On Tuesday, July 1st, the weather turned beautiful!! A bit breezy, as it usually is at the coastline, but the sunshine was certainly welcome. Once the weather turned, we started doin’ the tourist thing. We took a ride to Exit Glacier, about 10 miles out of town. Exit is one of 32 glaciers in Kenai Fjords National Park; a park we never knew existed. It is the only glacier accessible by road, and an easy half-mile trail leads from the Visitor Center to the glacier itself. We were warm that afternoon until we got to the glacier, then the breeze coming over the glacier caused us to put on our sweaters. 
All of these glaciers are fed by the Harding Icefield, a 300,000 acre expanse of ice that is several thousand feet thick. The icefield is a relic of the last ice age, and is named for President Warren Harding who visited Seward in 1923.The next day we drove out the road across the bay from Seward to a large drydock and a state prison. Not much to see there, but the view across the bay was beautiful. We also drove past Seward a few miles to see a rustic marina and campground called, “Miller’s Landing”. Not a place that we’d want to camp, since there were signs out stating that a brown bear (grizzly) and two cubs had been seen in the campground the day before.
Thursday morning, bright and early, the guys headed out for the Russian River, a tributary of the huge Kenai River, so try our luck at catching sockeye salmon. Two friends from Anchorage were our guides, and it was a fun trip. Apparently though, we were between two salmon runs, one in June, one in July, because none of us even got a bite!
We saw several fish caught by folks who are better fishermen than we are, and we watched a grizzly eating a fish just across the river from us. We had a good time, and got back to camp by late morning.
The fourth of July in Seward is the major celebration of the year. The town of 2,500 swells to 40,000 for the weekend. Fireworks in Seward begin at midnight on July 3rd, and it’s not dark! The wind, which had been pretty constant since we arrived, decided that evening to quit. The result was the smoke from the initial fireworks pretty much obscured the remainder of the show. It was fun sitting out along the path in front of our coaches watching the throngs of people and the fireworks.
The big event of the weekend is the Mount Marathon race. The race starts and finishes in downtown Seward, but racers have to climb the 3,022 foot mountain with slopes from 38% to 60%, then run back down; a total of three miles. The race was organized in 1915, and this year was the 81st running.
Nine hundred people participate in three separate races; 350 men, 350 women, and 200 juniors, from ages 8 to 17. There are three ways to qualify for the run; a lottery, or a finishing time of less than three hours the previous year, or for those real nut cases, automatic qualification after finishing your 10th participation in the race.
Our friend, David, who previously worked and lived in Alaska but who now lives in the Seattle area, has run three previous years, and ran again this year. He and Suvina, his wife, flew up a week before the race, and David trained on the mountain several times before race-day. His time was very respectable, but a ways off the record times of 43:23 for men and 50:30 for women. There’s a downtown parade on the afternoon of the fourth, and as with most small town parades, everyone participates. 
There was even a wedding performed on a float during the parade. That evening we sat by our rig people-watching until bedtime, which for Tom, came early. One of our new Alaska friends, Duncan, offered to take the guys fishing on his boat, and we were leaving at 6 AM, Saturday morning.
We traveled for about 2 ½ hours before settling down to fish. Duncan hooked a halibut almost immediately, but his line broke as he was reeling it in. Bob followed just a few minutes later, but the fish got off the hook before he could bring it to the surface. LaVan was the first to actually land a fish – a nice halibut, weighing about 18 pounds. Tom had lots of bites, but he was unable to hang on to any fish. Bob was next with a 15 pound halibut. The action slowed down, so we changed locations a number of times, looking for halibut and ling cod. After a couple of hours of no action, we decided to join a number of other fishing boats trolling for silver (or coho) salmon. LaVan scored again, but instead of a salmon, a large rockfish grabbed his bait. Oh well, they taste good, too. We were unable to land any more fish, so we headed back in to Seward. We were able to spot seven or eight humpback whales, a number of bald eagles, and countless puffin, a funny little bird that swims under water about better than it flies. Once we got back to shore, we all got a lesson from Duncan as he filleted the halibut & rockfish very professionally.
Our last evening in Seward included a fish fry hosted by our Alaska “SOB” friends. For those of you who are not Holiday Rambler folks, “SOB” means “Some Other Brand” of RV. While several new friends are HR folk, the others have various other brands of RV’s. The food was fresh and tasty; these SOB folks are good cooks. We travelers contributed cole slaw, baked beans and potato salad to the dinner fixin’s. We stayed up waay to late, visiting around a huge bonfire until midnight or so.
From here, it’s off to Homer, the home of Tom Bodette; you know, the “we’ll leave the light on for you” guy in the Motel 6 ads. He’s also a well-known writer of humorous stories of Alaska.
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