Valdez, Alaska: Ho Hum, Another Glacier

On the Glenn Highway to Valdez

The drive over to Valdez from Anchorage was a spectacular 300-mile trip.  We went up through a river valley along a winding road that limited us to 35 mph.  Then we got up on top and had smooth sailing.  

We got to see the four-mile-wide Matanuska Glacier (left), then high plains with short stubby Black Spruce.  This is the Glenn Highway, known as one of America's premier roads for scenery.

If it hadn't been, we might have opted to take a ferry from Whittier over to Valdez.  We weren't disappointed.  The scenery was as advertised.  Then we got to the road construction where they coat your vehicle with something akin to Portland cement.  But by then we were staring at a set of mountains that would knock your sox off.

Mt. Stanford, Mt. Wrangell and Mt Blackburn rose up before us.  Then at Glenallen, we turned south on Richardson Highway and started down through the Wrangell-Mt. Elias National Park and Preserve where those mountains live.  If you've never heard of this park you aren't alone.  Me neither. It's big.  How big?  It has one glacier that is bigger than the state of Rhode Island and a mountain range that is bigger than the state of Connecticut.  The whole park is bigger than Switzerland and has higher mountains.  That big.

After a few more hours we came to Worthington Glacier (above), just before the high Thompson Pass.  High here means about half the altitude of Green Valley. We finally slid down the hill into Valdez.  Except it wasn't where we expected to find it.  The mile markers have you arriving about four miles before you actually get here. The town moved. More on that later.

This is Valdez

Then we drove down into Valdez, which we had expected to be a quaint village like Seward.  It wasn't.  It was more like Whittier, but with a subdivision and a Safeways.  What they have most of all is RVs.  There are RVs everywhere.  We are in a park with wall-to-wall RVs.  The other parks are the same. Valdez also has lots of boats. And even more mountains.

Valdez is also the terminus of the Alaska Pipeline.  It runs down from Prudhoe Bay, way up on the Arctic Ocean, and brings all that oil here to get loaded into ships for shipment everywhere.  When you think of Valdez, what comes to your mind first may be Exxon Valdez, the ship that loaded up here then ran aground 45 miles down the Prince William Sound.  It spilled about 10 million gallons of crude, kicking off a terrible environment disaster.  For the record, we found not a single Exxon station in Valdez. 

But as in Seward, the primary reason for Valdez seems to be fish.  The big surge right now is in Pink salmon, also known as Humpies.  They are everywhere.  Leaping out of the water (below) and trying to crowd their way into the fish hatchery on the far side of the bay over by the pipeline terminus. 

We found thousands of pinks trying to find their way to the place of their birth to spawn.  Since they originated at the hatchery (below), that's where they were trying to return. Those ripples in the water below are fish!

Many succeeded.  But thousands of others died on the mud flats as the dropping tide left them high and dry. The gulls and bears were delighted. One night we saw a black bear and three cubs come to the hatchery to fish.  

Momma bear pulled a salmon out of the water and set it on a rock for the cubs.  One of them put a foot on it, and squirted out a million eggs (below).  That’s the treat they were seeking.  The carcass was left to the hundred of gulls milling about.

We also found bears at a creek right in town (below).  A brown, black bear with cubs, and a younger black bear came out periodically to scoop fish out of the small creek. We saw them just about daily.

The dark smudges behind her at lower left are cubs

.

One day we drove up Mineral Creek, crossing a very old and rickety looking iron bridge.  Then we went six miles up a dirt road that had lots of waterfalls and glaciers. 

The part at right was better than a car wash.

We also found the Valdez Glacier where would-be miners in 1898 were tricked into trying to hike the glacier to get to Dawson during the gold rush.  Bad idea. Many died.  We found huge blocks of ice floating down a large lake at the foot of the glacier (left).  



Many years ago, the Army decided to run a telegraph wire up across that same glacier and gave the job to a young Signal Corps lieutenant.  There is a mountain nearby named for him:  Mt. Billy Mitchell.  

Yup, the same guy.  Before he learned to fly, he was into wires.

