I was able to sleep in until about 5:30 AM, which sounds early, but since we went to sleep around 9:30 PM last night, that was more than enough sleep for the night. I got up and made coffee while Stephanie slept in a bit longer. It was nice that there was ground coffee and filters provided on our Cabin to use in the coffee maker
I worked on the blog, which is my usual morning task while Stephanie catches up on her beauty sleep for a bit longer.
Did we say how bright it is here at night and early in the morning. We have dark curtains for the large main window, but only some light filtering coverings on the double french door that goes out onto the deck, so we do get some light into the room. We looked up the sunrise and sunset information for Seldovia, and the sunset is at 11:30 PM, and the sunrise is at 4:30 AM. We do get some twilight darkness, but is is not for very long. It was still fairly light outside when we went to bed last night, and already light when I woke up this morning.
I also worked on my main camera, a Nikon D810. I was having some issues with it yesterday, and I was trying to figure out what might be wrong, some of the settings seemed odd, and the automatic focus was not acting correctly, or so it seemed.
I had also brought an older D300 as a backup camera, and unpacked that to see how it compared to some odd exposure settings I was seeing on the D810. There was definitely an issue when I made the comparison between the two. I tried to put my zoom lens on the D810, and it would not attach. When I looked closer, I discovered the the lens attachment ring was partially separated from the camera body, and that explained the issues I was having. Unfortunately, my camera bag had fallen out of the Tahoe yesterday when the lift gate was opened to get something out, and it had fallen onto the parking lot asphalt. I had not seen it happen, but apparently it was a hard fall, and with the lens weight attached, had partially separated the lens attachment ring from the body of the camera. That camera body is now useless for the rest of the trip.
I was glad to have the backup, but it is older and not as good of a camera as the D810. Hopefully, the lens itself was not damaged, and only taking pictures will tell. I had made the decision not to bring the camera battery charger for the D300 with me, I had charged up the two batteries before we left and had not taken the charger to lessen the items in my camera bag. Unfortunately, the batteries and chargers are different for the two cameras brought, so now I will need to conserve battery usage and make sure the spare camera is off when not in use. The batteries last a long time, so I should not have an issue for the two weeks we are here. I decided to use the older battery first, and save the brand new battery we had purchased for our Antarctic cruise this past February, I had taken the D300 as a backup on that trip also.
That was disappointing to discover. Apparently it is a fixable item through Nikon repairs, and based on some Google information, and might cost between $400-$600 based on other people’s experiences with the same issue. I will just have to ship it off when I get home for an estimate and then make a decision, repair or upgrade.
At about 8:00 AM Stephane woke up and we started getting ready. We had breakfast, pop tarts for Stephanie and a bagel with cream cheese for me. It would have been nice to have the bagel toasted, but with only a microwave in the unit, that was not an option.
At about 9:30 AM, Ashley and Bryan arrived. I was still getting my camera gear situated, as well as the GoPro camera, so I was snot quite ready to venture out yet this morning.
The Seldovia Grocery Store – The Crabpot
About 10:00 AM, we headed out to see the small town of Seldovia. We walked to the small grocery store just to check it out, and Ashley and Bryan bought some frozen chicken wings to cook at our next location, Between Beaches, where we have to bring all of our food and drinks for the three nights we are after we leave Seldovia.
The grocery had a lot of selection for a small store, but there was nothing small about the pricing. Everything was about 3-4 time more than what prices we would normally see in a grocery. It all has to be brought in by ferry, and there is only one store in town, so it is sort of a controlled monopoly. It was interesting to see that they were reselling a lot of Costco branded items, as well as a lot of large bulk sized items, obviously also from Costco. We wondered if that was something Costco supported for some of the remote areas of Alaska, or just the way things are done here. Although the prices are high, so is the cost to ride the ferry to Homer to get groceries from the Safeway Grocery store that is quite a long way from the ferry dock there. It would require some sort of transportation to that store as well as two round trip ferry tickets at $45 each way, so paying the higher prices in Seldovia may be the most economical way to shop most of the time for people living here.
