Seward to Valdez
Day 34 July 2, 2012Seward
Walter of course woke up at 7 am because the alarm was set for 7:30. He turned up the heat and then we were up at about 7:20 to get dressed and have breakfast. He took out the trash as I was battening down the hatches and came back to say that the spot we were supposed to move to was already empty. Hurray for early risers! This meant we only had to move the trailer once and it was all done and set up before we left rather than having to do it when we came back from our tour.
We were ready and waiting for the shuttle bus from the boat tour people at 8:50 and they arrived a little after nine. We got the scenic tour of all the places they go to pick up folks and arrived at the marina to check in at 9:30. There were lots of folks in line trying to buy tickets but ours were there waiting for us. Motor Marine Tours gives you an assigned seat at a table for the whole ride which is nice. We walked the little ways down the marina to their dock and then walked by all the Kenai Fiords Tour company’s boats to the end of the dock to wait in line to board. They took our tickets and then took our pictures (to sell at the end of the voyage) and we boarded. We had seats on the top level (there are 2 levels) in the middle. I didn’t spend that much time sitting there because the views were so much better out on deck and it was a NICE day. In fact the sun was out off and on which was heaven. You could stand on the back of the boat on our level and the one above but you could go out onto the nose of the boat on the level below. So when the boat slowed down that was my cue to go outside, down the stairs, through the cabin below us and out onto the bow.
It was in a nutshell a fabulous tour and a wonderful day. We started out with a close-up view of a sea otter and then graduated to a humpback whale and her calf. Then we had orcas in a pod of about 5. The orcas in Resurrection Sound are transient rather than resident so seeing them is a big deal. The narrator of the voyage, a park ranger for Kenai Fiords National Park, had only seen them once in the last 2 weeks. We saw more humpbacks in a group (I’m not sure how many but more than 3) bubble net fishing. They surface and take a big breath and then dive deep and let go of their breath to produce bubbles to catch the small fish. Then they open their mouths and gulp as they surface. I got one good shot of one of them coming full out of the water. I got lots of shots of tails. It was wonderful.
We also saw mountain goats down along the water line including a female and her kid. At one point a group of Dall Dolphins decided to escort the ship and the captain slowed down to let them ride in the wash along the bow. That was very cool.
Then we had views of Bear Glacier which used to be a tidewater glacier but has receded so that it has a lake at its base. Then on to a set of sea stacks or pillars where there were birds. We slowly wove through the pillars which was wonderful and then there were puffins in the air and in the water. What fun.
Lunch as served while we were viewing the second group of whales and everyone was out on deck so they stopped the buffet line for a while. Lunch was silver salmon, prime rib, salad and rice pilaf with black beans. It was all good.
Somewhere along the line we passed Pilot Rock which marks the end of Resurrection Bay and the beginning of open water. We weren’t in open water long and then proceeded across Aialik Bay to Holgate Arm and the Holgate Glacier. Wow! It calved once while we were there (I didn’t get a shot but it was swell) and there were seals on the ice flows. But even better we got to see Surprise Glacier which you don’t see until you’re practically at the face of Holgate and then you look left and there it is. I thought it was more picturesque than Holgate and had Walter take my picture in front of it. From there we went back out into Aialik Bay past Pedersen Glacier and up to Aialik Glacier. Aialik is a much bigger glacier than Holgate and it grinds and moans and drops lots of ice. I even managed to get a photo of a small calving. There was a large ice berg in the water that had calved in the last 24 hours. It was big enough that I took photos of it backed by Slate Island as we approached and then was surprised to see it as we passed it on our way back. There were more seals and a couple of sea otters in the water here.
We stopped along the way at some rocks that had a big group of Steller sea lions. There numbers are decreasing and they don’t quite know why, though there are lots of things that are probably contributing. At this point they’re on the endangered species list. We saw a second ground of them on the outer edge of Resurrection Bay so we feel very fortunate.
From here we motored back out across Aialik Bay around Aialik Cape and out around Barwell Island to see the kittiwakes nesting on the rocks. There were hundreds of them with these little nests on the rock faces. I don’t know what they’re made of but they look like they’re pasted on. We also saw a ton of common murres also nesting and even saw some puffins up on the rocks in the crevices which we were told was very unusual. Earlier in the day we saw a group of about 8 to 10 Kittlitz’s murrelets that are also known as glacier murreletes that are about to be listed on the endangered species list. This we learned from another ranger who we walked with after we disembarked.