Old Valdez vs New Valdez

I mentioned earlier the discrepancy between the mile markers and where Valdez is actually located.  On Good Friday, 1964, a 9.2-magnitude (huge) earthquake struck only a few miles from Valdez. The quake triggered a subsurface landslide, which took with it the town's long spit and dock and caused a tsunami. Twenty eight people on the dock to greet the supply freighter were carried away, and several longshoremen were crushed in the ship's hold. The backwash from the tidal wave then swept into town, which by then had dropped about five feet in elevation. The people and government later got together and decided the whole town needed to be moved. 

Houses and other buildings were hauled to the new site, and those left behind were burned.  Not much remains today except a few pilings from the old wharf where so many died.

The town of Tombstone, Arizona, calls itself the “Town To Tough To Die.”  

Compared to Valdez, they they are pansies.

What To Do In Valdez On Rainy Days

You can go to the two museums.  I found this really big gun at one of them.  Back in Show Low I had been worried that I couldn't bring a big enough gun on the trip, because Canada might not let me in.  I found a rifle in one museum here that appears to be just about the right size for protection against bears.  But the bears are so busy eating fish right now they seem to have no interest in eating us.

This is the fish I couldn't land back in Portage.  It gets bigger all the time.

The only bad part about our visit here was the rain and cold. I didn’t get to fish, and there isn’t a whole lot here to do after we visited the museums and Ernesto’s Mexican diner. Ok, in fairness they do glacier tours.  We did that in Seward.  And today is the start of the ladies Silver Salmon Derby.  You can fish, you just need a boat and a really big umbrella. 

 I decided today we shouldn't drive the passes of Richardson Highway in the heavy rain. So we are just sitting in the motorhome listening to the rain pounding on the roof. Tomorrow we will head north, back to Glenallen, then make a right turn onto the Tok Cutoff which will take us back to the town where we first arrived in Alaska from the Yukon back in June.  At that point we will start down the Alcan Highway to Whitehorse, then on to Carcross where we will park the motor home long enough to drive down to Skagway.  We may also take a ride on the White Pass Railway and will look at Dyea where my grandfather started his trek up to the Chilkoot Pass.

So stay tuned.  There is still a lot of Alaska and Canada left to explore.

John and Marsha

(All photos copyright 2013 John and Marsha Taylor)

Anchorage: We're Up Ship Creek

Ship Creek isn’t very picturesque.  Not at its mouth down in the industrial part of Anchorage, close among the shipping containers, metal recyclers and warehouses. 

You can only fish for salmon as far up as the first low dam. 

But people flock here when the salmon are running and sometimes stand shoulder to shoulder along the banks of the creek.  Outsiders call it “combat fishing,” but it really isn’t.  All you need to snag salmon is about a 6-foot section of ground to yourself.  Plop, lift; plop, lift (explained in our “Red Salmon Are Running” edition of this blog in July).

The creek gets much nicer higher up as it runs through Elmendorf AFB and Ft. Richardson, which are now operated as one joint installation called Joint Base Elmendorf Richardson, quickly shortened to JBAR.  We are camped at the Army end of JBAR in the Black Spruce Campground.  It has lots of trees and full hookups. And comes with a free airshow from the F22 Raptors and C17 Globemaster IIIs based at Elmendorf next door. And an intangible that is very special, indeed.  As I drove the big motorhome through the main Elmendorf gate, I had to open the side window and hand our id cards down to the young guard in USAF camo gear.  He handed them back, then drew himself up to attention, saluted, and holding the salute said, “Thank you for your service, sir!” 

No, thank you.  The Air Force is in good hands.

This isn’t my first visit to Elmendorf AFB.  I landed here back in 1966 as a brand-new Air Force lieutenant.  I was in the earlier Globemaster II, the C-124 we called Old Shaky or Cumulus Aluminus for its size.  It was dark at the time. In late fall it was dark much of the day.  I was sitting in the jump seat between the pilots and remember clearly what the moose looked like standing on the centerline of the runway ahead, illuminated by our landing lights as we touched down.  The pilot cursed and poured in the power.  We roared over the moose’s head—barely—somehow not rendering him taxidermy-ready. I come back here every fifty years or so. 

