Trip log: RV Trip to Alaska 2014 |
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6/19/2014 Day 43 Layover day in Seward, Alaska
This morning was a trip to the dump station, gas up the truck, fill the propane tank ($35) and the fresh water tank.
After re-planting the RV we drove out to Exit Glacier, 11 miles out of town, one of the many glaciers in Kenai Fjords National Park that descends from the massive Harding Ice Field. This is one you can walk up to, though you can’t actually get close enough to touch the ice. It has receded greatly since the mid-1800s. The walk is 1.3 miles up from the visitor’s center to the edge of the glacier, with about a 200 foot rise in altitude, most of that toward the end. It is spectacular (there’s that word again) to see it up close. No animals. Came back and had pizza at Christo’s Place in town across from the SeaLife Center.
Today has been cloudy with some sun occasionally. Temperature is high 50s, but in the afternoon the wind came up and the sea out here in Resurrection Bay has gotten choppy. |
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6/21/2014 Day 45 Seward to Williwaw Campground, Whittier, Alaska; 80 miles
We awoke to steady rain on the rooftop. It’s a good thing this RV doesn’t leak. Clouds down to the waterline, cold, rainy, wet, miserable—you get the idea. We have a front row seat on the edge of Resurrection Bay so we can watch the boats. Viewfinder went out as scheduled at 9 AM. We can’t imagine why. Everybody was huddled up inside, and you really can’t see anything or take pictures from in there. You need to be out on the bow. Once again, we got the best day! We decided today was a good day to travel somewhere else. Not that somewhere else would necessarily be any better, but no use sitting in Seward any more either. So while Donna went to Safeway with the provisioning list, I went to dump the tanks, then we joined up, attached the Jeep and drove to Portage Glacier. I also bought a chart #16682 of Resurrection Bay down below Northwestern Fjord where we went yesterday.
This is the longest day of the year. This is where Daylight Savings time originates. They store it up here and export it to the lower 48. Too bad they can’t import some sunshine in exchange. Williwaw Campground is a Chugach National Forest campground about 11 miles from Whittier on the east side of the Whittier Tunnel. Nice, well laid out, spacious sites in big trees and in sight of a glacier, with no hookups, no dump, no RV accessible water and only $9/night with the senior pass.
The Chugach National Forest visitors center here was quite interesting with a huge IMAX theater and a large screen which raised at the end of the movie to reveal picture windows looking out on Portage Lake. It’s still raining off and on. Whittier gets 16 feet (feet!) of rain annually, and over 20 feet of snow, but June is the lowest month at only 10 inches. |
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6/20/2014 Day 44 m/v viewfinder glacier tour in Seward, Alaska We took the 9 hour glacier tour from Major Marine on the 70-foot monohull Viewfinder. This is a twin screw, 24-knot vessel, no stabilization, that carries 30 passengers. Food service is limited to a cold box lunch and soft drinks, but is quite acceptable and fitting for a vessel of this size, only 20 feet larger than our own beloved Four Seasons. We took a picture of the anchor which is laughable. We spent most of the time up on the bow and it was cold, but the sun was shining and there was no wind except for that generated by the vessel itself.
The trip was absolutely the best! We left at 9 AM and returned at 5:30. We had a great day, saw lots of animals and birds, including two separate pods of orcas, several humpback whales, and a possible fin whale. Birds included kittiwakes, puffins like bees around a hive they were so thick, an eagle or two, and many that were unidentifiable to us. Sea otters, sea lions and seals were plentiful. We saw glaciers. This is part of the Harding Ice Field which extends all the way over to near Homer. None of them are tidewater glaciers, so one cannot see calving, and they are pretty small; nothing compared to the ones we saw ten years ago in Glacier Bay. They are very beautiful and interesting nonetheless. It was about a 60 mile trip down Resurrection Bay to Northwestern Fjord, and slow because of stopping to view the wildlife. The captain, Gary, and the one crew member aboard, Sarah, were very accommodating with this, stopping and circling whenever anything was even remotely possible to view. There were a host of birders on board who were working on their life lists. We got to sit in the pilot house with Gary and Sarah some of the time which was not only warm, but interesting to us having lived in our own pilot house those many years ago. I got some pretty good pictures of the orcas and a really good one of a sea otter. I took a lot of movies and many still shots of the scenery which it’s hard to get enough of. This is our second trip with Major Marine and we’re impressed with the outfit. It is privately owned by a local businessman, we understand. A very comfortable, fun and rewarding trip. On the way back the PA system quit which was traced to the generator having quit. Gary went below and restarted it, but it quit again, and then a third time before reaching port. I pointed out that’s usually a result of clogged fuel filters, having had much experience with the same problems. |
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6/18/2014 Day 42 star of the northwest tour in Seward, Alaska
After a sweet roll at one of the local bakeries, we drove out to Lowell Point south of town as far as the road went, along the seashore and below the vertical avalanche-prone cliffs. Then we booked a tour on the Major Marine Star of the Northwest wildlife tour which departed at noon and got back at 5 PM. We had Ranger Marc on board who gave us a running lecture on the geologic strata, land wildlife and sealife along the way. We had dinner of prime rib and grilled salmon on board just after leaving the harbor which was excellent; in fact exceeding anything we’ve had recently on land, except for our own, of course.
