Seldovia Trip

Note: Soon, I will have photos of the scenery and animals up from this trip on my photography blog.

We live on a bay, and there are other communities across the Bay. I realized recently that I have not gone anywhere over there in 5 years.

Now that I have this amazing camera and an insatiable appetite for photography, I was yearning to go somewhere close. Yesterday, C and I went on a boat ride to Gull Island and Seldovia. I have only been to Seldovia once, which was for a school trip in the 8th grade, and C had never been.

Seldovia used to be one of the bigger towns in our area, due to trading, but when the AlCan highway was built, it's status diminshed. After the 1964 earthquake, Seldovia lost a lot of turf and the town shrank even more. Now, there are less than 300 full time residents there. But it is a quaint place to visit.

The typical tourist photo

C was less than enthused by this trip, but he came along for my sake. We sat with some folks from Florida. They were pretty surprised that we were actually from Alaska, much less the town we departed from. I think they thought it odd that we were doing something touristy. (The reasoning for it was that we don't know anyone really well with a boat that could take us over there, so I figured we should let the pros do it!)

The wife and I got along well, and we both ran out of the boat often to take photos of animals - birds, sea otters and a harbor seal. C ended up reading his book most of the way to Seldovia and back :P. It was raining pretty much the whole time, but I was not too bummed. When it's raining and cloudy, the Bay's waters are much calmer than with sun. Plus, the photos turned out better with no sun!

We got to Seldovia and started wandering. There were tons of painted fire hydrants and trash cans everywhere that gave the place a fun look. Chainsaw carvings are big in the area too, and there were some incredible ones all around the town.

We ended up having lunch at a rather expensive little restaurant, but it was good. As we were in there, the rain started coming down in torrents. When we were finished eating, it had slowed a bit, but we came prepared with our umbrella! It was fun to walk along the streets together under the umbrella.

We wanted to get to a beach and ended up at a boat launch. It was still raining hard so there wasn't much to do. But as I looked down, I saw sea glass everywhere. My pocket was soon bulging. In 10 minutes, this is what I came up with:
We left soon after and started walking back through town again. We soon got back onto the boat and headed back home. By then, everyone on the boat was pretty tired, and many slept.
I read my book for a little while, but then started on the lookout for some more otters and cool scenery, as the sun started to peek out. I ended up being only 1 of like 3 others who even ventured outside at all on the return trip. Kinda sad, but I got some good photos!