Alaska Land Day 2: Seward Highway, Wildlife Conservation Center

Sunday morning, we woke up to gray skies. Megan was feeling better but U was still quite tired. He ended up resting/sleeping a lot of the day on our drive down to Seward. 

The Turnagain Arm looked different with gray skies. It was amazing to see how much the water level changed between high and low tide. It can be as much at 40 feet!

We stopped at Bird Point Lookout and walked around a bit.

I had read about the mud flats but I did not really understand them until I saw them. It looks like a beach but it is really silt that gets covered up at higher tides. In the center, the silt can be up to 1000 feet deep. Definitely do not want to walk on that!

We went to the Wildlife Conservation Center. It was neat! We drove around, parking and walking in several places. There were quite a few noisy ravens around the park. We saw a few porcupine and learned that baby porcupines are born with quills and that the quills harden within a few hours of birth.

Pretty flower

Moose!

There were four wolves that started howling. It was so cool to hear and see. We also saw them pacing around their enclosure.

Black bear playing with a stick.

Baby musk ox. We heard it bleat and then run towards its mama. As soon as its mom heard it, she went running to it. It was cute!

Look at the size of the lynx's paw! It allows it to walk on the snow. We did not see either of the lynx as they are shy and often not visible in their enclosures.

Sleeping black bear

A couple of grizzlies.

It was fun to watch this grizzly eating a fish.

Megan and Matthew with bear statue.

Lots of bull elk

Caribou. We learned that all deer, elk, caribou, etc., are part of the same family. Also, antlers on some types of deer grow 1 inch/day.

A few pictures of wood bison.

There were a bunch of baby wood bison. Some of them were quite rambunctious!

Turnagain Arm as seen from the Wildlife Conservation Center.

Sitka Black-Tailed Deer

Elk

Reindeer

We enjoyed the views as we drove down the Seward highway. Here are a couple of pictures from Turnagain Pass.

Me at Tern Lake where we stopped to bird watch for a bit. We saw lots of arctic tern as well as some gulls.

An arctic tern. These birds fly from the Arctic to the Antarctic and back every year!

A couple of terns in flight.

A couple of gulls.

A few more pictures of the terns.

We stopped at Bear Creek Weir to see salmon spawning.

We arrived at our lodging in Seward. Here are some pictures of our accommodations.

Alaska Land Day 1: Alaska Native Heritage Center, Turnagain Arm

After we got off the bus from the cruise ship in Anchorage, we picked up our car and headed to the Alaska Native Heritage Center.  

We enjoyed watching the interns do native dances. They explained their dances and costumes to us.

So much pollen!

We went on a tour of the villages. They explained about their houses and tools. A number of the homes had different summer and winter entrances. It was also interesting how they used the animals that lived around them for survival.

We visited the museum. Here U is with a canoe.

A parka made of sea otter fur. It was reversible: on warmer wet days, the parka was worn fur side out as it helped repel the water. On colder days, the fur side was worn facing inside to help insulate the body.

The interns demonstrated a number of native games for us. It was interesting to see how they would challenge themselves to do better, reach higher, etc. Several of the kids were going to be participating in the world championships in Fairbanks later in the summer.

U with the map of Alaska. It's quite large!

We stopped by the Anchorage temple on our way out of town.

We saw these three baby eaglets at Potters Marsh.

We enjoyed the views of Turnagain Arm on our drive down to our lodging at Bird Creek.

Unfortunately, both U and Megan were not feeling well by the evening. Some of U's family had been sick on the boat and it seems like they shared with us. It was good to get to our lodging so that they could rest.