Weekend in Valdez

Friday night and Saturday morning we had great internet access.  We caught up on a lot of blogging and decided to search for a local geocache – our first in Alaska.

We found the first at a closed roadhouse, but gave up on a second try at the National Park.

We spent a lot of the morning at the Visitor’s Center for the country’s largest National Park (6 times larger than Yellowstone).  Nine of the nation’s sixteen highest mountains are right here.  Can anyone name it?  We plan to stop in again when we come through here early next week, so we will leave our readers guessing (researching?) until then.  We traveled south on the Richardson Highway with the big pipeline beside us most of the way, past Worthington Glacier

  and through Thompson Pass.

Some of the hardest work on the pipeline was done in these areas. This drive was one of the prettiest yet.  The road goes past where Valdez used to be before the 1964 earthquake.  The entire town was destroyed in 1964 from an earthquake and tidal wave, but was rebuilt 4 miles away where the road now ends at the ferry terminal onto Prince William Sound.  The Alaska pipeline ends at a tanker loading terminal just across from the harbor

Another interesting thing about this town: there is no horizon, no matter which way you look.  It is totally surrounded, quite closely, by large mountains.

 +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Sunday was a “touristy” day, when we took a 6-hour tour to the Columbia Glacier icefields on Prince William Sound.  The morning was foggy and cool.  Winds during last night had pushed many of the floating icebergs back toward the shallow water and our very experienced captain took us as close as he could.  The captain pointed out that the colors of the icebergs are more pronounced in the cloudy conditions.  They were beautiful!

We took more pictures than we can post here. The captain and crew also pointed out every marine animal and bird we came across: seals, puffins, otters, porpoises, orcas, eagles.  Six orcas gave a great performance for us; it looked like synchronized swimming.  Unfortunately, they didn’t pose for the camera so we can’t show you all of them.

Monday’s plans are for a later departure from Valdez and a short driving day, back up and over Thompson Pass to Kenny Lake and the Edgerton Highway/McCarthy Road.