We left Steve and Marie’s, stocked up at the Safeway in Homer, and drove to the Hidden Lake campground in Kenai National Forest at Wayne & Marilyn’s recommendation. We try to boondock in free spots as much as possible, but when you have a beautiful, well kept campground that’s small and very quiet with no campsites occupied anywhere near us, it’s hard to argue with spending $5 and having an outhouse and access to water.
In the morning, we took the dogs for a walk around the campground and then headed for Seward. We pulled into Seward and parked at the end of the road on the sea wall and walked about a mile on the bike trail to the Kenai Fjords Visitor Center to ask about boat tours. They sent us to Kenai Fjords Tours where we booked the six hour tour for the next day. We then went out to lunch and had rockfish tacos at a Mexican place that even had real Mexican Negra Modelo and pina soda. Both Steve and Marie and Wayne and Marilyn had recommended a visit to the Alaska SeaLife Center, so we went there and saw all sorts of sea life, played in the touch tanks, and took photos of puffins, sea lions, seals, and starfish. We ended that tour with delicious gelato and chocolate sorbet for Tom, with the promise that we would visit the gelato shop again before leaving Seward. We did a test run to the parking lot where we would leave the camper while we were on the boat tour, and then drove out the Exit Glacier Road and found a boondocking spot at the Resurrection River Trailhead parking lot in the Chugach National Forest. One of the really great things about Alaska is that you’re allowed to park wherever there aren’t any No Parking or No Camping signs, and we ended up returning to this spot for two more nights with absolutely no problems.
We left the campsite Wednesday morning and drove to the port to meet the Kenai Fjords Tours boat. The tour was wonderful, and despite some really shrill, annoying, and pushy Italians, we had a great time. We saw lots of orcas, one humpback, seals, sea lions, otters, puffins, a bald eagle, and lots of other birds. The glacier was overwhelmingly beautiful, blue and huge and seemingly alive. A day on the water was exhausting so we drove back to the same place to camp, which was convenient since we wanted to hike the trails at Exit Glacier the next day.
We spent all day Thursday hiking all the trails at the Exit Glacier area. We did the easy trails in the morning and saw the glacier from the bottom, and then in the afternoon we did the ~9 mile out and back with ~3400’ of elevation gain to get to the Harding Icefield at the top of the glaciers. It was snowing/sleeting/raining and very cold and windy at the top, but the view was well worth it. We drove the whole ~2 miles back to the Resurrection River trailhead for our third and final night there before heading for Whittier.