Downtown Anchorage is an interesting combination of shops, hotels and two of the busiest airports in the world.  No, I don’t mean Ted Stevens Anchorage International. I’m talking about the light aircraft field, Merrill airport, that runs along Glenn Highway. Its ramps and runways are alive with small planes.  Heck, Alaska is alive with small planes. But there are still other airfields in town, one of them also the world’s busiest in its unusual category.  It has no runway.  It caters exclusively to floatplanes.  The Hood Lake Seaplane base was created by digging a long channel between two lakes.

The planes take on and land on the lakes, from the channel, or wherever they happen to be.  It looks chaotic, especially to a light aircraft pilot like myself. Ted Stevens is right next door, so somebody must be controlling the traffic here, right?

Here are some more photos of the floatplane activity:

The thing about downtown Anchorage that most impressed us was the flowers.  These people grow flowers everywhere. 

Flowers were in hanging baskets along the streets; bursting out of miniature gardens, and crowding flower boxes. The only other place we’ve seen this many flowers was Carmel, California.

We had lunch at the Snow Goose, a rooftop eatery our friend Gary Turner recommended.  It had really terrific seafood chowder, and we split an order of cod fish and chips.  We had been here a month earlier with Jack and Gayle Stayton.  After this visit we ended up coming back the very next day with our friend Evan McCollum who was visiting from Colorado.

Thursday we drove through the town of Palmer north of here, and up into the Talkeetna Mountains to see Hatcher Pass which sits high above everything.  We visited a state park there set up to preserve the old Independence Mine (left), a hard-rock gold operation from the 20s and 30s. Millions of dollars worth of gold were pulled from these mountains. Converted into today’s gold prices it would total a half billion dollars in gold. That’s 500 million bucks.  A teacher from Texas, here for the summer as a park docent, took Marsha and I into the mine buildings so we could see what it had been like to live and work here.  Some might find these conditions cramped, but these miners lived better than I did in the dorm in college.  And they had better food.  The cook had a much better apartment than the mine foreman, and was paid more. 

The miners stayed put when they got the best food and best dorms.  During the depression good jobs like this were a godsend, allowing the miners and flunkies (new arrivals doing menial jobs while they learned to be miners) to send money home to their families. Still, the work was hard and hours long.  Today, people in similar situations might prefer to stay in town and draw checks from the government.

The Hatcher Pass road is a loop, with a western descent that takes you down a wash-boarded dirt road to Wasilla. We tried that, but soon decided it was no fun bumping along into the glare of the mid-afternoon sun (at 7 pm).

We turned around, and went back down the paved road where enjoyed views of Little Susitna River. It is really more of a creek that high up.  How high was it?  We were huffing and puffing our way around the hills of the mine only to learn it was only a few hundred feet higher elevation than our home down in the deserts of Green Valley.  And less than half the elevation of Show Low. We are going to have to do some acclimatizing when we get home!

Oh, I need to tell you about how we got from Seward to Anchorage.  We decided to stop back at Portage valley, where we’d stopped on our way down to the Kenai Peninsula, so we could fish.  The Portage River was said to have lot of salmon of various varieties.  Jack Stayton and I got out our fishing gear and tried our hand at it from the banks of one of the most beautiful streams I’ve seen.  We caught lots of salmon.  Actually, Jack did.  I hooked quite a few but they always got off. Well, except for one Dolly I put back.

Jack hooked a bunch of big ones, some that ran away downstream taking his line right out to the end of the backing and breaking the leader. Jack also landed some very large red salmon (left), but they were bright red with green heads and had humps, the sign of a dying fish ready to spawn.  We took a couple of photos and eased them back into the stream.  The only thing we kept was Jack’s "chrome" red, and a very nice 2 pound Dolly Varden.

That speck at the right is me.  What a spot!