At about 4:30 they fed us cheesecake, frosted walnut brownies and tropical fruit—all you can eat just as lunch had been. We got back to dock at 5:30 and then caught the shuttle back to Stoney Creek. We were both tired and Walter left the backpack on the bus. I noticed right after we got settled in the trailer. So he called and then met the next shuttle and got it arranged for our driver to bring it back to us. Hurray. We tipped him $10 and were thankful not to have to negotiate going by the office the next day to pick it up. We hit the sack and slept a good long while before I got up and made us dinner.
We didn’t last long after dinner and both slept like rocks that night. We had taken non-sleepy Dramamine and that may have added to the sleepiness but it was also a very full day.
Day 35 July 3, 2012
Seward
It was cold and cloudy in the morning when we woke up and I was more and more thankful that we’d gone on the boat trip the day before when it was sunny. It had been cold out on deck but with the sun it was all fun. If it had been wet it wouldn’t have been half as much fun. And to have glassy seas where you could see the glaciers reflected in the water was just a perfect bonus especially for the folks who were concerned about sea sickness. As far as I know nobody got sick though there were a lot of folks asleep on the way back!
We had breakfast and showers and Walter checked in at the office to see if there were any cancellations. Nary a one. But they did have openings at their dry camping site just down the road. We were both pretty tired and decided that it would be better all the way around for us to have the trailer moved and set up than for us to haul it to town with us to visit the Sea Life Center and then out to Exit Glacier and THEN have to find a place to stay. So we paid the tidy sum of $25 to dry camp in a gravel parking lot and drove down the hill only to discover that they had said we were supposed to be in site 14 and there was no site 14 to be found. So we called up the hill and they said they’d come down and show us. We ended up in a little spot along the drive out, where we fit just fine. We dropped the trailer (we had to, to get it level front to back anyway) so we could be free to take the truck to town.
We made our lunch and climbed into the truck and motored into downtown Seward. Most of the town is new but when you get down by the Sea Life Center it actually looked a little familiar from my visit back in 1967. There was free parking (shock) and we found a space with no trouble. There were a lot of folk in the building because it was the day before 4th of July and it was windy and rainy. I got close-up photos of puffins and murres and a bunch of other cool birds and we watched them dive 2 stories down into the tank below. Then we visited the steller sea lions (better out in the wild) and the seals (swimming) and made our way through the rest of the displays. We settled in at the end to watch a movie on sperm whales and the problem of them eating salmon right off the lines of the big fishing boats that drop long lines with hooks along their lengths. I began to nod off and looked over and Walter was fast asleep. So we got up and went back out to the truck to have lunch with a view of the water from our truck. Every lot in town where an RV could park was full. On 4th of July they have the Mt. Marathon race and it appears that half of Anchorage was in town to watch. They had a street fair that ran on the cross streets of the main drag which we saw on our way out of town. We stopped to get a couple of quarts of oil (yes, Fernando is still leaking) and noticed that gas was over 50 cents higher here than in Anchorage.
We drove out to Exit Glacier and went to the Visitor’s Center there. Then took the hike to the view point and took photos. We were both really tired. If the weather had been better (it wasn’t raining at the moment but…) we would have gone further out but what we did was fine. I noticed that the flowers here were way behind others we’d seen in our trip. The lupine were just starting to bloom and there were single delights which were in bloom a month ago in Petersburg. I stopped to ask when the snow had finally melted here and they figured it was about June 15th. They had 20 feet of snow in Seward this past winter. The glacier cools the area around the visitor’s center that much more so it melted a little later than other places in Seward. We had heard they’d had to plow out the Stoney Creek RV park for Memorial Day!
We went back to the trailer and went to sleep and slept hard. I had no desire to deal with the computer or the camera and simply read after dinner and we were both asleep early again.
Day 36 July 4, 2012
Seward to Kenai River
It rained hard in the night and cleaned off the worst of the mud on the trailer. It wasn’t raining when we woke up but it was in the 40’s. We ran the furnace and got up and had breakfast. We decided that we’d drive north about 90 miles and see what we could find to camp. We are now 2 days ahead of our original schedule and it was time for a low key day.
