Glennallen to Valdez

Leslie Wednesday, July 16, 2008 and Thursday, July 17, 2008

Wednesday, July 16


Today was a quiet rainy day. We spent most of the day indoors watching the rain in our stream. I made soup for lunch. We did plan our travels for the next few weeks.

Thursday, July 17

We left Glennallen around 10:30 am headed towards Valadez. Before we left we had to stop by the dump station because this campground doesn’t have full hook-ups. Near the dump stations I noticed these cabbages. They are extremely large due to the many hours of daylight they enjoy.

This little squirrel showed off for me.

We had been told that the scenery on the route along the Richardson Highway from Glennallen to Valdez is amazing. Although there was cloud cover, the scenery did not disappoint. The road was pretty good with not too many frost heaves.
Great views of wide open scenery.

As we started up to the mountain pass (slightly over 2100 ft) we got several excellent views of the Worthington Glacier.

After the pass we saw many waterfalls.

















Here's Bridal Vail Falls.





















Horseshoe Falls




















The town of Valdez is quite small. The original town was wiped into the sea by the Good Friday Earthquake in 1964. After the earthquake they determined that the ground was too unstable to rebuild in the same place. The current town of Valdez is about 4 miles away from the original site. People come here to fish. There is a small city harbor, two hotels, four campgrounds, a few bar/restaurants, and a fish processing plant. Unlike many coastal towns, Valdez doesn’t have typical tourist tee shirt shops.

We decided to eat dinner out at a Chinese restaurant recommended by an on-line friend. It was pretty good. Later, around 9:30 we saw these interesting cloud formations on the mountains surrounding the town.

Drive to Valdez

Robert, Friday, July 18

Today we drove to Valdez. Thankfully, the rain of yesterday stopped and the sky had broken clouds. We packed things up and were on the road by 10:30. The road to Valdez from Glennallen is one of the prettiest drives in the state. It winds through mountains with snow fields, glaciers, and waterfalls. Periodically you can see the pipeline that runs from Prudhoe Bay. Then about 15 miles before Valdez is a glacier that we stopped to see. Just after the glacier is a mountain pass. Approaching from the north as we were, the grade to the pass is very gentle. The elevation of the pass is only about 2,500 feet. On the south side of the pass, the road goes down to sea level and it does so in one long hill. This is one where you down shift and coast. I didn’t check it but it seems the downhill side was almost ten miles of constant downgrade. When we got to Valdez, we checked the first campground where we were interested in staying. They actually have two campgrounds, one for adults and a second for families. The adults-only was filled and we could only get three nights in the family campground. As our plans were to be here four and maybe five days, we checked our second choice. This one is right on the water and while they had spaces, we decided not to stay there. The downside to this one is that it doesn’t have sewer hookups and it is located next door to dormitories that are used by the workers at a fish processing plant. The people we saw hanging around the dormitories made it look like a homeless shelter. So we drove to our next choice. Where we are staying is a big, gravel parking lot but they do have full hookups with free Wifi and cable TV. After we settled in, we drove around town and ate dinner in a Chinese restaurant. The evening entertainment was provided by a group of about twelve people setting up tents. If they had been teenagers, we would have thought that it was a bunch of scouts, but these guys looked to be 30ish. There was a stiff wind blowing and some of them looked like they didn’t have a clue how to set up a tent. After that I watched a little TV and went to bed.

Map of Valdez

To help readers find our location, I'm trying to post a map at each new location. Scroll down the maquest map.

http://www.mapquest.com/maps?city=Valdez&state=AK#a/maps/m::4:61.130798:-146.348297:0::/e