On Sunday, July 15, when we drove from Anchorage to Girdwood, down the Turnagain Arm of Prince William Sound, we were not happy campers. The rain was coming down pretty hard in Anchorage in the morning and we had to slog through a pretty big puddle right outside our RV to get ready to get on the road. The weather was a continuation of the rainy, overcast, yuk we had been stuck in since we left Fairbanks. We had been seeing weather predictions showing slight clearings, but nothing seemed to want to materialize. So on Monday morning, when we woke up to no rain and a bright spot in the sky, we made plans to get out and see what would happen.
We started small, going to the Alaska Wildlife Conservation Center. They take in injured and otherwise endangered animals and give them a new lease on life. It is kind of anti-climactic to see these animals in captivity after seeing others of the same in the wild. It was fun to watch the brown bears playing in the pond but after seeing a mama with four cubs in the wild, it loses some of its impact. Of course we were able to get much closer to some of the animals, like the elk and moose, than we have so far in our travels.
When we left there, the sky was clearing quite a bit, so we went back to the RVs for lunch and then headed down the Portage Glacier Highway towards Whittier. We made a short stop at Portage Lake, somewhere we had been the day before, but the weather was windy and rainy then. Now it is clear and calm and there are ice flows in the lake so a photo op beckoned. Then we headed on toward Whittier, which required us to go through a one-way tunnel that the cars share with the Alaska Railroad. Until 2000, the only way to Whittier over land was by the train, but they modified the tunnel to allow cars and trucks to make the trip. There was a toll and we had to wait 40 minutes for our turn to go towards Whittier. Now the weather can be totally different on each side of the mountain, but on this day we lucked out because it was as nice on the Whittier side as on the Portage Lake side.
Whittier is very small and not much more than a sea port. Most of the people who live there live in a large concrete bunker style 14-story building. We walked inside on the first floor and it was pretty depressing. It looked very institutional. I think not too many people live here year round. The woman at the tour building we stopped in said they had 42 feet of snow on the ground this past winter. That’s not the amount that fell, but how much was on the ground at the height of the winter. That means the lower 4 stories of the main apartment building there were under the snow. Ouch!
As good as the weather was on Monday, Tuesday turned out to trump it. Both days started with some overcast and cleared slowly, but on Tuesday it cleared to an almost cloudless sky. We decided not to go back to Whittier, which our traveling companions did do, but to stay and go on the Portage Lake cruise to the Portage Glacier. We rode our bikes down the mile and a half trail to the lake and then another mile to the cruise port. The Portage Glacier used to completely cover the area which is now Portage Lake as recently as 1900, but now the glacier has receded far enough to not be viewable from the Visitor’s Center. However, there is a cruise to be taken which goes right up to the face of the glacier and, on as clear a day as we had on Tuesday, this was quite an experience. The tour people said it is rare to be able to see the top of the glacier but we had that view and more.
After the cruise, rode to the Byron Glacier Trail Head and walked the 0.8 miles to the end of the glacier. We could only get as close as the snow field at the end of the glacier but it was a nice walk and a beautiful view. There are actually many glaciers in this area. I think we counted about eight of them just on this side of the mountain from Whittier. Geoff feels like he is a short-term memory photographer. Each time he takes a photo and looks down and then back up, he thinks “Wow, that would be a nice picture”, and he ends up with several that are very close to being the same.
Our next stop is Seward on Resurrection Bay. The weather predictions for the next two days are looking good right now. We are hoping they hold up as well as they have for these past two days. The trip from here to Seward is supposed to be spectacular scenery, if the weather is good. We could take a long time to drive those 80 miles if we are stopping every couple of miles to say “Wow, that would be a nice picture”.
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