We broke camp at about 10 am and the traffic into Seward was heavy. The race was to start at 11 am and clearly there were people who had started early from Anchorage to arrive in time. As we drove north Walter spotted a moose out at the edge of a small lake. There was a pull out across from a trailhead and he stopped and I hot-footed it back up the road. The moose happily munched way and posed for me. As a bonus the mountains were out. And you could see that fresh snow had fallen at what looked like 4,000 feet to me—anyway not that high—and it’s July for goodness sake.
We switched drivers at Kenai Lake and there were a few folks out in boats and more of the mountains were out. We had a sun break or two and we both were happy to have it not be raining too much. There were a few sprinkles here and there but nothing serious. Walter pulled out the campground book as we neared 90 miles out and we decided on Mogan’s Landing State Recreation site. We turned a little early to get there but in time signs showed up to direct us there (and Walter asked Carmine to direct us). The signs and Carmine agreed and we arrived a little past noon. The place was basically empty—our favorite! There were 4 other units in a campground with 32 sites. Perfect. The campground is situated up on a bluff above the Kenai River. There were mountain views (and the mountains were out) and we took one of the sites where you could grab a bit of a view. We registered and noticed that the king salmon fishing run was closed to fishing this spring just as it had been in Willow. But that fishing for red salmon (Sockeye) opened on July 1.
We stopped to talk to the campground host and she said that the reds were just beginning to run. A few folks had caught fish in the last day or so and her husband was down there now. The ranger came by with the fish count from yesterday and they had counted 7,000 fish at the mouth so they were on their way.
After a nice visit with her we went back to the trailer and had lunch and decided to take a hike down to the river before we had our nap. We went in search of a trash container which turned into a bit of a challenge but we found it and then went through the day use area and down the hill to the river. We met the host again with her dog and she said her husband had just caught a nice big fish and he’d show it to us if we asked him. So off we went to see his fish. He was a ways down the river off the bank in waders. He had what he said was about a 12 pound fish. It looked plenty big to me. The river is the creamy jade that comes from glacial melt and you can’t see anything in it. But the fish don’t care.
The fishermen cast out into the river and them pull their lines back along the river’s edge. The fisherman we talked to said that the fish stay close to the bank. They’re not allowed to use bait this year so they just have lures that look like fish roe. We wandered around for a while and then hiked back up the hill and took the gravel trail back to the trailer. There were little pink bells (twinflowers) in bloom along with the blue geraniums (wild geranium) and lupine. The fireweed has buds but no flowers here. There were also some nice patches of hawkweed in a lovely orange.
Since the sun had been out while we were on our walk, the trailer was nice and warm. We opened up some windows and went to sleep. I woke up with a cold wind on me and soon it was raining so I had to get up and close things up. I downloaded photos and updated this while Walter decided to play with the phone. He called all sorts of folks and even checked the messages on the phone at home. I of course had a couple of messages from potential web-mastering customers back on June 22nd. Oops. I left messages that I would call them when I got back in August. Hopefully the messages aren’t too garbled since we only had 1 bar.
Tomorrow we plan to go out to Homer and camp on the bluff at a private campground (expensive but supposed to have a great view and it’s NOT on the Homer Spit) and to explore Homer. Then we’ll start working our way back towards Valdez.
Day 37 July 5, 2012
Kenai River to Homer
We were slug-a-beds today and didn’t get up until after 9. There were fireworks going off with bangs and booms at 12:30 last night so I guess that might explain why we slept in. It was cool and a bit windy when we broke camp but most of the way to Homer it didn’t rain much.
You could faintly see Mt. Redoubt across the Cook Inlet from the area west of Clam Gulch (don’t you just love that as a name for a town) but it was raining over the inlet so the mountain was pretty fuzzy. Mt. Iliamna was even fuzzier. So we just pulled over and enjoyed the view and switched drivers rather than taking any photos. We passed through Anchor Point which is the western-most point in North America that you can drive to. Big deal. One of our guidebooks said there was a monument you could take photo of but we couldn’t find it. No big deal.
By the time we got to the bluff overlooking Homer the weather had cleared enough that we had a nice view of the near portion of the Kenai Mountains across Kachemak Bay. I took photos and then Walter wanted his picture taken with the Homer sign so we did that. There was a nice tall patch of lupine and he had me sit next to it to show how high they get. We’ve seen an inordinate amount of lupine on this trip. At this point what’s in bloom along the road is lupine, cow parsnip and cotton grass. I have never seen so much cow parsnip in my life. It mixes very nicely with the lupine and is really pretty along the roadsides.
