Glacier Day Cruise

Our day cruise to the glacier was awesome. It was gray and gloomy when we left, and it did rain a couple times while we were out but we still saw a lot.

We managed to find an espresso store for our lattes before we left. So far we've managed to find one everywhere we've gone. I like trying out the local places. This one is called "Little Chicks" for some unknown reason. Besides selling espresso they sell t-shirts and sweatshirts. One t-shirt said, "Behind every man is a woman rolling her eyes." Randy and I agreed that our motto would be the other way around. He often thinks I'm absurd; I don't know why that should be.


The captain of the boat was named Stan Stephens and he seems like quite a character. He was very knowledgeable and interesting to listen to as he narrated things. He and his wife own the operation. A woman we met told us that he had retired and sold the business but then after several years bought it back. I guess the other people weren't doing a good job. During the cruise we wondered if he would talk at all about the Exxon Valdez oil spill but he never mentioned it at all. I wondered if he didn't want to bring it up for some reason. Rose, our B&B owner, said he was quite influential during the event. Then at the museum and also in a book Randy read we saw that he was pretty angry at Exxon. Maybe that's why he didn't talk about it on the cruise. Or maybe just because it was 20 years ago now.


We met two women on the boat who were high school friends and retired teachers. One had moved to Fairbanks after college and been there ever since, the other still lived in South Dakota and was visiting. They were fun to sit and talk with. The one from Fairbanks seems like a true Alaskan. She has a cabin in the Arctic Circle and she and her husband hunt and fish. She talked about bringing bear and moose meat to the cabin when they went.

We saw lots of wildlife and scenery from the boat. It was great. Sea lions, way more otters all together than we ever have seen in Monterey, doll porpoises which I had not heard of before and who look like mini-Orcas.














And the glacier truly was awesome. The blue ice was something I hadn't expected. When we came to the edge it was pretty quiet, but we waited around and saw a few pieces "calve" off. Even when nothing fell, we heard the booming cracks.








The big excitement was whales. First a humpback,...




...Then orcas! One orca came quite near the boat. He would dive and everyone would wait for him to come back up, watching where he just had been. Suddenly we'd hear a big puff of air and he'd be coming up on the other side. We'd all run for that side then. It cracked me up. A couple movies are just of the backs of people running and me laughing.




I had to take movies of the orcas with my own little camera. By then I had run the battery out on the other camera. When we were back at the B&B and I mentioned that, Rose laughed and said, "You were really in the moment!" Nice way to say I went totally overboard. :)  (Haha, didn't mean the pun there.)

Backcountry Adventure

I am writing this 3 days after it happened. We've had some long days, very fun. We drove out of Gakona on Sunday and the sun was coming out. I caught this picture of the sun's rays, which I always think is so beautiful.


We decided to take a side trip to McCathy-Kennicut. We'd read about it and heard the ranger explaining a little about it to another couple. You have to take a 60 mile gravel road and then walk across a footbridge to get to it. The first thing the ranger asked the couple was, "Do you have a spare tire?" The road was not just gravel, it had potholes and "washboarding," which I'd never heard of, but now I know what it is. It's when there are ridges on the road, like old washboard ridges.






The first bridge we got to had been a railroad trestle bridge before, It was a one-way wood bridge, very high above the river. Kind of scary looking. But we made it.


Randy's a good driver and did an excellent job driving this road, but I was a little nervous. Every so often he'd turn his head to look at something and I said, "Randy, I don't want to see the back of your head!" There were times he had to go 5 miles an hour, it was so rough. But we thought it was worth it. The town and the mine were very interesting.

McCarthy is a town and Kennicut was a big copper mine. The old buildings are cool. And the weather could not have been better. We had fun wondering around.


















I took several pictures of windows. I like windows. I like to think of people who lived and worked there looking out these same windows, and what they saw.








There was one little cabin open. Can you imagine living in that with kids and everything? They said they reserved the cabins for people who had a higher position.









On the gravel road we kept thinking surely we'd see some wildlife; there were all these pools that looked perfect for moose, and it was such an untraveled road. But, no, we didn't see a moose until we were back on a "regular" road.


Then we started on our way to Valdez. It was getting late so I called Rose, the owner of the B&B we were staying in there. She asked about our weather and when she heard it was sunny she said she was jealous. On the way we saw a glacier near the road and I took a bunch of photos from the roadside and car, not knowing we'd actually be able to walk right up to it.




