Day 50: Kenny Lake to Valdez

June 3, 2014

Today we awoke to bright sunshine – would have been nice yesterday – but we were thankful today was beautiful all day. After breakfast we left Kenny Lake en route to Valdez. The roads were pretty good. We saw beautiful show capped mountains and the oil pipeline paralleled us all the way. We then arrived at the Worthington Glacier. It is classified as a National Natural Landmark. It heads on Girls Mountain – elevation 6134. We all – including Scout – hiked up to the Glacier. We think that Scout may be the only dog on Pine Mountain to have sat on a glacier and drank glacial water. He loved the snow as well. We we all did based on the snow balls that were thrown.

Hiking to the glacier

Scout on edge of glacier

Scout helping ranger clear snow

After about an hour at the Worthington we headed toward Valdez going thru the Thompson Pass. We came into some of the most beautiful scenery any of us have every seen. You heard “Wow. Look! Wow. Oh, it's so pretty. Wow. Awesome. Wow” from all four of us. It was truly a breath taking drive. It was so beautiful after one stop for more pictures (171 were taken with just one camera and 172 with another), we agreed to go on into Valdez and get Fred set up and return in the truck for more exploring.

 

 

We are at the Bear Paw II RV park in downtown Valdez – right across from the Harbor. We are all just amazed with the beauty. We sit outside and just take it all in. We can watch the boats come and go, and gaze at the mountains. The views are just incredible. We immediately decided that we would love to stay here for several more days.

Our view with tide out

Our view with tide in

After getting settled we went back up to the top of the Thompson Pass, stopping to take pictures of some of the water falls – Bridal and Horsetail Falls being the two largest.

It was 63 in Valdez and when we were at the top of the pass the temp dropped to 52 with a pretty strong wind. - short sleeves to jackets.

Thompson Pass was closed this past January due to a huge avalanche. The avalanche debris field in the canyon was estimated 100 feet tall and between 1,000 feet and 1,500 feet long. Highway officials said they had never seen an avalanche this large touch a roadway. You can still see a lot of evidence of the avalanche including a huge pile of compacted snow and a tunnel made by the river through the snow. You could see where the force of the snow pushed the bolts thru the metal guardrail It was really amazing and something none of us had ever seen.

Snow from avalanche on opposite side of highway

 

We also visited the fish hatchery. It's too early for the salmon yet. Unfortunately did not yet see bears or eagles there. We will try again tomorrow. We did some geocaching which always takes us to interesting places. As we walked around town we found soft serve ice cream. Very good.

Tomorrow we will do some more exploring and then take a glacier cruise to the Columbia Glacier. We are hoping for another beautiful and exciting day.