window has a tree outside, providing privacy.
The landscape gardener for the lodge lives in a unit near ours, and is creating a side patio for us to enjoy this summer. Below you see the beginning of our garden. We are amazed at how quickly things grow here. The trees have gone from bare branches to full leaves in three days, and wildflowers are coming up where the dirt was covered by snow a week before.
When we step outside our cabin the evening, we can see the sun turning the tops of the snow-covered mountains pink.
Across the road is the Resurrection River, which at this time of year is running fast and high thanks to snowmelt from all the nearby mountains.
In fact, there are mountains in every direction from here.
After a few weeks here, the cabin does feel like home (albeit not one we want to live in permanently). The main drawback to it is that the bathroom is about 100 feet away, in the employee common area. It's not bad during the dry weather, but walking outside in the rain, realizing you forgot to bring your soap, walking back through the puddles, back to the bathrooms... well, you get the idea. So far we haven't seen any brown bears on our 3 A.M. strolls to the bathroom but we have heard that our employee housing area lies on their route to the river, where they like to fish. So, we're on alert...
We started training for our jobs (Marcia's in the gift shop, and Tom's at the front desk) the day after we arrived. Each of our jobs required us to learn some new computer skills. The tasks themselves aren't challenging, but carrying them out under adverse conditions (such as a long line of people wanting to check in at the front desk, with phones ringing nonstop, or a non-functional credit card reader in the gift shop) can be. There is a dramatic flow to the week. The majority of guests are touring with cruise ships, so usually two or three buses of guests arrive and depart at once. This process begins late Thursday, and continues through the following Monday morning. There's a frenzy of activity in all areas for the evening arrivals and morning departures throughout the weekend, and then it's fairly quiet for until the cycle starts again.
Fortunately, neither of us expects to work more than 40 hours a week on a regular basis, so we have time to explore our environment in our time off. We don't have a car here, but the lodge operates an hourly shuttle on the 15-minute run into town. We use the shuttle both for the necessities of life, such as frequent visits to the Seward Safeway, and for more pleasant jaunts such as going to the SeaLife Center (a combined aquarium, research center, and educational organization) or to the restaurants next to Seward's small boat harbor, all of which have great seafood and splendid views of the snowy mountains on the opposite side of Resurrection Bay.
We spent several hours on our first day off exploring the SeaLife Center, where we saw Steller sea lions, which are the size of walruses...
... as well as a couple of varieties of puffins...
... and this beautiful octopus.
We’re also very lucky to have access to the Windsong’s restaurant, Resurrection Roadhouse, where we can enjoy great food at discounts of 30 to 50 per cent.
And there are a couple of other interesting eating places within a short walk.
A big plus from Tom's perspective is that the Alaska Railroad comes to Seward, and during the summer it operates a daily passenger train to Anchorage (which we plan to ride soon). Here, the train is crossing the fast-moving Resurrection River.
There no doubt - we made a very good choice by coming to Seward for the summer!
To see our other reports about our summer in Alaska, follow these links: Part 2; Part 3.
Seward is about 125 miles south of Anchorage, on the Kenai Peninsula. We knew from our initial research that this was a beautiful area, and its proximity to Anchorage gave it a big edge over other tourist destinations in the state. The lodge is on the edge of Kenai Fjords National Park. We quickly said “yes” to Windsong's offer, and spent the next four months planning our Alaskan adventure.
On May 7, we flew from Los Angeles to Seattle, and then on to Anchorage, arriving in mid-afternoon. We expected much of the Seattle-Anchorage flight to be over open ocean, but in fact most of it was along the coasts of Vancouver Island, mainland British Columbia, and Alaska itself. That, plus a mostly sunny day, made for a beautiful three hours of sightseeing, given the hundreds of islands, and the many water channels separating them, along this rugged coastline.
(click on any photo to enlarge)
We did manage to stock up on rain gear, since the forecast for our first week in Seward held the promise of one rainy day after another. We also had a chance to attend the first Anchorage Market and Festival of the season, a large open-air craft fair that operates every weekend through early September. Our takeaway from this was that Alaskan artists and craftspeople spend the coldest and darkest eight months of the year making things and the warmest four months selling them. We also got our first taste of Alaskan salmon, halibut and crab, all of which we intend to be eating much more of in the coming months.
And we ran across some interesting, only-in-Alaska places, like the native art gallery where we learned about the seal-gut parkas we had seen on display in the lobby of an Anchorage hotel. They're waterproof and lightweight, and are handsewn with a type of grass. They look like they're made of parchment. We also found a well-stocked sweater shop run by a Finnish woman named Pia, where Marcia bought sheepskin innersoles, a merino/possum wool collar and pair of gloves.
We spent the morning of Mother's Day, May 9, in a van traveling from Anchorage to Seward. Our driver, Eddie, now works for one of Seward Windsong's sister companies, but in his prior life he was a train dispatcher for the Alaska Railroad. He and Tom had lots to talk about. About 45 minutes out of Anchorage, we stopped at the Bird Point turnout. The body of water in these photos is Turnagain Arm, a branch of Cook Inlet known for its tidal extremes.
After a few weeks here, the cabin does feel like home (albeit not one we want to live in permanently). The main drawback to it is that the bathroom is about 100 feet away, in the employee common area. It's not bad during the dry weather, but walking outside in the rain, realizing you forgot to bring your soap, walking back through the puddles, back to the bathrooms... well, you get the idea. So far we haven't seen any brown bears on our 3 A.M. strolls to the bathroom but we have heard that our employee housing area lies on their route to the river, where they like to fish. So, we're on alert...
We started training for our jobs (Marcia's in the gift shop, and Tom's at the front desk) the day after we arrived. Each of our jobs required us to learn some new computer skills. The tasks themselves aren't challenging, but carrying them out under adverse conditions (such as a long line of people wanting to check in at the front desk, with phones ringing nonstop, or a non-functional credit card reader in the gift shop) can be. There is a dramatic flow to the week. The majority of guests are touring with cruise ships, so usually two or three buses of guests arrive and depart at once. This process begins late Thursday, and continues through the following Monday morning. There's a frenzy of activity in all areas for the evening arrivals and morning departures throughout the weekend, and then it's fairly quiet for until the cycle starts again.
We spent several hours on our first day off exploring the SeaLife Center, where we saw Steller sea lions, which are the size of walruses...
A big plus from Tom's perspective is that the Alaska Railroad comes to Seward, and during the summer it operates a daily passenger train to Anchorage (which we plan to ride soon). Here, the train is crossing the fast-moving Resurrection River.
To see our other reports about our summer in Alaska, follow these links: Part 2; Part 3.
Text and images ©2010 Tom and Marcia Murray
WOW! Truly jaw-dropping awesome pictures. I love your cottage - good luck with the bears. When can we come to visit?? Enjoy your stay in that glorious mountain country!
ReplyDeleteNamaste - Nora & Tim
Beautiful location for summer jobs, WOW. have a great time exploring this beautiful area this summer Marcia!
ReplyDeleteKim Dixon
I will be working at the Windsong Lodge this summer and this really helped be get an idea of what i was in for. Great photos!
ReplyDelete