We dropped off the chicken wings at their apartment and Stephanie and I got to see what it looked like inside. It was not bad, it was about half kitchen and half living space, and had no view what so ever, but it was nice to have the fill size refrigerator to store our food, and an oven and toaster for bagels
The Seldovia Historic Section – Low Tide
Next, we headed to the old town boardwalk area of Seldovia, most of the older buildings had been built on the small river that flowed from the mountains into the ocean. Several buildings were now shops, but it was interesting to see them, they are all built on wooden pilings out over the river/stream, which was now barely a trickle of water since the tide was now low. The tide range here is about 22 feet between low and high tide, so there is certainly a drastic difference on the appearance of the river at the two tide levels. We planned on coming back here later to see what it looked like at high tide.
We wandered to the other end of town to a small shop/gas station, the only gas station in Seldovia. We bought two tickets each for the duck race that they will be having as part of the 4th if July celebration tomorrow. The main bridge over the river near the old town is the finish line for the duck race. The store was interesting, it was a small hardware store, and of course, the prices were high, but had quite a large selection if items.
Welcome To Seldovia
One thing of interest here is all of the boats and just general stuff that is squirreled away about everywhere you look. We surmised that nothing ever leaves here, it is just put in a field or some other area to sit and rust away. There were a lot of fairly large boats all sitting in open areas supported by large blocks of Styrofoam instead of the metal supports you would normally see in a boatyard. I guess the Styrofoam will last much longer in the salty air than metal supports, and it was obvious from the condition of a lot of these boats that they had been sitting for a long time, and will probably be here forever. It is more than likely too expensive to ever fix these boats up since everything has to be brought in by ferry, and also too expensive to ship them out to somewhere to be fixed. We all thought that maybe these were like the car junkyards we typically see, maybe these boats are now sitting here for parts only.
We headed back to our place for some lunch. Stephanie and I had ham sandwiches, but Ashley and Bryan opted to purchase some lunch form a booth that was set up today as part of a fund raiser and they were selling some type of Korean ribs and teriyaki chicken, an well as a pasta salad. They brought their food back here to eat with us at our table.
After lunch we all decided to rent a four person golf cart to tour some beach areas that are quite a walk from town. The golf carts are $65 for four hours, not terrible. Ashley and Bryan needed to go back to their place and we were going to meet them at the golf cart rental store, about half way between our two units.
First, we needed to go onto the Asta Gallery and meet our host Sandy. The store did not open until 1:00 PM, so we headed there after we finished our lunch. The store is the front half of the building right on the other side of our kitchenette wall. They sell all sorts of artwork, and trinkets. Sandy was really busy with making sales, and it took us a but before we could talk with her about paying the remainder of our bill for the unit. She was having some difficulties with there credit card system, and was having to enter all of the sales in by hand, which she said was a higher cost to her due it being a less secure transactions, not to mention it was much slower.
We all agreed we would just come back later and settle our bill, hoping the automated credit card system was back in service.
In the meantime, Ashley and Bryan had gone ahead and rented the golf cart, apparently there was only one left, the others had either been reserved or already rented to people arriving for the day on the 11;00 am ferry from Homer. These day trippers only have about 4 hours here because the 11:00 am ferry that arrives here at 11:45 AM is the first arrival from Homer, and the next ferry to Homer leaves at 5:30 PM.
Seldovia Outside Beaches
We headed out to go to the farthest point from town that we were allowed to take the golf cart, going farther away is subject to a $350 fine. We headed to an area called Outside Beaches, and got out and walked on the stony beach. It was interesting and there were a lot of small stones with interesting patterns on them, all ground smooth by the waves.
We stayed there for about 20 minutes, collecting some small stones as well as a few really small pieces of sea glass.
Seldovia Inside Beaches
Next, we headed to an area called Inside Beaches, closer into town, and it was similar to the outside beaches area, but much smaller, and there was a more rugged coastline around it with large boulders. We found a little more sea glass there and took a few photos before heading back toward town and heading out toward the airport.
On the way back into town, we visited the old St. Nicholas Russian Orthodox church up on a hill. It was nice to have the golf cart so we could ride up there instead of taking the wooden steps. The church was no longer usable, it was quite old, having been built in the late 1800’s.
