Day 49, 13 July 2015
Glennallen, AK to Valdez, AK 121 miles
So we returned to the Richardson Highway, this time headed
for Valdez. We stopped at the Wrangell—St Elias National Park Visitors Center.
This is the largest national park in the US (bigger than 6 Yellowstones). Known as the “mountain kingdom of North
America,” this is the place where the Chugach, Wrangell, and St Elias mountain
ranges converge. Nine of the 16 highest mountains on the North American
continent are in this park. Mount St Elias (18, 008 ft) is the second highest
peak in the US. It is the home of the historic Kennecott Copper Mine complex.
It is also a wilderness with no paved roads. We were advised not to take Rocky
into the park, but rather disconnect and take the Jeep, and “make sure you have
a good spare and jack.” We watched the DVD on the park and toured the exhibits,
but kept on heading south toward Valdez. The highway is quite scenic here. Some
highlights include Willow Lake with a view of the Wrangell mountains, the
Trans-Alaska Pipeline (which follows the highway all the way to Valdez) at the
base of the mountains, Tsina River Gorge, the Worthington Glacier (where we
hiked up to it and touched it!), waterfalls in Keystone Canyon just outside of
Valdez. At the Valdez Museum, we found out that the Keystone Canyon was the
center of a shoot-out where the Home Railroad (locals trying to establish a
railroad heading north) and the Guggenheim folks (who were building a railroad
to access their copper and gold claims) had a confrontation that resulted in
Guggenheim moving the railroad to nearby Cordova. At the Valdez Museum, we also
discovered that March is a bad month for them – the earthquake of 1964 and the
1989 Exxon-Valdez oil spill both occurred in March. Both had inflicted a lot of
damage to the town and neighboring areas, but Valdez survived. The rain at camp
reminded me of Alan Sherman…
Dearest
friends – all the best
Here we are
at Eagle’s Rest
Camp is
very entertaining
And they
say that we’ll have fun when it stops raining
To a
glacier we went hiking
Charli
found it to her liking
Lots of
scenics we have viewed
And someday
this silly poem might be continued
The good news is that it’s raining less today, and the
clouds are a little brighter, Then the sun came out – a miracle happened! We
took a Columbia Glacier cruise. Quite convenient, actually, they picked us up and
dropped us off right from our campground. The area is surrounded by
volcanically formed mountains. There are 30,000 sq miles of glacier ice in
Alaska, covering five percent of the state. The crew of Glacier Spirit was very
attentive, the captain – Amanda – was very safe, courteous, knowledgeable, and
responsive to questions. She also was very tuned to wildlife in the area, so we
stopped for whales, salmon fishermen, birds, sea otters, and sea lions. I was
surprised that commercial fishermen pay $150,000 for a license to fish in
Prince William Sound. I was also surprised to see a humpback whale splashing in
the water. We did catch his/her tail after the dive. Nice view of the Anderson
Glacier and its waterfall. Fascinating were the icebergs. Unexpected thousands
of them floating in the water before we got to the Columbia Glacier. Sea otters
were playing on the icebergs. Birds were floating on the water between
them. Our Captain Amanda did a great job
working her way through the icebergs toward the glacier. What an amazing site!
Three flows of the glacier – east, west, and main – coming to the sea and
dropping ice into the water. Some icebergs were larger than our 80 ft boat.
Some were a brilliant blue color. We came a lot closer to the glacier than I expected,
due to the large amount of ice in the water. We passed sea lions playing on a
sandy beach – glad to catch them in the 16 ft tide in this area. And we saw
tankers filling up and being escorted through the Sound from the Trans-Alaska
Pipeline terminal. We saw the site where the Exxon Valdez hit ground and
spilled 11M gallons of oil in 1989. Tragic, but after 26 years, they mostly
recovered from the spill. Very nice cruise in a very scenic area – glad we did
it.
Day 51, 15 July 2015
Valdez, AK to Tolsona, AK 201 miles
We headed north on the Richardson Highway through the
Keystone Canyon, past an incomplete railroad tunnel hand cut through the solid
rock and is all that is left of the railroad era in 1906 when nine companies
fought to take advantage of the short route from the coast to the Kennecott
copper mines. A feud interrupted progress, and the tunnel waa never finished,
since Guggenheim ended up building his railroad to his copper mine from nearby
Cordova. We took a spur to Chitina, a small community at the end of the
Edgerton Rd. Thinking about visiting the historical site of the Kennecott
copper mine and the village of McCarthy within the Wrangell-St Elias National
Park, but the park ranger was only there on weekends for road condition
information, we had no cell phone service to call McCarthy for lodging
reservations, and there was no place to park Rocky while we took the Jeep on
the 60 miles of bad road to McCarthy. Along with a couple from Wales, we had lunch
at the picnic shelter at the end of Edgerton, but deferred the McCarthy Road trip
to another visit. We camped at the Tolsona Wilderness Campground in a wooded
area where all the sites were on Tolsona Creek. Stretched the legs with a short
hike before a late dinner. Good thing we brought some DEET.
Day 52, 16 July 2015
Tolsona, AK to Glacier View, AK 60 miles
Back on the Glenn Highway headed toward Anchorage, we caught
some nice views of distant mountains and glaciers. We stopped at the Sheep
Mountain Lodge to hike their trails and do a little panning for gold in the
nearby Caribou Creek (claimed by the state as a “gold mining experience” recreation
site). Ended up soaking in their hot tub, enjoying their Alaskan Salmon dinner
special, and spending the night in one of their RV sites. It was like being on
vacation.
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| Part of the trail |
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| Resting on one of the trails |
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| Rafts on Caribou Creek |
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| Eureka! |
Day 53-54, 17-18 July 2015
Glacier View, AK to Anchorage, AK 111 miles
Although we covered this territory before, the view of the
Matanuska River and the Chugach Mountains looked different and interesting heading
in the other direction. Except for a short stretch of construction near Palmer,
the road to Anchorage was in pretty good shape. Anchorage is Alaska’s largest
city. All stores, services, amenities, etc. can be found in the Anchorage area,
as well as half of Alaska’s total population. We took advantage of this to get
Rocky an oil change and a bath, also wash the Jeep and bikes, get haircuts, and
settle into a campground conveniently located next to downtown - also next to
the Alaskan Railroad tracks, but fortunately, the trains don’t run at night.
Although within walking distance, we rode our bikes to the Anchorage Market and
Festival. Local farmer’s veggies, food for brunch, jewelry, birch syrup,
clothing, and live entertainment – all were available to tourists eager to
spend their money. We also found the visitor’s centers, both city and federal, where
they were very helpful with travel advice, maps, national park information, as
well as city nightlife. We even tried one of the ranger’s favorite hangouts,
Humpy’s, for some local craft brews and fresh halibut tacos.
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| King Mountain |
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| Alaska Railroad train next to the campground |
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| Downtown Anchorage |
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| Weekend market |
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| ITSALAWNCHAIR! |
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