Trip to Valdez--July 22

We slept in this morning. We didn't leave till 6:30. The day was cloudy and overcast pretty much all day--oh well. When we left we were on the Glen Allen Hwy and eventually turned onto the Richardson Hwy. The Richardson goes thru a lot of muskeg tundra and boy did we have lots of frost heaves.The first stop was to read about the formation of gypsum in the mts there due to volcanic action and they were reddish due to the iron oxide. Our next stop was to take pictures of the Matanuska Glacier which heads in the Chugach Mts. and trends NW 27 miles. Some 18,000 yrs. ago it went all the way to Palmer. Now its avg. width is 2 miles and at its terminus it is 4 miles wide. I am always awed by their beauty and immensity. Our next stop was breakfast at Grandview Cafe. It was new, only built in the late 90's. The people who owned and ran it were Christians and the food was good and a very pleasant place to stop.

We stopped at the Wrangell-St. Elias National Park and Preserve Visitors Center.It is the largest National Park we have at 13.2 million acres of wild land and 9.7 is designated as wilderness. It is formed by the Wrangell, St. Elias, and Chugach mountain ranges. The park contains the greatest collection of peaks over 16,000' on the continent and Mt. Elias is the 2nd largest peak in the U.S. The park also contains the largest concentration of glaciers on the continent. Hubbard Glacier which flows out of St. Elias is one of the most active glaciers in North America. It is advancing in spite of "global climate change" if you believe in that which I am doubting more and more. Nature has been changing for millions of years and will continue to change no matter what we do--we are not the Creator. There are only two roads further into this park and neither are real good. This is honestly a preserve first and a park second. This place is magnificent but you explore more on foot than anything else. They had a visitor's center, a theater, a cultural center and an exhibit building and of course a restroom building and a trail out back. We saw a movie which wet your appetite for the park and listened to a ranger talk about the wolves in the park. The pelts from all these animals are beautiful and each so different. The sea otter pelt has 20,000 to 30,000 hairs per inch, yes per inch. You can't even see its hide when you try and separate the hairs(which you can't).

Passing more smaller glaciers and beautiful waterfalls to Worthington Glacier. It is located in the Copper River basin and is the most visited site in the area. It is a National Natural Landmark. This one heads upon Girls Mountain at 6,134'. The sight of it on the way to it was the best because you could see where it splits and forms two and then we went on up to the kiosk and read a little about it and if they all receeded, it would be the last to go if it did. Unbelieveably there were two men and a younger boy who walked up onto the glacier with no poles or ice spikes on their shoes and as they were coming down it was difficult. They also could have fallen into a hidden crevass.

We drove through Thompson Pass at an elevation of 2,678'. The National Climatic Center credits snowfall extremes in Alaska to this pass. The station there has recorded these extremes: 974.5" for the season in 1952-53, 298" for a month is Feb. 1953 and 62" in a 24 hr. period in Dec. 1955. That is something else. They have snowpoles that look like upside down "L's" for the snow plows-for guidance.

As we were getting closer to Valdez we also passed two wonderful waterfalls called Bridal Falls and Horsetail Falls. I never get tired of waterfalls either. Then our last stop before the RV park was an almost completed tunnel. There were copper mines up here very early on and 9 railroad companies were trying to be the first up here to get the business. This tunnel was being dug by hand into the solid rock of Keystone Canyon until a fued and a gun battle insued which ended the whole thing. It was never finished but you can go up to and inside if you want. Our RV park is practically right off the waterfront and the marina.