Heritage Center, Glenn Highway, Valdez

We finished the state fair. Next order of business was getting our generator fixed. The repair shop had called and reported that the parts were in. We took the RV back to Anchorage for a 10:00 AM appointment, left it and went to the Alaska Native Heritage Center.

Athabascan log house and food cache

The Heritage Center is a first class museum in northern Anchorage, displaying and demonstrating native culture from all of the Alaskan tribes. There are 5 main tribes, including Athabaskan, Inuit, Aleut, Tlinglit, and many sub tribes. Each culture had created their own traditions for costume, housing and food sources. The museum had typical houses from each culture, with docents in each to explain the way of life and the essential elements of living. For example, the Saint Lawrence tribes on the north slope built sod houses, buried about ½ way into the earth. A single opening in the roof, covered with a “window” made of sewn seal intestines provided light. This group hunted seals and walrus, whales, as well as fish. The summer tundra yielded berries and rose hips.

Eskimo athletic games

The Center also provided demonstrations of various cultural activities. One that we watched was simple yet challenging games which are now part of the Eskimo Olympics. A leather covered ball, about the size of a tennis ball, is suspended from a string held up by a wooden arm. The string is arranged so that the ball can be raised and lowered. Several physical games are played with this equipment. In one, the player sits on the floor holding one foot in his hand. Using only strength and coordination, he or she has to raise the free foot and touch the ball. Strong agile boys can achieve a one hand handstand while raising the foot up to the ball. It's really quite amazing, and difficult. Try it sometime.

We got a call from the generator shop, our coach was ready, and we picked it up and returned to the Palmer Elks for one more night. The next morning, we headed out to Valdez.

Valdez had been a question mark on our trip. We hadn't heard or read a lot about it, although the Chamber of Commerce does an excellent job of keeping the name visible throughout the state. It seemed a bit out of the way, taking some 250 extra miles to get there and back. But in the end, we decided that we'd go.

Colorful autumn taiga along the Glenn Highway

The Glenn Highway from Palmer to Glenwood passes through the Chugach Mountains on the south and the Talkeetna Mountains on the north. The Matanuska River runs under and along the highway near Palmer, as it winds down into the Knik Arm, the northern end of the Cook Inlet. The highway gains elevation up to the Tahneta Pass. In this area, the taiga (bush and forest just below the tundra) was crimson red and golden yellow with fall colors.

We arrived in Glenwood, had a bite to eat, then stopped at the Visitor Center for the Wrangell/St Elias National Park. I had heard that the view of the mountains from here would be spectacular. All we got were views of some rather ordinary clouds. The ranger said, “We should have been there in the morning.” But we stayed the night in their entrance road, and I walked back in in the morning to see if there was a view. Nope. We went along to Valdez.

Bridal Veil Falls

People had reported to us that the waterfalls in the mountains on the way to Valdez we quite a sight, and we have to agree. Photographs do not do them much justice. Thompson Pass was also breathtaking.

We finally arrived in Valdez, and got ourselves a space in Sea Otter RV Park, right on the channel where the boats cruised back and forth from the small boat harbor into Port Valdez, the bay. Across the bay, we could see the Pipeline Terminal, with a cluster of oil tanks arranged on the hillside next to it. Two huge oil tankers arrived, filled up overnight, and departed the next day. Dozens of fishing boats ranged down the bay, small aluminum skiffs to 50' charter boats. Across the channel toward town was the ferry dock. The Marine Highway runs from Valdez to Whittier and Cordova. The ferry arrived and departed twice a day.

I couldn't make up my mind whether to go fishing in Valdez or not. I had heard good things about Allison Point, across the bay and inland from the oil terminal. But I didn't know what to use for bait, where to go, etc. I finally decided to skip it.

Then luck stepped in. We had chatted with our next door neighbors, a family from Palmer, there with 2 boats and two freezers, a cord of wood, and plans to catch salmon in a week long stay. They reported catching their limit the first day out, with 3 of them in the boat. They asked me if I'd like to go along the next day. I thought about it for a microsecond, checked with Consuelo, then told them yes. I scurried into town to get a one day fishing license.

