Seward, July 4, 2009

When Jim awakened on the 4th of July he saw this cow & calf Moose right near our RV in the campground. He went across the street, stood behind a boat on a trailer & took these photos. Since she had a calf, he did not want the female Moose to feel threatened in any way.

Isn't that enough to bring a smile to your face? It sure does to mine!

Here they are both eating.

If you look, the cow & calf are in the clearing to the right of our RV.

We had decided to take the Jeep and go to see Seward, about 93 miles away. We had not seen any brown bears yet so we stopped at a "known bear site" the Russian River Ferry and asked if they had seen any. The young men there told us to go to the Russian River Campground and take the short trail to the Russian River Falls. Some bear had been sighted there. So we did! We discovered that we could ride our bikes on the trail so we did that. This short trail turned out to be 2.8 miles just to the falls and mostly uphill, at least 80 % of the way. At least now I can say I have done mountain biking! We rode, walked, & rode & walked some more. We only have 5 speeds on our bikes & with my knees, I could not push up some of the steeper parts. Ironically, a large brown bear did come onto the path in front of us about 40 feet away, look at us and then continue on his way! I could not get my camera out fast enough! He was really big, too! The biggest one we have seen anywhere. What a treat!

Anyway, above is the photo of the falls.

We left our bikes and walked about another half a mile to see the fishermen at the river bottom to see if any bears were there. There were no bears there but had been there earlier.

This fisherman had good luck & bad. As you can see he did hook a salmon but the bad luck was that he did not land it. I felt really sorry for him!

On the way back to our bikes, we encountered this Spruce Grouse & her three chicks. She had one chick off the path in the weeds not keeping up, and she was clucking for him to get back to her. See her looking for that chick! This was another treat!

This proves that Jim is now a mountain biker! Wahoo! :-) (and these are our beach bikes from Jacksonville Beach, FL!)

I can look pretty good on the downhill slopes back to the Jeep! The best thing about the trail was the ride back - 80% downhill!

Well, about noon, we headed down the road to Seward. Here is a volunteer for the Mount Marathon Race held every Fourth of July in Seward. They have these contestants race a 3.2 mile course where they race a 3.1 mile course that climbs up and down a 3,022 foot mountain! It starts and ends in downdown Seward. That sounded particularly brutal to me! The women's race was well underway when we arrived about 2:30 p.m.

Here is one woman coming across the finish line at 3 hrs, 9 minutes & 33 seconds. When they come down the mountain, many run so fast they fall over or fall on their rears & slide part way.

Here are two older women who had run the race. I heard that there are some in their 70's still racing but have been doing it for the past 10 years. If you look closely at their rears & feet you will see dirt!

This is the start of the men's race, about 3 pm. It was very hot there that day and was in the middle 80's on the mountain. The guy in the middle had a loin cloth on and a feather headset.

As it turns out, this shot at the beginning shows the eventual winner in the middle back with the balding head.

This is sad. The guy who was ahead for the last part of the race & would have been first, collapsed about 100 yeard from the finish line. When the second guy got to him, he was unsure what to do & thought maybe this was the finish & he had come in second. However, the crowd yelled for him to get to the finish. This shows him right by Brent Knight, who was down on the pavement. He, Matias Saari, has his hands & arms up to his head.

Here is the winner, Mathia Saari, about to cross the finish line.

Here he finishes at officially 48 minutes, 1 second. I believe the lower time on the scoreboard is the record time.

This is Mathias on the ground after finishing.

This is the second place winner, Eric Straubel at 48:30

This third place winner came in at 48:47. His name is Clint McCool and he is very dirty on his face, arms & back from rolling down the mountain when he stumbled. The 2nd place winner, Clint McCool said he felt really badly for Brent Knight because "..he smoked us all." " He destroyed us getting to the top and had a great race." The winner, Mathias Saari, said, "I'd rather win being the strongest guy start to finish, and Brent was the strongest guy until that last 100 yeards." "and it's unfortunate he couldn't get there." "Brent's a friend of mine." "I just hope he was OK." They took Brent to the hospital unconscious, but he was fine the next day.

Jim is by the sign indicating that Seward was the start of the 1910 Iditarod Trail. Seward is a port, as you can see from the background.

This is a view of the mountains across the water from Seward. It is pretty, in much the same way as Valdeze.

This sailboat really made this shot of those mountains across the water!

After the race, Jim and I rode our bikes along this paved trail by the waterfront in Seward. While doing so we passed this restored Railroad Station. Railroad stations are very interesting and almost as nice as lighthouses! :-)

On the way back to the campground in Soldotna, we decided to take this 20 mile, scenic, dirt road to see if we could scare up any more wildlife. We did not see any wild creatures except a few cars driving too fast the other way and smothering us in their dust! We did see this Silkak Lake view. This lake & the nearby Hidden Creek are spawning areas for red & silver salmon. It is very important and the fish & wildlife do a lot of research here on salmon. The fish grow here in the lake and then swim down the Kenai River into Cook Inlet, and then out to sea for a few years.