Seldovia

Sunday, August 12th – We decided to take the Rainbow Tour boat across Kachemak Bay to the small fishing town of Seldovia. The only way to get to Seldovia is by boat or plane….no roads connect it to the mainland.

We were traveling on the Rainbow Connection……

A tour boat that is unique in that it has a female Captain and an all female crew…..and a dog, of course.   : )
We left around 10 am, and cruised out into Kachemak Bay. I was surprised at the number of families with small children who were on this cruise. One group seemed to be going over to Seldovia to visit family, another group, to pick blueberries.

We cruised around Gull Island……

An outcropping of rock that is used as a rookery by thousands of seagulls, cormorants….

And even some tufted puffins.

These guys are so cute! With their bright orange beaks.

While sailing, we were on the lookout for any marine mammals that we could spot. We saw a number of sea otters….this cute little fellow looks so peaceful and happy.

The highlight of our trip over to Seldovia was Opal, the whale who swam close by to say “Hi”.

Each whale has a unique pattern of markings on their flukes, or tail fin. The individual whales have been named and can be recognized by their flukes. There is also a website that one can go to to look up all the different catalogued whales.

We reached Seldovia about 1pm. We would have about 3 hours in town, so our first order of business was lunch. Dave had looked up the Tidepool Café on Yelp before we had left, and sure enough…there it was…..and came highly recommended by the Rainbow Connection Crew.  It was good food, and fast service, and a nice way to get the ‘flavor’ of the town.

As we walked around Seldovia, we noticed that each building had a wooden sculpture sitting outside…..

Each with such intricate detail……

Some cute and fanciful….

Some artistic…..others with a religious theme.We made it a point to photograph them all, though all are not included here.

The visitor’s center had this beautiful stained glass with an appropriate seaside theme.

We strolled the old boardwalked section of town with a number of cute shops, but most were closed because it was Sunday.

We did stop in at this bookstore/coffee- shop just to look around. It was a strange, eclectic used book store, with a rather conservative “Get the government out of our business” radio program playing in the background. Rather representative of Alaska, in general……..