The Great Alaskan fishing dogs

As 7:00 the next morning, we launched their 20' flat bottom boat and hurried out onto the water. There were 4 of us, Lance and Tammy, husband and wife, and their grown daughter Jamie, and me. There were also 2 dogs, a black and a chocolate lab. They were the fish dogs. They were a riot, scrambling from front to back, barking at otters and seals, jumping salmon, driftwood, or lures being cast. Every time we caught a fish, they wanted to see it, smell it, taste it. They ran back and forth from the bow to the stern, until once they collided head on with each other, causing a gash over one eye. That slowed them a little, but just a little.

Captain Lance immediately got lost in the fog, as he tried to work his way westward along the north side of the bay, but lost sight of land. For whatever reason, he kept doing a slight left hand turn, thinking that he was going straight. Port Valdez is 13 miles long and 2-1/2 miles wide, and I think we covered most of it before we saw lights and figured out we were at the oil terminal. Oops! He headed off across the bay again, and this time ended up at Allison Point, even farther east and still across the bay from where he wanted to be. Setting out one more time, I kept watching the wake, and guiding him off to the right as he tended to veer left, and we this time arrived at the ferry terminal, which was at least on the right side of the bay. From then on, he never lost sight of shore, and we got to the fishing spot about 1-1/2 hours after we left. Wow!

Silver salmon for the freezer

But then we caught fish, nice big fat silver salmon which tipped the scales between 10 and 15 pounds. I caught 4, and lost a couple more. Between the 4 of us, we pulled 14 into the boat in about 5 hours. From the reports that we got on the way back, we did quite well for ourselves, as several boats returning had caught only one or none. We took our catch to the fish cleaner on the docks, who filleted our catch for us. I arrived back at our camper with 4 fish with a net weight of 16 pounds. Just as a side benefit, I got some more eagle pictures, since we saw dozens of them along the shore. What a piece of luck!

Meanwhile, Consuelo had a sore throat that over two weeks had developed into a glob of crap and then into her sinuses, and she finally called the Mayo Nurse and was told to get to a clinic. The gave her antibiotics and a cough syrup. When she returned home with the meds, she had a ½ hour coughing bout that left her abs sore the next day. (A week later, she seems to be improving, but is still coughing...)

On our final night in Valdez, our fishing friends loaned us the DVD of Clint Eastwood's “Gran Torino”, which we found to be excellent.

The next morning we departed Valdez, back up the highway to Wrangell/St Elias, and this time the mountains were in full view, though the clouds were still around. I stopped a couple places along the way, and got some pictures of the mountains.

Just north of Glenwood, the Glenn Highway splits, the Glen Highway continues on to Delta Junction, joining the Alaska Highway at it's end. The other road is called the Glenn Highway, Tok Cutoff. We took the cutoff toward Tok. This road is built primarily over permafrost, the bane of the Alaska road builder. As the summer sun heats the road, the frost underneath melts, leaving full width dips in the road, typically 4 to 8 feet long, and 6 or more inches deep. The road gets patched, but the permafrost never gets replaced, so every year it melts a little more. Late summer, the time we are traveling now, is just about the worst. Sitting up high in our RV, I can see the dips most of the time. Many of them have skid marks in them, where some other RV or truck has bottomed out their suspension, probably sending the occupants towards the roof of the cab, to be restrained only by their seat belts, should they be wearing them.

Tundra swans

But to save some miles, we put up with this kind of road, take it slow, reduce speed for the dips, and only manage to bottom out on a couple of the "invisible"ones. The payoff is that we see new country. We usually get to see the black spruce forests, since they are the only trees that can manage to grow year after year with their feet frozen in the permafrost. And we get to see the little ponds that are just standing water that can't seep into the ground, and whatever surprises they may hold, like the tundra swans in the picture.

View from Eagle Trail SP

About 15 miles before we reached Tok, we found Eagle Trail State Park and stayed the night there. There were two trails that I got to walk on, one that climbed into the hills overlooking the valley, the other a nature trail with lots of signs describing the flora. Both were a lot of fun.