Richardson Highway to Valdez

On June 11th we left Tok and drove down the Tok Cutoff to Glenallen where we spent the night in the Northern Nights RV park. There's nothing much to speak of in this town, except that it's at the junction of three of Alaska's highways--the Tok Cutoff, the Glen Highway to Anchorage, and the Richardson Highway. It's kind of like Tok in that you have to pass through it to get anywhere. We chose to head south on the Richardson Highway toward Valdez.

The section of road between Glenallen and Valdez was spectacular. I know I keep saying that, but the scenery never gets old. All along the route we paralleled the Wrangell-St. Elias mountain range.

At times, you felt like you could almost reach out and touch the mountains.












The highest point on the highway is called Thompson Pass. Just before you reach the summit, you come to the Worthington Glacier. In 1968, it was designated by the National Park Service as a National Natural Landmark.

This is the terminal end of the glacier. You can't see this portion in the photo above. It's hidden behind a ridge.  To give you some perspective, the red speck at the bottom right is a hiker coming down off the mountain.

We climbed it too! It looks a lot smaller from a distance.

After hiking to the glacier, we continued toward Thompson Pass. It clearly was still winter here!

I was amused by the height of the roadside snow poles that mark the edges of the road for the snow plows. Do you think they get much snow around here? The record is 974.5 inches for a season in 1952-53.

  

When we came down from the summit and got closer to Valdez, the scenery changed dramatically as we passed through Keystone Canyon. It was lush green with the Lowe River running alongside the road.









And waterfalls galore...in particular, this one called Bridal Veil Falls.

This is the remains of the avalanche that cut off the road to Valdez for a couple of weeks in January, 2014. There's also a huge pile of snow on the other side of the road that can't be seen in this photo.















We finally reached our campground, The Valdez Glacier campground, which was a state facility about 3 miles from town. It was a pretty, wooded campground that was much more appealing than the gravel parking lots in town that were called RV parks. We sacrificed all the hook-ups and proximity for the natural setting.

It was a short drive into town where we strolled along the harbor.

Then went to a restaurant called Off the Hook that overlooked the harbor and had a delicious seafood dinner.

The next day, we decided to take a glacier and wildlife cruise to Columbia Glacier in Prince William Sound with Stan Stephens Cruises. The Valdez Spirit was a small boat with about 60 passengers on board.  Lots of room on the decks for viewing and photographing.

As we pulled out of the harbor, I watched a flock of gulls that seemed to be chasing a tow boat. I'm not sure what the attraction was unless there was a school of fish nearby.

This couple from England whom we had seen at the restaurant the night before, happened to be on this cruise too. We had fun spending the day with them and ended up going to The Fat Mermaid together after the cruise for dinner and lots of laughs. One of the best parts of travel is meeting so many fun and interesting people from all over the world. We also met a wonderful German family who are  living in Ohio for a few years and traveling all over the country while they're here in the USA. I wish I had gotten a photo of them.








This is one of many icebergs that had broken off the Columbia Glacier and were floating in the bay. It is the fastest retreating glacier in the world. Warming air temperatures have caused an increase in the amount of ice detaching from the glacier and floating in the ocean.









The glacier once filled this section of the bay. It was originally about 41 miles long. Now it is only about 10 miles long. According to the captain of our ship, it has retreated so quickly that the section of the bay that it had filled is still uncharted water.







In addition to the glacier, we saw an abundance of wildlife....

A humpback whale with its calf. Unfortunately, they didn't stick around for very long.











Lots of sea lions.....

 ....hanging around in all sorts of places,

tufted puffins,













and sea otters, who seemed to be putting on a show for us.

It was a fun day and interesting day. We really enjoyed the time we spent in Valdez. Now off to the next adventure.