Photographs of Seward, Alaska

I’ve already told you about our camp at Hope so in this post I’ll tell you about our camp in Seward. My main goal in going to Seward was to take the short hike back to the Exit Glacier which is a small finger of the Harding Icefield in the Kenai Fjords NP. To find a campsite I searched through the Milepost around Seward and easily found one on mile 3.7 of the Seward Highway (Seward is mile 0). Fortunately, there are several designated campsites along Herman Leirer Rd. Because it’s the road you take to Exit Glacier, it’s well marked and easy to spot; just look for the sign to Exit Glacier.
Along the way there is a section with many designated campsites that are free and available on first-come-first-serve basis. As we drove along all the ones we would have wanted were already taken and I began to worry, but then we came to one with 2 very large boulders blocking it. Since we were running out of options, we stopped to look at it. They boulders had been placed in exactly the right way to leave room for a car or RV to get around them. I have pictures of it at the bottom of the post.
It turns out that it was access to the gravel bar along the river. We walked a 30 feet out to the gravel bar and looked up and down and saw 2-3 people out camped on it and also found a sign saying it was part of the free campsites and listing the rules—one of which was there was an 8 day stay limit. We weren’t going to be there that long so we decided to stay there so we set up camp.
Most of the rivers in Alaska are glacial and broad wide gravel riverbeds like this one are very common. Over the millennia the river will wander back and forth across the valley turning it all into a gravel bar with numerous channels, most of them now dry. With reasonable caution you can easily drive almost any vehicle on one of these and while we were there we saw several cars searching for a campsite all around it till they found the one they wanted. If you are near Seward, this is THE place to camp! There are beautiful mountains on both sides of the river and at both ends of the valley. Without any doubt, this was the prettiest camp I’ve ever had! The first four pictures in the post are looking at the 4 directions from our camp
Unfortunately we didn’t have internet so we wound up driving into Seward to get it. I need a pretty fast signal with all the photo uploads I do so I ended up going into the Starbucks at the Safeway there to use their WIFI. It worked out fine.
We liked our campsite so much we ended up staying there for 6 nights. The first few were waiting out the rain and then we got lucky and the weather improved and we got some pretty nice days. On one of those we went back and did the hike to Exit glacier. I’ve been to Seward probably a hundred times in my life and yet I’d never seen Exit Glacier before.
Sometimes that’s the problem with being a local, you never really see your home area. For example, I asked my son if he wanted to a take a flight-seeing trip over Mt. McKinley with me and his answer was, “Why would I; I can go out and see it on any clear day.” And that has always been my thinking as well.” I’ve seen thousands of glaciers, why would I go out of my way to see this one?” This whole trip is basically to do all the “touristy” things I’ve left undone.
We hiked Exit Glacier and I must admit it was a disappointment. It’s always been a small glacier but recently it has shrunk so much it’s pretty unimpressive. But it’s an easy hike so I didn’t mind. There is a much longer and much more difficult hike to an overview of the Harding Icefield I would have loved to do, but I honestly thought it would do damage to my knee and I am in such poor shape it would have been very difficult.
Of course, I’m including some scenery shots of around our camp and the roads around Seward. This time though I’m including some shots of the town of Seward itself because it is one of the prettiest towns I’ve ever been in. As always, I hope you enjoy them.