We motored on into Homer and pulled in at the Oceanview RV Park. They’re located on the bluff above town away from the hustle and bustle of the Homer Spit where all the tourist traps and huge RV parking lots are along the water. The view is nice but the prices are high. We paid $40 for a site with just electricity and no water. For the first half of the day we had a great view. But then at dinner time a big Winnebago Chalet pulled in next to us and blocked the view.
We set up camp and while we were doing that it started to rain. We had lunch and then did some housekeeping, taking things out of the back of the truck to use in the trailer. Then we decided that it was time for a road trip. We took the truck (we’d unhitched to fit into the little site they gave us) and drove down to the Homer Spit to see what was what. It’s another glitter gulch but next to the water this time. There were RV’s parked all over the place and tons of cars parked in front of the rows of tourist crap stores with people walking everywhere. We drove down to the end of the spit where the ferry dock is (you catch the ferry to places like Kodiak and the Aleutians from here) and parked to take pictures. There were about 12 people fishing and we actually saw someone catch some sort of rock fish. Then we drove back through the tourist crush and Walter took pictures of it all from the car windows.
From here we drove along the bay and out East End Road which goes southeast of town along the ridge. It gives great views of the three glaciers you can see from this area: Grewingle, PorHock and Dixon. It was misty so my photos aren’t the best but it was a great drive with lots of flowers and nice views. There are an amazing number of houses out this way--considerably more than we saw at the end of the road in Juneau or in Sitka or Petersburg. Most have eye popping views and are surrounded by fields of horsetail, cow parsnip and lupine. The horsetail makes everything look fresh green and soft and fuzzy. But I wouldn’t want to try to garden with it.
When we got back from this drive we did battle with the Wi-Fi and lost. Some days this new laptop just will not sign on to some networks. So we paid for local use for 4 hours and did our email and checked the weather. By the time I was done with it the sun had come out. Hurray. There’s a trail down to the beach at the top of the bluff so I took a walk down there while Walter did his email and surfing.
After dinner the free Wi-Fi was working –mysteries of mysteries—and we finished our planning for the next couple of days of our trip. Tomorrow we will motor on to the Girdwood.
Walter took his shower tonight and said the water was hot and the shower area was warm. I’ll do all that tomorrow morning. I spent some time processing photos from Petersburg in hopes of getting my next email report out but I ran out of poop before I got it done. And then I remembered I needed to update this!
Day 38 July 6, 2012
Homer to Portage Valley
It was damp and misty this morning when we got up and it stayed that way much of the day. We had sun breaks from time to time but the rain/mist never really stopped for long. We had breakfast and then while Walter did the dishes and got the trailer ready to took my shower. The water was hot. The bathroom was warm and all was good. I stopped by the office to see if they knew of any place for me to buy some Halibut for dinner. No luck. The captains and crew on the charters can no longer catch fish—only the clients can. That means the local supply has dried up. She had paid $20 a pound for halibut for her fish fry on 4th of July. She was willing to sell me the leftover that was frozen but excuse me, I can get frozen at home for under $12 a pound!
The folks in the rental RV next to us turned out to be from Seattle so we talked to them for a while. They are up for 19 days and had done the boat tour in Seward on Tuesday. He got a fabulous photo of a full breaching humpback (I thought ours had come out a long ways but his was all the way out. AND they saw breaching orcas too.
Once we got hooked up we motored down to the nearby gas station to get propane. When we were done with that Walter asked about potable water and they pointed us to a setup AND a free dump station. While we filled up with water who should come to use the dump station but the folks we had just talked to. They finished in time for us to use it and then we were on our way. The weather was a bit clearer today across the Cook Inlet so we stopped to take photos of the mountains across the way. I couldn’t tell which was Mt. Redoubt or Mt. Iliamna but I got LOTS of mountains so my guess is they’re in there with perhaps Mt. Douglas to.
We had lunch and changed drivers just outside of Sterling and then motored on towards Anchorage. We wanted to drive about 180 miles today so we aimed for the Williwaw campground which is just 6 miles up the Portage Valley Highway from the Seward Highway. If you want, you can go down the road a bit to Whittier from here or visit the Portage Glacier which you now have to take a boat out to see.