While there we drove over to the nearby town of Whittier.  It is only a mile or two down the road from our RV park, but you have to go through a very long tunnel that cars and busses share with the train (below).  Whittier is a tiny town with a ferry and cruise ship terminus. 

A million people get off the ships and onto a train or busses that take them to Anchorage.  Few stay, so there isn’t much in Whittier. We did find a nice restaurant, however. I had probably the best fish and chips on the whole trip at Swiftwater Cafe.

We have been in Anchorage for a few days trying to get one of our slide-outs on the Winnebago to unlock and go out.  After two trips across town the part finally arrived on Monday.  We are  heading out to Valdez on Tuesday.  It is 300 miles east of Anchorage so we need to get going.  They are having some kind of silver salmon festival next weekend so we need to get in and out before the festivities get rolling.  Then on to Tok, where we first arrived Alaska from the Yukon way back in mid-June.  Then we'll go south on the Alcan back to Whitehorse then down to Skagway.  Alaska--Canada--Alaska--Canada.  We are being told that the Alcan roadway has roller-coaster frost-heaves so bad across the border in Canada that we won’t be able to get over them.  So keep your fingers crossed for us.

And stay tuned.  There is a lot more ahead.

John and Marsha

(All photos copyright 2013 by John and Marsha Taylor)

Seward: A Whale of a Good Time

Resurrection Bay at 10:30 pm

There is something very fishy about Seward, Alaska.

In fact, the whole Kenai Peninsula is mostly about fish. 

Seward is on the east side of the peninsula, approximately opposite Soldotna, which we drove back through to get over here from Homer.  Soldotna is still a madhouse, with fishermen and dip-netters everywhere.  The red salmon are still running there.  Seward is calm by contrast.  It is tiny town hemmed in between Resurrection Bay on one side and mountains close at hand on the other.

There seem to be a lot more boats here than people.  Boats of all sizes, ranging from a huge cruise ship, to tour boats, to skiffs.  Boats from all over.  We even saw one from Fairfax, Virginia, a suburb of Washington, D.C.   And one minnow from Seward that was taking its first cruise (below right).  Way to go Brad!

Halibut is the big deal here. 

People come here just for the Halibut.  These odd-looking, but tasty fish used to come out of the waters here in huge sizes—200 pounds was not uncommon.  Now they are much smaller. But still heavy compared to other fish.

The middle of the Kenai Peninsula is mostly ice.  The Harding Ice Field is a huge pack of ice that sits atop the interior mountains.  Fingers of this ice snake down canyons on both sides.  They move at glacial pace.  But they do move, imperceptibly. As more ice gets deposited at the top, its incredible weight pushes down on its lower tenticles, causing them to inch toward the sea. 

We hike to Exit Glacier

The first day we were here, Jack Stayton suggested we take a stroll up to Exit Glacier, the only one you don’t need a boat to visit.  I asked if he knew the Exit entrance.  He did.  It is near our campground just north of town.  We found a paved walk heading up the hill past the National Park hut.  We figured it would be an easy walk.  I should have been suspicious when Gayle decided not to come along. It got harder when we had to scramble up a rocky path.  But sure enough, there was a glacier there. One of many in this area, as it turned out.

Didn't Gilligan Take a 7 1/2 Hour Cruise?

Against my better judgment, we decided to join Jack and Gayle on a 7 ½ hour cruise to view the bigger glaciers down south where they meet the Gulf of Alaska. I needn’t have worried about getting seasick, you could have waterskied the whole trip.  But if you had, you might have been eaten by a whale. Just kidding.  More on whales coming up.

We saw the Bear Glacier, the Holgate Glacier, and the Pedersen Glacier, but the kicker was the Aialik Glacier. Aialik is an Indian word meaning, “A very big, blue glacier.” The governor of the Territory of Alaska had earlier offered to name it for President Warren Harding, but Harding declined. They eventually named the whole ice field after him.  It is huge.  As was Harding.

That's our boat, at right.

The first thing we noticed about Aialik Glacier (above and below) is that glaciers this size are chilly. As we got close we found the breeze coming down off this huge ice flow was not unlike the air you find in your fridge at home. Or freezer. The second thing we noticed was that pieces of the wall of ice were falling off into the sea. 

