Anniversary Weekend, day 3: Sea Life Center and Lowell

Sorry for the 2.5 week delay in finishing this series on the adventure blast five-year anniversary. 

View from outside Sea Life Center

On day three, Sunday, after another nice in-room breakfast we headed out to visit the Alaska Sea Life Center. Similar to an aquarium, the Sea Life Center has a number of various exhibits, fish tanks, a petting pond, swim tanks for sea lions, otters and birds, and many other sea creatures. However, being an aquarium is not the main purpose, rather income from touring visitors is to fund the mission which is as a research, rehabilitation and education. 

FISHIES!

The Sea Life Center also maintains a set of cameras out on an island called Chiswell Island, which is a popular place for Sea Lions. Not much research has been done on sea lions; however, these cameras provide a 24-hour non-intrusive look into sea lion behavior. Some sea lions are tagged and traced to learn about the migratory or traveling patterns. In short, the Sea Life Center is leading the way in this area of research. Also, if you live in Seward, you can watch anytime on TV what's happing through the cameras on Chiswell Island. 

Resident sea lion "Woody" taking a swim

Afterwards we went down to a place called Lowell Point. A mile or two south of Seward, I can only describe it as 'redneck Alaska.' I won't try to describe it. The point is that Lowell has a beach. Covered in black sand, it's the closest beach I know to Anchorage. We had to go see it, and the view was, of course, gorgeous!

View from Lowell Point

5-year anniversary at Lowell Point

Here's a video of a friendly little guy in one of the big tanks. Enjoy!