13 - 22 Aug - Lopez Island, WA to Glennallen, AK
Aug 13 -17 (Mon – Thurs)– Lopez Island, WA
On Aug 13 we flew, with Inbal, to Seattle, and took the San Juan Islands Ferry to Lopez Island where we stayed for a couple of days with our friends Ginny and Martin at their beautiful vacation home. Lopez Island is a peaceful little paradise about 70 miles north of Seattle. The weather was beautiful and we spent two days taking boat trips around Lopez and to Orcas Islands, visited the little towns, had interesting discussions with Ginny and martin about the war in Lebanon, as ceasefire was declared. Inbal, on a brief vacation from Israel, who never before had an Island experience was in heaven with so much water and so much greenery to feast her eyes on. It was so wonderfully peaceful, stimulating company and great hospitality. We thought the area felt a lot like New England. On Aug 16 we returned to Seattle, visited Pike’s Market and the Seattle Aquarium which Inbal really loved. We spent the night at a hotel near the airport, and at 4AM the next morning Inbal caught a plane to LA for a connection back to Tel Aviv and we caught a plane to Anchorage.
Aug 17-18 (Thurs – Fri) – Anchorage to Seward, AK
After arriving at the beautiful new Anchorage airport we checked into the Dimond Ctr hotel several miles from the center of town and then, despite the rainy weather we decided to check out Anchorage. We took a city bus conveniently located nearby and were in the center of town within 20 mins. And were able to watch an Imax movie about Alaksa. We then walked around the city center for a bit. Anchorage is very spread out but has a downtown core with a few, multi story buildings. It was basically nothing to write home about, but does have plenty of stores (Safeway, Borders, Starbucks, Walmart, Home Depot, ect.).
When we went to pick up the RV early the next morning and found out it will not be ready until later in the afternoon. To make use of the hours we were able to rent rented a car on short notice and proceeded to REI to get some gear and loaded up on groceries.
The RV is an almost new, fully outfitted 25 ft. Winnebago Chalet. We found plenty of room for our clothes and all the groceries, and after getting settled into it we headed south to Seward on a windy rainy evening. After 2.5 hours we got to a camp ground right on the harbor (surrounded by what seemed like hundreds of other RV’s). The rain was pouring and the wind was howling but the RV was cozy. The length of the days, up here near the Artic Circle, is about 16 hours at this time of year (6 am – 10 pm), and we got to sleep around 10:30 pm just after the sun had set.
Aug 19 (Sat) – Seward, AK
Saturday morning began ominously with dark clouds and rain but it gradually cleared and a beautiful rainbow appeared across the sky. We watched the cruise ship the “Statendam” leave port, the same ship we will be on in two weeks. We walked to the boat harbor for a sightseeing cruise of the Kenai Fjords national park. On the way we crossed small streams just swarming with huge salmon coming in from the ocean. During the six hours cruise the weather gradually cleared, so we had patches of blue sky and bright sun when it really mattered. The cruise was spectacular. We got to see sea otters, bald eagles, seals, sea lions, puffins, porpoise and a whale. We were surrounded by snowy mountains and huge Glaciers. After some rough cruising at high seas the boat stopped for about an hour, very close to the Aialik (sp?) glacier and we could see the incredibility blue ice, hear the thunderous cracking of the ice and watched enormous bolders of ice fall into the water to produce icebergs all around us. It was truly fantastic!!! . We found out the next day that the next cruise ship in port after the “Statendam” had speared a whale that was struck to its bow (what a mess!!).
Aug 20-21 (Sun – Mon)– Seward to Valdez, AK
After spending a second night at Seward, we drove, again through pouring rain, to Whitter to take a ferry to Valdez. To get to Whitter we had to go through a really long ,one-lane tunnel. Every half hour the direction of traffic gets switched. When we arrived we had to wait for the train and oncoming traffic to come through before we could follow the train from our direction. The ferry to Valdez, across Prince William Sound took about five and a half hours. It was impossible to see anything of this beautiful journey through the heavy rain and fog. We utilized the time to edit pictures and read, and even had a fairly decent salmon dinner at the cafeteria. The only excitement was when we were passing near the Columbia Glacier we saw many small icebergs in the water spawning some Titanic jokes to go along with the scenery. . We finally arrived in Valdez in pouring rain and found ourselves a camp ground, again near the water and again surrounded by dozens of side-by-side RV’s (it even had wi-fi).
Aug 21 (Mon) Valdez to Chitna, AZ
We got up to a beautiful morning with the fog clearing across the water and clouds clearing from the surrounding snow covered mountains. Everywhere we looked there were silver ribbons running down the mountains as streams of water rushed down from the melting snow and runoff form the rain. Across the harbor, above the oil tanker docks, we could see huge glaciers in the mountains. We visited a salmon cannery across the street from the RV park that seemed to employ all Asian workers (it was not a pretty sight!). After laundry and buying supplies we headed north up the Richardson Highway.
