The Seward Highway and Alaska Sea-Life Center

The 100-mile drive down the Seward Highway from Anchorage is one of America’s Scenic Byways for good reason.  Even on an overcast day like today, the Turnagain Arm (a glacial fjord) is pretty spectacular.  Today the wind was howling, and as we drove down the highway we could see about twenty kite-boarders enjoying the ride.

We pulled over to have a closer look at one of the roadside trails in the Chugach National Forest.

Seward is the gateway to the Kenai Fjords National Park.  We are looking forward to exploring the park a little bit, but we got into town too late to get over there today.  Instead we walked downtown, had a late lunch, and stopped in at the Alaska SeaLife Center.  Our Lonely Planet guidebook describes it as “more than just one of Alaska’s finest attractions…[it’s the] only coldwater marine science facility in the Western Hemisphere”.  So we thought we’d be seeing something really cutting edge.  Suckers!  Turns out it’s just another one of the SeaLife chain of mediocre mini-aquariums.  The Scripps Oceanic Institute it is not.  But since we had gone to the trouble of walking over there, we went inside anyway.  Because they had some adorable puffins, of both the horned and tufted varieties:

We did come across a window overlooking their rescue facility, which had a couple of injured sea lions and harbor seals in some rehabilitation tanks.  There were a bunch of other above-ground tanks that were visible, but we couldn’t see what was inside them.  Supposedly they were rehabbing a baby walrus in there somewhere, but we didn’t get to see it.  Lonely Planet promised we should “plan to spend the better part of one of your best afternoons here”.  Hmm…we were done in about an hour.  Maybe we missed something?  It was okay, but we’ve certainly found better ways to spend our afternoons in Alaska.

“Meh!”