The Star of the Northwest is 100 feet, steel hull, with three Detroit engines and a cruising speed of about 11-12 knots. We cruised down along the eastern edge of Resurrection Bay to Cape Resurrection where we had small swells on the beam as we crossed over to the west side between Rugged Island and Hive Island. This is the edge of the Gulf of Alaska. We came alongside Bear Glacier about 1 mile off, headed north around Callisto Head and back to Seward Harbor. The Donna Genius Factor of Picking Outing Days came into play once again; the day was sunshine, calm and clear until we re-entered the harbor at 5, then it started to cloud up and by the time we got back to the RV it was lightly raining and the wind and seas had come up.
We saw a pod of 4 or 5 Orcas, which are a rare sighting—most of the tour boats have not seen any. We saw Steller sea lions, which for us are old hat, having seen so many in our cruising days. Puffins are always interesting and we saw them on the wing and roosting on the rock ledges which is new for us. We have seen puffins in Glacier Bay before, but they were always in the water. Captain Jay took us right up to within a few feet of the rocks in several places, once where a cliff overhung the bow and a waterfall came down upon those of us in front. You can do this because the mountains are nearly vertical both above and below the water, and the water is hundreds of feet deep just a broom-handle length off.
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6/22/2014 Day 46 Layover Day at Whittier; Glacier tour on kenai star Miraculous! Awoke this morning to blue sky, no wind, no rain. We left the RV in the campground, drove through the Whittier Tunnel at 7:30 and had breakfast at the Inn, and signed up for the Major Marine boat tour on the Kenai Star to the Blackstone, Beloit & Northland Glaciers. It goes past a lot of others, all valley or hanging glaciers. These two are the only tidewater glaciers near Whittier. There’s one that visits 26 glaciers in 5 hours, none of them tidewater.
We also got reservations on the Monday ferry to Valdez, then drove out east of town on Shotgun Road to the end where you get a spectacular view of the fjord and the town of Whittier. Then we had time to kill and just walked around town for a while and managed to be on hand to witness a boat launch of a really big boat by the really small Travelift at the boat harbor.
The glacier tour was interesting, to say the least. There were mobs of people, some who just arrived in the nick of time via the train waiting to board about 5 different tours all leaving within a half hour of each other. Consequently, ours was late boarding, then sat there. Ominously, the rear engine room hatch was open and people were crawling in and out of it with concerned looks on their faces for about 30 minutes before the announcement finally came: “Well folks, we’ve had a slight mechanical problem, the heads (bathrooms) were broken, but we’ve fixed it. Sort of. You can’t flush the toilets, but Josh, our newest deckhand—wave, Josh—will be on hand with a bucket to flush them after each use.” Josh dutifully waved and had a rather bemused look on his face, but he did indeed make a heroic if not entirely successful attempt with his bucket to stay on top of things. The Kenai Star is a very large catamaran that takes about 150 passengers. It was about a third full but it’s way too big and too many people for us. It’s also old and not very well maintained. They had the same salmon/prime rib dinner as in Seward, and it was top quality as before on the Star of the Northwest. But our trip on the 30 passenger Viewfinder out of Seward still ranks #1. We saw no wildlife other than a few sea otters on this trip. The two glaciers were impressive, as glaciers always are, but were not active—meaning they didn’t calve off chunks which is what everyone wants to see. But the day was beautiful, clouds moved in toward the end of the day but visibility remained perfect. We got back on time, made the 6 PM tunnel opening and were back at the campground by 6:20. |
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We saw mountain goats, Dall’s Porpoise and a few people, including Russ, saw a black bear briefly, high up a steep mountainside near some goats. We almost saw a humpback whale—Captain Jay saw it and pointed to where it was, but it didn’t resurface until well behind the boat. Other birds seen were kittiwakes, common murres, cormorants, eagles.
The boat is immaculate, the crew was great, the food was great and we would recommend Major Marine for any of their tours in Seward or Whittier. One sad incident of note: a Kenai Fjords boat came out of the harbor this morning and we saw it immediately turn around and go back to the harbor at speed. Our captain said it had been a heart attack on board. Don’t know the outcome. |
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From Wikipedia: “The Anton Anderson Memorial Tunnel (often referred to simply as the Whittier Tunnel) is a multi-use highway and railroad tunnel that passes under Maynard Mountain. At 13,300 ft (4,100 m), it is the second-longest highway tunnel and longest combined rail and highway tunnel in North America.”
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The town of Whittier is ruled by the tunnel. The Whittier Tunnel is 2.5 miles long and takes 6.5 minutes to travel at the 25 MPH limit. It’s single lane, and shares with the train which runs daily between Whittier and Fairbanks. You drive straddling the train tracks. The tunnel charges a toll eastbound, $12 to $35 depending on size, and it’s open for eastbound traffic to Whittier at the bottom of each hour, and coming back at the top of the hour, no toll, regulated by traffic signals and traffic bars. Cars go first, followed by increasingly larger vehicles, trucks last. When the train comes, vehicle traffic is stopped in both directions and the train goes through.
Everyone in town lives in one 7-story apartment building. It has both rental units and owner condos. Going price is about $49,000 for a 2-bedroom unit. There are no single dwellings in town at all. There are a few derelict trailers and some very tiny cabins out the Shotgun Road, but no houses. Some of the stores have apartments above them where, I presume, the owners or proprietors might live. Nearly everyone evacuates to someplace else in the winter. |
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Inside the Whittier Tunnel which is shared with the train tracks |
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Donna laughing at Viewfinder’s puny anchor |