Our first stop was the Valdez Glacier which we could approach within a few miles on a dirt road. The Richardson Highways followed a gushing river, threatening to overflow it’s banks. The scenery was gorgeous passing impressive gorges watefalls and mountain passes through the Chugach Mountain range. Tall snow capped mountains to the north and the most impressive sight of the days, the Worthington Glacier which came down almost as far as the highway. We took a short hike up the face of the glacier and walked on the ice at it’s foot. As we were returning to the parking lot we heard that a bear was seen a bear walking across the glacier below the hikes just a few minutes before we go there. We continued on for another few hours and finally got to a small camp ground on the Edgerton Highway about 90 miles north of Valdez. Once checked in, since we still had a few hours of light left in the day, we drove to the end of the paved road to Chitna. The road goes at the boundry of Wrangell-St. Elais National Park and we had amazing views of some of the enormous snow capped mountains in this park which is larger than the state of Rhode Island, has the highest concentration of glaciers in the continent and is almost completely inaccessible by road.
Chitna was an interesting old town left over from the copper mining days around the turn of the century. Most of the buildings (and there were no more than ten altogether) were built of logs in the style of turn of the century. The place was pretty run down, but interesting. We finally got chased away by the mosquitoes and went back to our camp ground for the night.
Aug 22 (Tues) – Chitna to Glennallen, AK
It’s Dahlia’s Birthday, a bit cloudy but no rain. We headed north on the Richardson Hwy to visit the tiny town of Copper Center with it’s log cabin museum of artifacts of the old trappers and miners from the area. Just down the road was the Wrangell-St. Elais National Park Visitors Center which had a beautiful film about the Park and a museum about the wild life in the area.
We celebrated Dahlia’s Birthday having lunch at the very elegantly rustic Princess Hotel nearby. After lunch we went our next camp ground past Glennallen (Tolsona Valley) which was only about 40 miles from the place we had spent the night before. Much of this area is on permafrost and the road in many places was very wavy and rough from the melting and re-freezing of the permafrost. They call it road heaves. There were a number of older houses along the road that were bowed in the middle because their foundations were sinking in the permafrost. Our campground was lovely and was about three- quarters of a mile from the highway on a dirt road. Our site was right on a creek and surrounded by trees. (Here, in the wilderness, we were amazed to get wi-fi broadband Internet service in our RV from the campground office)
On Aug 13 we flew, with Inbal, to Seattle, and took the San Juan Islands Ferry to Lopez Island where we stayed for a couple of days with our friends Ginny and Martin at their beautiful vacation home. Lopez Island is a peaceful little paradise about 70 miles north of Seattle. The weather was beautiful and we spent two days taking boat trips around Lopez and to Orcas Islands, visited the little towns, had interesting discussions with Ginny and martin about the war in Lebanon, as ceasefire was declared. Inbal, on a brief vacation from Israel, who never before had an Island experience was in heaven with so much water and so much greenery to feast her eyes on. It was so wonderfully peaceful, stimulating company and great hospitality. We thought the area felt a lot like New England. On Aug 16 we returned to Seattle, visited Pike’s Market and the Seattle Aquarium which Inbal really loved. We spent the night at a hotel near the airport, and at 4AM the next morning Inbal caught a plane to LA for a connection back to Tel Aviv and we caught a plane to Anchorage.
Aug 17-18 (Thurs – Fri) – Anchorage to Seward, AK
After arriving at the beautiful new Anchorage airport we checked into the Dimond Ctr hotel several miles from the center of town and then, despite the rainy weather we decided to check out Anchorage. We took a city bus conveniently located nearby and were in the center of town within 20 mins. And were able to watch an Imax movie about Alaksa. We then walked around the city center for a bit. Anchorage is very spread out but has a downtown core with a few, multi story buildings. It was basically nothing to write home about, but does have plenty of stores (Safeway, Borders, Starbucks, Walmart, Home Depot, ect.).
When we went to pick up the RV early the next morning and found out it will not be ready until later in the afternoon. To make use of the hours we were able to rent rented a car on short notice and proceeded to REI to get some gear and loaded up on groceries.
The RV is an almost new, fully outfitted 25 ft. Winnebago Chalet. We found plenty of room for our clothes and all the groceries, and after getting settled into it we headed south to Seward on a windy rainy evening. After 2.5 hours we got to a camp ground right on the harbor (surrounded by what seemed like hundreds of other RV’s). The rain was pouring and the wind was howling but the RV was cozy. The length of the days, up here near the Artic Circle, is about 16 hours at this time of year (6 am – 10 pm), and we got to sleep around 10:30 pm just after the sun had set.
