Ferry to Seldovia, Outside Beach, Linwood 7-6-10

We got up early today to finish packing and pick up groceries for our camping trip to Seldovia. Seldovia is a cute little fishing village across the bay that apparently you can't get to other than by ferry or plane. For this reason, I was surprised to find so many vehicles when we did arrive. Anyway, Ray checked in while I searched my bag for the dog leash I bought and thought I'd packed somewhere. We let the dogs run on the beach for a few minutes before heading to the ferry. We were carrying huge backpacks, pushing our bikes, and holding dog leashes (I used a rope and carabiner). For a second it looked like we wouldn't fit on the boat, but they helped us on and we ended up outside in the front, which was exactly where I wanted to be anyway.

The ferry ride was beautiful, as you can see from the pictures. We saw sea otters, lots of seagulls, puffins, tufted puffins, red-faced cormorants, cormorants, clam catchers, magpies, crows, bald eagles, weird diving birds (I don't know the name), and best of all... a HUMPBACK WHALE!! It was so amazing. The whale was a check off my bucket list, but I really want to see some up close. The sea otters were fun to watch too. They floated around eating fish like they didn't have a care in the world. I was almost jealous.

When we got to Seldovia, we put our packs on, got on the bikes, and headed for Outside Beach, which is where we were planning to pitch the tent. Riding bikes with those huge, heavy packs proved to be rather challenging, but we made it eventually. At one point we stopped at a campground thinking it must be ours, but turned out we'd passed the beach entrance and had to go down a rather treacherous path to get to the beach. At one point, I over-compensated when my bike slid and actually fell off, pulled by the weight of the backpack. It had to have been rather comical. I laughed. :-)

The ride was worth it when we saw the beach. It was beautiful. We saw a camper pull away as we were riding down to it, and no one else was there, so we claimed it by putting up the tent and leaving some stuff on the picnic table. We were lucky we got there when we did, as multiple vehicles came driving through to check it out. I'm starting to think Marmot should hire me to pitch their tent in random beautiful places and take pictures of it for their ads. Just a thought.

After Ray hung our food in a tree to keep it away from potential bears, we rode our bikes back to town with the dogs running alongside, and went to a cafe for a sandwich. We then went to the local bar, which is apparently the place to go for locals. It was okay. We had a couple drinks and headed to the Mad Fish for dinner. It was a delicious burger! We rode back to camp and went to bed after a few Reese Cup S'mores. They were an end to a fantastic day.