When we arrived the place was pretty full. They take reservations for one loop and that loop was pretty much reserved. We found about 4 empty spots at the end of one loop and took one that wasn’t bad to back into. By the time we were set up the other 3 spots were gone. We keep hearing folks driving by looking for spots and I suspect the place has been full since 4 pm.
We filled out our registration envelope ($9 with a golden age pass) and walked backed to the registration kiosk. It was raining lightly and we’d put on our rain coats and rain hats. There’s a nice waterfall that is visible from parts of the campground so since the sun was momentarily peeking out we went looking for the trail to see it. I got my pictures and Walter spied a sign pointing us to a fish viewing area. So we hiked across the campground to find that the first fish don’t begin to show up here until mid-July. Ah well. The creek was actually fairly clear since it’s still getting snow melt rather than just glacier melt and there are springs that feed it too. We followed the Williwaw Nature trail a ways out into an area with ponds and lots of mosquitos. We’d decided to make a loop of it when we came across several piles of fresh looking bear poop. Walter was tired and I was wet so we turned back and came back to the trailer.
It’s amazing to me that in these areas near glaciers the flowers are way behind those in other areas. This place is a little further along than Exit Glacier was but not much. I got some new flowers today including twisted stalk and my first mimulus (at least I think it was one right next to the creek but too far away for absolute ID).
Tomorrow we plan to drive to Palmer to do grocery shopping and then onward on the Glenn Highway towards Valdez. There are view points for the Matanuska Glacier and a place to view Dall sheep. We saw nothing today at all worth noting in the animal department except scat.
Day 39 July 7, 2012
Portage Valley to Independence Mine to Mendeltna Creek Campground
It rained hard in the night but by morning it had stopped at least for a while. The waterfall on the mountain behind the campground wash crashing loudly so we drove round the campground to get a new photo of it. I didn’t really look any different but what the hey. The Campground Full sign was out on the road when we left. There were a few spots open from folks who had spent just one night but most of them were reservation sites that were reserved for Saturday night too.
Traffic on the Seward Highway into Anchorage was heavy again. It wasn’t as bad as on Sunday when we were driving to Seward but there were still an amazing number of folks driving south. Yesterday we were amazed at the number of folks driving out on the Kenai towards Homer and there were more today driving towards Seward. Since many of them had dip nets, boats or canoes I suspect that word of the fish starting to run was out.
As we were driving along with folks on Walter’s tail we saw to clusters of folks stopped and looking up the mountainside. The first cluster were looking at a pair of white critters that could have been sheep or goats but they were much more than white dots. The second set of folks were looking at a pair of Dall sheep rams—I could clearly see their curled horns. No photos though, since Walter didn’t want to cause an accident and there really wasn’t any place that was big enough for us towing the trailer.
We stopped for groceries at the Eagle River Fred Meyer again. It was kind of nice to shop in the same place two weeks in a row. We saw a couple from Iowa that we’d gotten to know on the ferry. They had done the Kenai and Anchorage and now were on their way to Denali.
From Eagle River, Carmine the Garmin gave us some interesting back-road directions to get to Hatcher Pass and the Independence Mine State Historic site. By the time we reached the road up the mountain to the pass it was raining pretty hard. We stopped part of the way up and I took photos of little Sustina Creek which was a very pretty babbling creek with lots of cascades. There was a lot of Goat’s Beard in bloom along the road along with more cow parsnip.
The clouds closed in as we drove higher and you couldn’t see much of the mountain view that is supposed to be so spectacular from here. Ah well, we went for the mine so it was okay. There were people finishing up some sort of mountain run as we arrived and they all look pretty cold and wet. There were also lots of folks setting off in the rain with backpacks from the trailheads along the way. I guess if you let the rain get in your way up here you’d never get to do anything.
There was still quite a bit of snow on the hills surrounding the mine. Independence Mine was a gold mine that was opened in 1939 and stayed open until the late 1940’s. It was a hard rock mine where they had to crush the rock and use chemicals to extract the gold from the rock. There are about 20 miles of tunnels all of which are closed now.
