Sunday the 5th September saw us wake to a clear, sunny day in Seward Alaska. Seward is a very pleasant port town on the Kenai Peninsular with mountain ranges on both sides. The morning was spent doing a tour and ride at the local husky dog kennels. The owner of the place, Mitch Seavey, won the Iditarod dog sled race this year (huge event in Alaska). Given that we love dogs it was a sure bet we would like this place - mind you the odour from the dog compound (>60 dogs) was enough to clear the sinuses!!! It was a very interesting experience and the dog sled ride was good fun. They use wheeled sleds during summer to exercise the dogs.

In the afternoon we ventured out to Exit Glacier (20 mins from town). There are a number of short trails in and around the glacier so we went exploring for a few hours. We were safe though because Michele had her river pebbles to whack together to scare the bears off??? The glacier is pretty cool (pardon the pun) because you can walk right up to the face of it - well nearly.
No caption needed for this photo!!

The main tourist activity for the next day (6th Sept) apart from driving around the area was a visit to the Alaska SeaLife Centre. We saw puffins here for the first time. These things are cool to watch as they actually fly around underwater to get their food. There is all the usual creatures you would expect like seals, sea lions, octopus etc. They did have a hands on display with heaps of different types of starfish and anemones that you could touch. It was great for young kids so it kept me amused for a while ;-)

That evening we were guests of our B&B hosts, Ken, Jennifer, Joe and and their Golden Retriever, Gem. The place we were staying at, Winterset, was fantastic (Winterset Cabin). It was a log cabin that they had designed and built themselves. They also built their own wonderful log house and their property backs onto the Chugach national forest. The weather had been really good so we sat on the outside deck drinking 'Farsters' (that's Fosters for those back home!!) while Ken cooked up a feast of Halibut and Kenai Red salmon on the bbq - superb. We topped off the evening sitting around a camp fire under the stars while Ken & jennifer reminisced about their travels to Australia back in the mid 80's. This is one of those places you find when travelling where you could easily stay for quite a while.
Our gracious hosts...