We drove down from Denali to Seward, about a 5 hour trip, and set up camp on the waterfront in the city-run RV park there. It’s a big campground with a beautiful view of Resurrection Bay and the surrounding mountains. It’s located on a paved walking path that gives pretty good access to most of the town. Seward is a hub for cruise ships that offer excursions to Denali National Park either by rail or by bus and has a lot of amenities to serve those visitors.
The town is decent-sized with about 3,000 residents and has a pretty well-stocked Safeway grocery store, a number of outfitters, a National Park visitor center, and tour operators as well as a brewery and quite a few restaurant options. We took advantage of the eateries and enjoyed dinner at Ray’s Waterfront and Seward Brewing Company, both of which were excellent.
Kenai Fjords National Park
The main attraction in Seward is Kenai Fjords National Park which offers opportunities for both hiking and boating access to the park. We spent a couple of days hiking by the Exit Glacier visitors center, which gave us a good opportunity to see the glacier up close. The glacier is a short walk from the visitor’s center and has several trails for viewing it ranging from fairly flat to a challenging hike up to the ice field that for us ended in a half-mile trek across the snow above the Top of Cliffs viewpoint before we called it quits. Even though we didn’t make it to the top the trail offered stunning views of the glacier, ice field and surrounding mountains.
Kenai Fjords Boat Tour
Our last day in Seward was spent on the water touring the park and preserve, giving us the opportunity to view humpback and killer whales, sea lions, sea otters, seals and a variety of birds. The tour included a hot lunch (chicken burritos) and snacks with a freshly-baked cookie to top everything off. We spent lunch time at Aialik Glacier where we watched a section of the glacier fall into the bay and the crew retrieved some glacial ice to pass around.
We had an extremely enjoyable stay in Seward before moving on to Wrangell-St. Elias National Park. Check out the rest of our trip here.
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