We stopped by the Managers House which has been turned into a Visitor’s Center. They had a player piano going and a bunch of young kids gathered around watching the piano play itself. We read the displays and discovered that the processed rock was sent to Tacoma, WA for final refining. It’s amazing how much ore went down to Tacoma from all over the place.
It was raining pretty hard and the temperature was only 47 so we only walked around among the lower buildings and didn’t climb the hill. We stopped and talked with one of the docents and he took us over to Bunkhouse Number 1 which has a school room set up in it. You can also see the radiators that heated the place and the little apartment that was provided for the school teacher. By this point it was well after 3:00 and we had a ways to go yet so we went back to the truck and motored down the mountain and out to the Glenn Highway.
Most of the mountain views were obscured by clouds and we didn’t see any wildlife. You can tell that it must be a really gorgeous drive when there aren’t any clouds since you’re diving through a steep canyon with mountains on each side. The Matanuska River winds it was through the canyon. At first it is a braided river as so many we’ve seen. But as you gain elevation the canyon narrows and it becomes deep enough for white water rafting. It didn’t seem to be a very attractive alternative to us since it was only 50 degrees but what do we know?
The rain had stopped by the time we reached the Matanuska Glacier viewpoints. I got some decent photos of this very large glacier. There is clearly a rock glacier on each side of the main portion of the glacier since you can see bit of ice showing though the black rock covering the sides. As the road climbs you get a continuously changing view of the glacier until finally all you see is the area full of gnarled ice and black rock flowing down the valley. It was very photogenic by this point so I didn’t take photos of that part.
We climbed to 3,000 ft plus passes and then the terrain opened up to scattered trees and views of the surrounding mountains. We stopped and I took photos of the mountains to the south including what we think must be the Nechina Glacier.
All through this area there appear to be old gravel pits with folks in RV camping in groups. They all had trailers full of ATV and we saw lots of folks roaring around on them. We finally arrived at Mendeltna Creek Campground at about 6:00 pm. There was no one in the office because the office lady was off getting tea for folks in the café. She was more than mildly harried but did take our $25 and told us we could take a spot on either side, they were all full hookups as far as I could understand her and the showers were free too. We asked about Wi-Fi and her husband said that they’d never been able to get the thing to work. So we have power and water and are spared the intrusion of the rest of the world via Wi-Fi. We picked a spot away from the road and down by the creek. When I got out to direct Walter in the parking process I was swarmed by mosquitos. I’ve never had them so thick. While we set up I had to continually swat at them to keep them from flying into my mouth and eyes. Needless to say we got set up REALLY fast. Then we chased mosquitos for a while inside the trailer since a few got in just in the process of opening the door for each of us to get in a couple of times.
While we were eating dinner a red squirrel (white belly with a brown stripe down his side) came and sat on the limb outside the dining table. I got a couple of nice photos of him before he decided it wa time to go to the next tree and chirp at us.
There was a little sun when we first got here and the temperature was 57 outside—whoohoo! But the clouds have closed in again and the temp is back to 51. We’re headed to Valdez tomorrow where they gets tons of precipitation every year so no doubt it will rain. Hopefully it will be dry when we head up into Wrangell-St. Elias later in the week. Neither of us relish the idea of driving the road to McCarthy in the rain.
Day 40 July 8, 2012
Mendeltna to Valdez
The sun was out when we woke up this morning and there was blue sky to the southeast and black clouds to the north and west. The good news is we were going southeast! We had fried eggs for Sunday breakfast and then put on the DEET and the head nets to break camp. And of course the mosquitos didn’t swarm like they did last night. I walked over and took a look at Mendeltna Creek which is really very pretty and then we tried to fill the water tank. Oops, there was no water in our half of the RV park. So we loaded everything up and went looking for water. The other half of the park had water so we just pulled into one of the spaces (we were the only folks in the park so it wasn’t an issue) and filled up the tank. Then with a little searching we found the trash containers and we were off.
The sun held as we drove east on the Glenn Highway towards Mt. Drum in the Wrangell Mountains. The view of the mountain was obscured at the top but it was exciting to see a big white mountain for a change rather than just the black one with streaks of snow down their sides. I took pictures through the truck window as we got closer and closer to Glennallen and the Wrangell’s. We stopped and got gas in Glennallen because it was pretty clear there wasn’t going to be anywhere much to get gas until we hit Valdez and that was a little closer to empty than we were comfortable with. Glennallen isn’t anything much to write home about but it did have a decent sized grocery store and a main drag that was recognizable as a town.