Aug 19 (Sat) – Seward, AK
Saturday morning began ominously with dark clouds and rain but it gradually cleared and a beautiful rainbow appeared across the sky. We watched the cruise ship the “Statendam” leave port, the same ship we will be on in two weeks. We walked to the boat harbor for a sightseeing cruise of the Kenai Fjords national park. On the way we crossed small streams just swarming with huge salmon coming in from the ocean. During the six hours cruise the weather gradually cleared, so we had patches of blue sky and bright sun when it really mattered. The cruise was spectacular. We got to see sea otters, bald eagles, seals, sea lions, puffins, porpoise and a whale. We were surrounded by snowy mountains and huge Glaciers. After some rough cruising at high seas the boat stopped for about an hour, very close to the Aialik (sp?) glacier and we could see the incredibility blue ice, hear the thunderous cracking of the ice and watched enormous bolders of ice fall into the water to produce icebergs all around us. It was truly fantastic!!! . We found out the next day that the next cruise ship in port after the “Statendam” had speared a whale that was struck to its bow (what a mess!!).
Aug 20-21 (Sun – Mon)– Seward to Valdez, AK
After spending a second night at Seward, we drove, again through pouring rain, to Whitter to take a ferry to Valdez. To get to Whitter we had to go through a really long ,one-lane tunnel. Every half hour the direction of traffic gets switched. When we arrived we had to wait for the train and oncoming traffic to come through before we could follow the train from our direction. The ferry to Valdez, across Prince William Sound took about five and a half hours. It was impossible to see anything of this beautiful journey through the heavy rain and fog. We utilized the time to edit pictures and read, and even had a fairly decent salmon dinner at the cafeteria. The only excitement was when we were passing near the Columbia Glacier we saw many small icebergs in the water spawning some Titanic jokes to go along with the scenery. . We finally arrived in Valdez in pouring rain and found ourselves a camp ground, again near the water and again surrounded by dozens of side-by-side RV’s (it even had wi-fi).
Aug 21 (Mon) Valdez to Chitna, AZ
We got up to a beautiful morning with the fog clearing across the water and clouds clearing from the surrounding snow covered mountains. Everywhere we looked there were silver ribbons running down the mountains as streams of water rushed down from the melting snow and runoff form the rain. Across the harbor, above the oil tanker docks, we could see huge glaciers in the mountains. We visited a salmon cannery across the street from the RV park that seemed to employ all Asian workers (it was not a pretty sight!). After laundry and buying supplies we headed north up the Richardson Highway.
Our first stop was the Valdez Glacier which we could approach within a few miles on a dirt road. The Richardson Highways followed a gushing river, threatening to overflow it’s banks. The scenery was gorgeous passing impressive gorges watefalls and mountain passes through the Chugach Mountain range. Tall snow capped mountains to the north and the most impressive sight of the days, the Worthington Glacier which came down almost as far as the highway. We took a short hike up the face of the glacier and walked on the ice at it’s foot. As we were returning to the parking lot we heard that a bear was seen a bear walking across the glacier below the hikes just a few minutes before we go there. We continued on for another few hours and finally got to a small camp ground on the Edgerton Highway about 90 miles north of Valdez. Once checked in, since we still had a few hours of light left in the day, we drove to the end of the paved road to Chitna. The road goes at the boundry of Wrangell-St. Elais National Park and we had amazing views of some of the enormous snow capped mountains in this park which is larger than the state of Rhode Island, has the highest concentration of glaciers in the continent and is almost completely inaccessible by road.
Chitna was an interesting old town left over from the copper mining days around the turn of the century. Most of the buildings (and there were no more than ten altogether) were built of logs in the style of turn of the century. The place was pretty run down, but interesting. We finally got chased away by the mosquitoes and went back to our camp ground for the night.
Aug 22 (Tues) – Chitna to Glennallen, AK
It’s Dahlia’s Birthday, a bit cloudy but no rain. We headed north on the Richardson Hwy to visit the tiny town of Copper Center with it’s log cabin museum of artifacts of the old trappers and miners from the area. Just down the road was the Wrangell-St. Elais National Park Visitors Center which had a beautiful film about the Park and a museum about the wild life in the area.
We celebrated Dahlia’s Birthday having lunch at the very elegantly rustic Princess Hotel nearby. After lunch we went our next camp ground past Glennallen (Tolsona Valley) which was only about 40 miles from the place we had spent the night before. Much of this area is on permafrost and the road in many places was very wavy and rough from the melting and re-freezing of the permafrost. They call it road heaves. There were a number of older houses along the road that were bowed in the middle because their foundations were sinking in the permafrost. Our campground was lovely and was about three- quarters of a mile from the highway on a dirt road. Our site was right on a creek and surrounded by trees. (Here, in the wilderness, we were amazed to get wi-fi broadband Internet service in our RV from the campground office)
posted by Dahlia and Lance Riley @ 11:36 AM
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