It was cool to see it so close up. As we got close I started smelling this fresh, sweet smell from a flower growing there. It felt kind of magical to walk up to a glacier surrounded by the scent of flowers. A woman we met later thought it might have been lupine but when I looked it up I didn't think so.


We went through a beautiful pass on the way to Valdez. It was like a dreamscape -- green, lush mountains, clouds caught in the trees, and waterfalls.






We arrived in Valdez quite late, around 10 pm, because we stopped so often to take pictures. I had googled for directions to our B&B but they didn't seem to be correct. They said to go down "Blueberry Hill Road," which we did and the the B&B was supposed to be just .3 miles in. We didn't see any sign; just looked like a bunch of houses. I knew it was someone's house who let out the bedrooms, but we couldn't figure it out. We went back into town and found a restaurant that was opened. A guy waiting in line to go in told me that there were 3 long driveways on Blueberry Hill Road and one of them the house was a B&B. He was pretty sure it was the middle driveway but said, "Just go down all the driveways and one of them will be it." So back we went and Randy went down the middle driveway. It turned sharply and then there was no way to turn around so he had to back out, not an easy feat. He got pretty frustrated, muttering under his breath, etc. He kept telling me to call the B&B owner for directions and I kept trying but I got voicemail every time. Finally I started knocking on doors of the houses where lights were. One young kid answered and wasn't sure, he'd just moved in. When I apologized for bothering him so late he said, "No problem. I was playing ping-pong. If you guys want to play ping-pong later, just come on over." I knocked on the door of the house at the end of that sharp turn driveway and the woman there pointed to the lights of another house and said that was the one. So finally we found it.

Once we'd brought in our suitcases we went back to that restaurant for something to eat. We hadn't had any supper. Then I tried to find out when and where the glacier day cruise thing was where we'd have to go the next day. I had tried to have everything I needed about our itinerary on this one Google doc but I didn't put directions. I figured I'd look those up each night before. But we didn't know if this B&B had internet or not so I asked some of the workers about Stan Stephens Glacier Cruises. No one knew, but they had free wireless so I was able to find it on the iPad.

The B&B is very nice. Rose, the woman who owns it, is a sweetheart. She fixes delicious breakfasts, too. And there is wireless. :)

Other Mountains

Today started with a delicious breakfast with two other couples staying at the B&B. One was from Kentucky and the other from Switzerland. It's fun to hear about others' travels. The Swiss couple have done a lot of traveling in the US. They said they tell all their friends to travel here; it's the best. I asked what was one of their favorite places and they said the Bryce Canyon area. They've also been to Yellowstone, Yosemite, New York city, Mt. Rushmore, a bunch of them. When I asked how they liked Yosemite they said they liked it but it was a lot like Switzerland, except the trees were taller. I never would've thought that.

After breakfast we headed down the highway towards Gakona. Most of the day it was sunny and beautiful. There were two mountain ranges that we were driving between. We took tons of photos. We're so used to having to grab the opportunity before clouds move in that I have way more photos of these mountains than I need. The biggest one is called Mt. Drum.


We had some luck seeing some wildlife, too. A moose and a caribou. The caribou was especially pretty, with the reflection in the pond. The moose was busy eating and didn't want to look up at first. What a funny looking animal a moose is.




We stopped for lunch at an old roadhouse where the owner makes homemade pies. We each had a piece of blackberry pie with ice cream. Delicious. Kind of a fun old place to see, too, although the bathrooms would've been much improved by more modern amenities. But it's all part of the adventure.


At one overlook where we stopped to take photos, a guy came over and said he would take our picture. He directed us where to stand so the sun would be on our faces. He did a good job, I think. Nice shot.


The place we're staying tonight is called the Gakona Lodge and Trading Post. Very rustic.


After dropping off our stuff we drove around to see what we could see. We went to Copper River, where there's another roadhouse, also a museum.


When we passed a sign for a visitor's center at Wrangell-St. Elias National Park we decided to check it out. It turned out to be a very nice stop. The visitor's center was well done and there was a pretty path to walk, a loop through the woods. At one point it crossed what had been the old road from Valdez to Fairbanks. Hard to imagine driving that!




It turns out the Wrangell-St. Elias National Park is the biggest park in North America, bigger than Denali. It was a beautiful day and a beautiful place.