We turned south on the Richardson Highway and shortly came to a nice big turnout where I could finally take a photo of Mt. Drum and his companions Mt. Sanford and Mt. Wrangell. I hiked out a little dirt road and got a view of the mountains and the Copper River (yes, the one of Copper River Salmon fame). Then we drove on down the rest of the way to the actual viewpoint where there was a sign to tell me the names of the mountains. I love when that happens. As I was finishing up my photos a lady walked up exclaiming on how cute Rosita was. She and her husband were from New Zealand and ever so glad to see a small caravan after seeing all the huge one all gathered together with their ATV’s along the Glenn Highway. They were on a 60 day trip around the US. They’d spent 30 days in the lower 48 (including Seattle) and now were spending another 30 days doing Alaska.
We carried on and the mountains continued to change on all sides. The Wrangell’s got larger and larger and the Chugach range to the south began to really rear their heads. They were mostly out of the clouds while the Wrangell’s are so tall (Mt. Wrangell is 14,163 ft) that their heads were in the clouds. We stopped to take photos again this time including not only the Wrangell’s but the beginning of the Chugach.
I got enchanted by one mountain with a hanging glacier that turned out to be called Mt. Billy Mitchell after an army officer involved in stringing telegraph wire across all of Alaska. As the road took a turn into the Chugach we began to see lots of ribbon waterfalls coming down out of snow patches in the mountains. There weren’t any turnouts to take photos but I remembered someone telling me that they loved this road because of all the waterfalls and I figured these were the ones.
Along about lunch time we began to see the Worthington Glacier which is very large and very near the road. We pulled over at all the turnouts and I got great photos. And then we went up into Worthington Glacier State Recreation Site which takes you up to a lovely viewing area complete with great RV parking. We parked and took the walk down the hill to view the glacier and use the spy glasses provided to watch the crazy people up climbing on the glacier itself. It’s a very steep face and it didn’t look particularly safe but people have to do what they have to do. There was a very neat partially melted blue ice formation at the toe that I had fun photographing. The view in all directions is wonderful. The mountains to the north and east were still snow covered (as were a number of the walkways in the recreation site) and the sun was out with white puffy clouds.
We had lunch in the trailer with a view of the mountains and the activity of folks getting ready to go play on the glacier. Then we motored on towards Valdez which was only another 29 miles away. The road crosses Thompson pass where there was still a LOT of snow. They had over 600 inches of snow at the pass (yes that’s 50 feet) this past winter and there were still large amounts at every cut and place it might accumulate. The road then comes down in a sweeping arc to join the Lowe River and go through Keystone Canyon. Here there were more waterfalls complete with wonderful large turn outs for photo taking. Bridal Veil Falls is a 900 foot drop straight down to the river below. I went over the to the guard rail and saw a group of folks get out of a raft and go stand under the waterfall! They had on hard hats and dry suits and clearly standing under the waterfall is part of the adventure. There was a second thinner fall next to Bridal Veil which I suspect dries up later in the season.
We also saw the weird red Rotel bus again. We’d seen it back in Kluane on our way up from Haines. It has regular bus seating in the front half and berths with small windows in the back for people to sleep. So it is a hotel on wheels. It’s run by a German company and most of the folks on it were German. We drove on for another ¼ of a mile to Horsetail Falls. We talked with a flag man back in Juneau about this drive and he said that Horsetail was especially wonderful in the winter as it built up ice on the rocks and increased the horsetail effect. No ice today but it was still nice. There was yet another long thin fall next to it.
We drove another 10 miles to Bear Creek Cabins and RV Park, a nice nearly empty RV park with full hookups, showers and Wi-Fi. We paid for two nights and set up camp. I had to move the picnic table over (what is it with us getting sites with picnic tables parked in the middle of them?) but there was only one and I didn’t have to drag it too far. We didn’t have to fight the mosquitos while setting up and we fit nicely in the spot.
The Wi-Fi works wonderfully and we’ve spent the afternoon (we got here at 4 pm) getting caught up and enjoying the sun (and the rain showers and returned sun) all afternoon. Tomorrow we will do laundry and explore Valdez.
To continue to follow our adventures in Valdez and beyond go to Part VIII of my blog.