Valdez

Rained most of the night and is still raining when we wake up.  The mountains surrounding the town are in the clouds and banks of fog on the lower areas.  The Alaska news says this is the 5th rainiest July on record. Last July was also rainy. Sounds like climate change back home in northern New England, wetter summers. A couple towns in Vermont have already had destructive floods this summer. RV folks who were here in June said they had lots of sun.

Well at least we have so far avoided serious high heat and forest fires.  I don’t think we will be so lucky going through southern Canada and back into the states.

Finally it stops raining in the afternoon and we go for a walk to the Visitors Center.  We even come upon a Radio Shack, I didn’t think any still existed. Of course we had to go in and talk with the owner.

Another Alaska T-shirt

Valdez

Rained hard overnight. We continue the last 20 miles or so down the Thompson Pass into Valdez. Impressively narrow canyon that the road shares with the Lowe River.  Lots of spectacular waterfalls.

Still overcast and raining so we head directly to the Bear Paw CampGround near the waterfront. It's cold and rainy so after setting up we head to “The Fat Mermaid”  for bowls of chowder. Back at the RV I could not get the power plugin to work.  We have plenty of power with our two lithium batteries and propane for heat. I will figure it out tomorrow when it hopefully stops raining.

 

Thompson Pass

We have another sunny morning. We drive east out of the Chugach Mountains in to rolling hills. Heading east to the town of Glennallen we can see the Wrangell Mountains progressively getting larger, particularly Mount  Wrangell at 14113 feet.  Not a lot of cell coverage heading east on RT 1, Glenn highway.  After we stop at a very busy gas station at Glennallen we find good cell coverage all the way south to Vadlez on RT 4. Not a lot of settlements but plenty of towers for highway cell coverage,

Mount Wrangell

Fire Weed

Quick stop T-shirt

We stop at the Wrangell- St. Elias National Park & Preserve. This is the largest National Park in the USA, about the size of Connecticut. There is a road, 60 miles of gravel, to the towns of McCarthy and Kennicott. Kennicott was a huge copper mining facility which was abandoned in 1938. Kennicott ripped up the railroad track, but left all the machinery and buildings in place.  The park service has stabilized many of the buildings and offers tours.  The road is on the old railroad bed.  The park service grades the road multiple times in the summer, but people occasionally get flats due to old nails and spikes. We return north on RT 4 and may drive out to Kennicott

Late in the afternoon it gets very cloudy and foggy.  We boondock near the top of the Thompson pass under the Worthington Glacier just north of Valdez for the night.  If it was clear we would be able to see 3 different glaciers, but currently can only see part of

Copper River

In the clouds for the night

Large gravel pad, glacier deposited. Could part a 100 RV’s

Grand View

The Immediate Care Facility opens at 10:00 AM. Linda leaves another message which we know is useless, so we drive back there.  They send the prescription to a Costco just down the road.  So by the time we get an oil change at Jiffy Lube and Gas at Costco, the prescription is ready to pick up.

Linda is feeling somewhat better with the over the counter stuff she has taken so we decide to head towards Valdez. We are having a nice warm sunny day, we seem to be getting about one a week. Valdez has a couple immediate care facilities, in case Linda does not improve.  After Valdez it could be quite a few days before we would have access to immediate care.

We have a nice sunny drive up the Glenn highway and we make lots of stops to take in the views. Just before we stop a mother moose and her calf cross the road in front of us. 

Matanuska Glacier

Moose Crossing

A little later when we stop at GrandView campground and restaurant I spy 5 Dall sheep high up on the mountains across the road.

Dall mountain goats, somewhere up there.

Dall mountain goats

Even though we are out in the boonies they have a pretty good restaurant here and we have a pizza for dinner  and rhubarb-strawberry pie for dessert.  Rhubarb must grow well in the land of the midnight sun since it seems to be the most popular dessert here.  The woman running the restaurant and office is of Asian descent and English is obviously not her first language. She is just such an engaging person we don’t let lack of understanding  get in the way. I remember a line from one of our French-Canadian boating friends at a North Carolina restaurant talking to the owner who had a very thick southern accent.  “I don’t understand a word you are saying, but I love your accent”

Grand View Restaurant

Anchorage

Rains overnight and is still raining when we get up in the morning. Just before we get ready to leave I hear a couple Loons. When I walk closer to the lake a number of them start to fly off. Don’t think I have ever been close enough to hear a Loon taking flight. Their wings make an odd sound flapping on the water’s surface before they get fully airborne.

My one goal today was to go to the town of Whittier on the way back to Anchorage. Whittiier could only be reached by boat or by hiking over a glacier prior to World War 2.  When the Japanese attacked the Aleutian Islands the USA was concerned they might take Seward cutting off its rail line to the interior of Alaska. The USA dug a 2.6 mile railroad tunnel to connect to the Alaska rail road just south of Anchorage. Today it is a one way car and rail tunnel.  Cars go east on the ½ hour and west on the hour.  I assume cars on both ends have to wait for the train, which I don’t think happens very often anymore.

