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Glennallen to Valdez

The day started off well with a super serving of French toast in the family run Caribou Cafe in Glennallen.

As I said in the previous blog, my next major destination was Wrangell- Saint Elias National Park.

As I was leaving Glennallen I noticed the State Trooper Bruce A. Heck Memorial Corridor a gesture which the State of Alaska makes towards its State Troopers fallen in the line of duty. It made me glad that my nephew Matthew in Detroit ultimately opted not to take a position with the Alaska State police.

Copper Center was my first stop, it is renowned for being the first white settlement in the area.

Taking the Richardson Highway (No. 4) south towards Valdez, (pronounced Valdeeez) for a distance of 160 km brought me to the Visitor's Center for Wrangell - Saint Elias National Park.

Well designed and architecturally pleasing, it is a lovely place to browse and pick up a great deal of information (to be read later) and most importantly the latest weather forecast .

What is confusing here is that the access road to the park is at least 60 km further south along the Richardson Highway. The consideration may have been driving distance for employees who would most likely live in Glennallen and would have to travel an additional 120 km per day just to get to work.

It was Wednesday and they were calling for a partly sunny day by Friday.

I therefore made the decision to continue to Valdez and to enter the park on my way back north in the hopes that the weather would be better.

These are many of the little conjectures and judgments that one has to make when traveling which can make for moments of joy or disappointment depending on the outcome.

In this case it worked out very well as later in my drive south along the Richardson Highway conditions improved to partly sunny.

This part of the Richardson, which is a drive over Thompson Pass, should certainly be one of the "13 All-American Drives" (it is not). The vistas on both sides of the highway make this stretch of road the best mountain scenery driven in Alaska, so far .

A beautiful stop along the way is the Worthington Glacier located near the top of Thompson Pass. It is quite accessible and one can go as far as one dares in exploring the glacier.

At the top of Thompson Pass, the road is lined on both sides with 14 ft. heigh L - shaped metal tube markers spaced about 200 ft apart.. Reaching out over the road they are designed to give the snow plow operator some indication of where the road might be when huge snow drifts cover any signs of its whereabouts.

The thrill of this road is not over. There is yet to come the deep and 15 km. long descent to Valdez located at sea level.

Before entering the town, I took the turn-off to see the end terminal of the Alaska pipeline. This is where the oil that has been pumped across Alaska from Prudhoe Bay is transferred to tankers on Prince William Sound.
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This is what I wrote in a previous blog:

Now, that had a familiar ring to it - Prince William Sound.

Was that not the sound in which the Exxon Valdez (pronounced "Valdeeze) broke apart and emptied its cargo of crude oil into the waters of Prince William Sound causing much ecological damage?

The accident indeed did take place at the eastern end of Prince William Sound on March 24, 1989 when 11 million gallons of crude oil were spilled as a result of the ship hitting a reef .

My next priority was to drive through the little town of Valdez to see the Alaska Ferry Terminal on the other side of the town. Unfortunately no ferry was in port.

In the late afternoon, the clouds had mostly cleared and I was confronted by a classic Alaskan coastal landscape. Before me lay the beautiful idyllic scene of a fishing/pleasure port whose waters reflected a mirror image of their surroundings which included majestic snow capped mountains and cumulous clouds.

It was a pleasure to have a digital camera and let it run loose.

As darkness sets in around 20:30, I searched for a place with wireless access to do some blogging. That I found at Prince William Sound Community College. My time however was short as I still had to get to a restaurant by 21:30. But there is always tomorrow.

The town of Valdez is quite small and somewhat dormant at this time of year. There was hardly anything open and I was grateful for the facilities at the college.

Having said that, Valdez has a super setting of having that beautiful combination of sea and mountains in close quarters and the drive there is breathtaking .

In my limited time, I did manage to have a significant encounter with an artist which I will write about in my next blog.

It was another great day.

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