Once you turn on the Richardson Highway at Glenn Allen and make your way through the Thompson Pass down into Valdez, the lushness is overwhelming! Valdez gets over 360 in of snow annually plus 64 in of rain and while it may not make for ideal touring conditions it provides scenic splendor!
Valdez main commerce comes from fishing and tourism. One of the main tourist attractions is a boat tour of Prince William Sound and two of the largest glaciers in Alaska. Because we just did a nine hour glacier boat tour in Seward and the weather wasn't the best here, we decided to skip the pricey boat tour and do some land touring! But, we have a nice view of the harbor from our campsite...
Our first stop was the Fish Hatchery where millions of Salmon come back to lay eggs and die. Bear frequent the Hatchery, but we didn't see any yet. We did see such a bizarre sight of so many salmon frantically swimming up to the Hatchery, I can't even say how many, I have never seen anything like it!
The salmon bring lots of wildlife to the area from eagles and gulls to sea lions and bears. The bears have become a tourist novelty so the town set up lots of warnings. We didn't see any bears yet.
But several eagles...
Next we drove to many of the sights in a Keystone Canyon, including two of the many waterfalls, Horsetail and Bridal...
And this unique tunnel, but the sign explaining it was a hoot!
Next we passed this cool glacier where an avalanche came down in top of it followed by new vegetation growth. While we were there a father and son stopped us...they were from Smithfield, Va! He was in construction and up here overseeing the rehab of a Golden Corral, the owner of the restaurant was from Smithfield and decided to retire in AK so he got this fellow to come up to do the rehab...small world!
Finally we made our way to Worthington Glacier where we hiked right up to the face!
It's been a low key stop, but beautiful countryside!
Very nice! Can't wait to see that area again (saw it in 1996?)
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