St. Nicholas Orthodox Church
After the church visit, we rode out to the airport. There were quite a few planes at the airport, most of them set up with large balloon tires for the rugged landing areas of Alaska. While we were there, we saw one plane land, and also another one take off. The one leaving seemed to be taking tourists for a ride. There was also a helicopter that that left soon after the plane, also probably on a sightseeing tour.
It had started to drizzle after we left the Inner Beach area, but it was light and intermittent. On the way back into town in our golf cart, we stopped at the bridge crossing the river, which was now full of flowing water from the incoming tide.
The Seldovia Airport
There were a few fishermen there trying to catch salmon, but we did not see any in the water while we were there. We met some people from Anchorage that were here visiting for the 4th of July and talked with them for a while.
Next, we headed back into town and stopped at the visitors center and went inside to look at some of the exhibits there and to warm up a bit from being out in the cold drizzly air. They had really nice, clean bathrooms, which we took advantage of while we were there.
Seldovia Bridge
It was about time to turn back in the golf cart, but first we went to the other end of town to the liquor store and bought some Alaska Amber Beer to drink on the porch later on. We could only get one cold 12 pack, and one that was warm, so we took the warm one to Ashley and Bryan’s refrigerator to chill down, and then took the golf cart back to the rental company.
We headed to the Asta Suite to enjoy the beer on the porch. There was some sun peeking through at times, but but was still quite cool in the wind and was still drizzling rain on and off. It was too cool to sit outside on the deck, so we all headed inside and sat around our table, which we moved to be more in line with the large picture window looking out over the harbor.
We had a good time relaxing and drinking the beer, listening to music on our small Bose speaker and watching all of the people going out to board the last ferry to Homer. Both the arriving ferry this morning and the one heading back were quite full since tomorrow is the 4th of July. Everything is pretty dead around town until the 11:00 AM ferry arrives, and then the population probably doubles here.
Ashley & Bryan – The Linwood Bar & Grill
Around 6:00 PM, we headed to the Linwood Bar and Grill for some dinner. The pizza here was supposed to be really good. When we arrived, we ran into Bryan’s friend Lance, who has the cabin nearby here, and several of his friends that were here visiting like us, and staying in Seldovia. We talked with them for a while, the friends had been out on a chartered fishing boat and had caught quite a few cod and halibut. They are all from the area around Columbia, SC, same as us.
We got a table for four and sat down to order our food. We had looked at the menu online while we were relaxing earlier, and we knew we wanted, the pizza, except for Ashley, who was going to order fish tacos. Stephanie and I were going to order a large pizza to split, as well as some appetizers, and Bryan was ordering a small pizza for himself. Bryan ordered his pizza, and Ashley ordered her fish tacos, but when we tried to order our large pizza, our waitress told they were out of pizza dough, period. Bryan had ordered the last pizza that was available. We were a little surprised since it was only 6:30 PM, but apparently they only make a certain amount of dough per day, and with all of the holiday crowds here for lunchtime, they were out of dough. Now we had to go to plan B. When the waitress came back, she said they were making more dough, but it would be 45 minutes before it was ready, and we were too hungry to wait that long. We ordered a chicken strip sandwich to split, with jalapenos and mozzarella cheese.
When all of the food arrived at the table, we were glad we had not been able to order the large pizza. Bryan’s small pizza was really thick, and larger than we had thought. It was plenty big enough for two, and the large would have been way too big. Now we know, and we will probably be back here tomorrow for dinner, there are not a lot of choices for eating here since Seldovia is such a small town
After dinner, we all headed back to hang out on our deck, but Ashley and Bryan did not stay long, we were all tired and they headed back to their place to relax. Stephanie and I had one glass of wine sitting out on the covered deck in our lounge chairs, and then we headed back inside to warm up and get showers.
We had done a lot today, and had done a fair amount of walking, and we were tired.
We headed to bed about 10:00 PM, but first we had to close the curtains since the sun still had not yet set, that was still 90 minutes away.