Entering the train/car tunnel to Whittier

The first place we try, that has good reviews online, says we will have to wait 1-½ hours. Then tells us their doctor who handles medicare patients is not in until tomorrow. We leave and I find another provider with good ratings on Yelp. We go to that address in a Mall and find they no longer exist there. We drive to our third place and Linda sees a doctor pretty quick. He writes a couple prescriptions for her, but now it is rather late, but a nearby Walgreens is open until 9:00PM, so we have the prescription sent there and we ride there to pick it up. The Pharmacy there closes at 7:00PM and they do not open until Monday, SOB ! Linda calls back the immediate Care facility and they are now closed. We buy the over the counter stuff the doctor recommended and give up on the rest until tomorrow. Linda leaves a message about her problem. We head back to Cabela’s for the night, with at least 50 various other RV’s.

Peter Lake

To Peter Lake Video

https://photos.app.goo.gl/bs5m3yZjrGZd9nrg8

Back to a cloudy day, but at least the winds have dropped off.  One last stop at the “Two Sisters” bakery later in the morning on our way out of town. Still a line. I get some sandwiches to go for lunch and dinner.

Leaving the Spit

It’s low tide late morning and lots of people are walking out on the sand flats which extend ½ mile out or more in places..  The tide range here is over 20 feet. There are even some people horseback riding.

Driving north, Anchor Point catches my interest when I discover that it is the farthest west highway (paved road) in North America that connects to the USA highway system. I turn around, we have to check this out. Turns out to be more interesting than I imagined. There is a boat launch of sorts.  There are a couple of high wheeled tractors that tow fishing boats on trailers down the beach to the surf to launch.  When the fishermen return they call on the VHF radio to the tractor to come out to pick them up.  Unfortunately with todays overcast conditions no one is launching. Fortunately some locals explain how this all works or I would've missed it.

Tractor boat launch

From the internet

Now, every way we go gets us closer to home. 
Most western highway in north America, the pavement ends behind us.

When we first get there this fellow approaches us. I thought he was going to collect a parking fee, but he sheepishly asked if we have some spare toilet paper.  His wife used one of the Portalets, before she discovered there was no toilet paper. I guess we have all been there, once. He tried to return the roll and we tell him to leave it in the Portalet for the next person.  I have never made so many Assholes happy.

A little further north we make another detour to Ninilchik Beach.  Not sure what caught my interest but it was a very interesting stop.  There is a small charter fishing fleet here in a protected manmade boat basin.  The boats can only come and go at high tide.  There are only two boats on the dock, but about 50 Alaskan cars parked, so I assume they all left on there charters early this morning at high tide.  There looks to be an old, now closed, canning factory next to the basin.

Everyone has gone fishing

No boats going through here for another 6 hours

Can walk across the channel at low tide

From the Internet, what the basin will look like when the boats are in.

During the busy season low tide (Internet)

During the busy season high tide

High tide, Google Earth

We stop for the night a couple hours later at Peter Lake at a free campground in a recently burned over area. We are parked right on the water. Nice breeze, no bugs. I am beginning to think that all the stories of the masses of mosquitoes in Alaska are to scare us folks from the lower 48 away.

Burned out surroundings

Campground view, Peter Lake, 10:30PM, in the evening

Homer Spit

I made reservations a couple days ago for Ocean Shores RV Park and for tonight at Heritage RV Park on Homer Spit.  Homer Spit is a 4-1/2 mile long piece of land extending out into Kachermak Bay. The Split is a terminal moraine left over from the Ice Age.

Kachermak Bay

Homer Spit

First stop is “Two Sisters” Bakery. They are open 4 days a week and today is the first day they are open this week. We get there shortly after they open at 10:00AM and there is already a long line and no parking.  I drop Linda off and park a couple blocks away. I don’t get back for 10 minutes and Linda is only half way through the line.  We purchase a bunch of items and have breakfast back in the RV.

Next stop is the “Pratt Museum” which explores the history, science and art of the area.  

After that we stop at the “Center for Alaskan Coastal Studies”. Lots of interesting displays on the negative impact that Europeans have had on land animals, sea life and the native population. They explain the various efforts to rectify past mistakes,

Then we head to our RV Park on the Split. We walk to the “Broken Oak, Oyster Bar” recommended by some fellow RVers we met at Whitehorse BC.  I get a ½ dozen of raw oysters and Linda gets steamers and then we split a dinner of Shrimp and Grits. As we are sitting at the Bar the Maitred d’  gets a call asking if they have hamburgers, I guess they don't understand what an Oyster Bar is.

Camping on the beach, Brrrrrrr.

Catalina 36, not many sailboats at the marina, mostly fishing boats

At the Oyster Bar

Interestingly the Oysters are Atlantic and west coast oysters locally grown.  Oysters don’t naturally grow in the cold waters around Alaska, it's too cold for them to reproduce. The Kachermak Bay Oysters Co-Op has figured out how to get them to procreate in their lab. Then they move them to tiered nets hanging from buoys to finish their life cycle.

The news for heading home may be causing some problems. I have planned on taking the ferry from Haines to Skagway, a short trip that would save a full day of driving. The road from Skagway to Whitehorse and the ALCAN had a rock side that could take a couple days to get one lane open. Also, along the ALCAN  some heavy rains washed away the road just west of Fort Nelson. It will be a week or two before we get to these places, so hopefully they will be fixed.  I am also glad we did Banff and Jasper on our way north. The town of Jasper was evacuated for approaching forest fires a couple days ago and buildings on the south end of town have caught fire. The whole town is in jeopardy. 

Maligne Hotel on the main road

Tonights news, WTF !

ALCAN washout

Rockslide north of Skagway