Seward

We had been on the water three hours when the captain cut the engine and let us drift toward the face of a tidewater glacier, a blue-white wall taller than it had any right to be. For a long minute nothing happened, just the creak of the boat and the distant bark of sea lions. Then a slab the size of a house sheared off and dropped into the fjord with a crack that arrived a half-second after the sight of it, and the swell rocked us where we stood. Lia grabbed my arm. Around us strangers laughed the nervous laugh of people who have just watched something far larger than themselves. That is Seward: small town, enormous world.

Kenai Fjords by Boat

The only real way to see Kenai Fjords National Park is from the water, and the day cruise out of Seward’s small-boat harbor is worth every chilly hour. We passed dark cliffs streaked white with nesting kittiwakes, watched sea otters float on their backs with paws tucked up against the cold, and idled while a pod of orcas cut black fins through the swell. Humpbacks blew spray in the distance. The glaciers came at the end, and after the calving we drank hot chowder from paper cups with numb fingers, watching harbor seals ride the drifting ice. Lia said it was the most wildlife she had ever seen in a single day. I had stopped keeping count.

Exit Glacier on Foot

Not every glacier here requires a boat. Just outside town, Exit Glacier spills down from the vast Harding Icefield, and a trail runs right up toward its snout. As we walked, small roadside signs marked the year the ice used to reach — 1917, 1951, 1998 — each one further and further from the glacier’s present edge, a quiet, sobering timeline of retreat. We climbed the steeper Harding Icefield Trail partway, gaining a ridge where the whole frozen expanse opened white to the horizon, broken only by dark rock peaks poking through like islands. A marmot whistled at us from a boulder. The wind up there had teeth.

The Harbor Town Itself

Back at sea level, Seward is a working town, not a postcard, and we liked it more for that. Fishing boats unload halibut and salmon at the dock, and we ate both, fried and fresh, at a cramped counter where the cook clearly cared. We wandered the SeaLife Center, watched a bald eagle work the shoreline, and walked the waterfront path as the low evening sun — still bright at ten at night in high summer — lit the mountains across the bay. Lia bought a hand-knit hat from a shop on Fourth Avenue that she has worn every cold day since. It smells faintly of Alaska, she claims. Maybe it does.

Getting There

Seward sits about two and a half hours south of Anchorage by road, and the drive down the Seward Highway along Turnagain Arm is a scenic event in itself, so give it time and stop often. In summer the Alaska Railroad runs a spectacular route between Anchorage and Seward that many travelers rate as the best part of the trip. Book your Kenai Fjords day cruise in advance for the peak months, dress in warm waterproof layers even on a sunny morning, and accept that the weather on the water will change its mind at least twice.