Photo by Gayle Stayton

Big chunks of ice came crashing down.  Others floated past us, and close to the glacier the water was like an ice slush with big chunks in it. 

The seals reclining on the chunks and slush (left) didn’t seem to notice the cold.  They looked as warm and comfy as tourists sunning themselves along Waikiki Beach.  I didn’t notice until I was examining my photos on the computer later, but there were people in kayaks in among the seals in that frigid slush. Brrrr.

The enterprising tour company,  ever alert to finding new ways to separate you from your money, came up with one I thought was truly novel.  They were selling glacier margaritas.  They  fished a big chunk of glacier ice out of the water (right) and used it to make frozen margaritas, calling them “the most ancient drink you will ever have.”  I suppose they meant that this ice had formed hundreds or even thousands of years earlier.  It takes that long to get from the top of the ice field to the bottom of a glacier.  They were forgetting that the water we had brought with us in bottles was much older than that, and had probably passed through a dinosaur a million years ago.  It is all salesmanship.  On this ship, anyway.

As we motored out into the Gulf of Alaska we went past lots of islands, which seemed alive with birds, otters, seals and other wildlife. 

The otters were floating around on their backs (right).  

The seals were doing what seals do best: Eat and rest (below). 

Puffins and gulls raise their families out here.

And we had some Dall’s porpoises racing alongside us for a while, playing in our bow wake.  Then came the whales.  Lots of whales.

Humpback whales would surface for a second spouting big clouds of water vapor as the exhaled.  Then they’d take a breath and slip back beneath the surface.  Hundreds of cameras would then be pointed where they disappeared, and all would then miss the next spout which would come somewhere else. 

Occasionally, we photographers would be rewarded with a piece of tail.  The Park Service naturalist doing commentary told us that seeing the whale’s tail as they dived meant they were going deep and would stay down for up to an hour.  But there were plenty more where they came from.  You just had to get lucky and have your camera focused on exactly the right spot when one surfaced.

Then we got the leaper.  He would streak to the surface at high speed and go straight up until more than half his length was above water.  Then he’d fall sideways back into the sea.  It seemed a game.  I was glad I was not in the small boat floating  next to him when he did this.  His game may have been to splash them. He made a very large splash coming down.

We even had one whale wave to us (right).  One flipper emerged from the water and gave a languid wave before disappearing again into the deep.  

Like idiots, we all waved back.

Here are a few more photos from the cruise:

There is a town here, too

There is a shopping area built up around the boat harbor.  They charge $10 to park there.  We prefer to shop where parking is free, so we went into the old town at the south end. 

We ate in a Greek restaurant called Apollo.  Nina, a friend from Tucson, had recommended it.  I had the best dinner yet on the whole trip. It was so good we went back the next day for lunch.

There are lots of shops here.  And a barber who advertised special rates for military, seniors and zombies.  So Jack and I got haircuts.  And two of three discounts.

There is also the Alaska Sea Life Center in Seward

We went there to see all the wildlife we had already seen two days before on our glacier cruise.  They had sea lions, puffins, and fish.  Lots of fish.

Ok, so I'm not big on science centers, having been intimately involved with two of them.  But this was very nice.  They had lots of things for kids to experience.  Like the tidewater animals you could touch.

Tomorrow we move on again, back to Portage to see if there are streams we can fish there.  Then we'll go on to Anchorage for a few days to see if Winnebago can figure out why our living room slide won't unlock and extend.

I'll do another edition from there.  We already have a bunch of photos taken at the Hood Seaplane Base, the world's busiest.  We will show you Anchorage soon.

After that we are headed to Valdez to find an Exxon station, then on to Skagway to see the Chilcoot Trail and Chilcoot Pass that my grandfather traveled in 1897 on his way to the Klondike.  

There is still lots of Alaska and Canada left to report to you.  So stay tuned.    This trip just gets better and better.

John and Marsha

(All photos copyright 2013 by John and Marsha Taylor)