Blogs from Whittier, Alaska, United States, North America

Whittier is the western gateway to Prince William Sound and is located on the northern edge of the Gulf of Alaska. It is a very small town of a few hundred. Whittier was established by the U.S. Army during Word War II as "the secret port". Following the war, the Army built the two large buildings that still remain as landmarks in Whittier. The 14-story Begich Towers is now a condominium that houses most of Whittier's population along with its post office, city hall and medical clinic. Whittier has a mild maritime climate with a maximum of 84F and a minimun of -29F. Average snowfall is 260 inches annually. There is not much there except for small restaurants, shops, train station, day cruise dock, and ferry dock. When we arrived in Whittier, we lined up in ... read more

Whittier is sount of Anchorage, we took the train to Whittier for our cruise to the glaciers.... read more

After Glacier Bay, the ship cruised though College Fjord before arriving in Whittier at about midnight. There are many glaciers in College Fjord and they are named after eastern colleges. We didn't get a lot of time to sightsee here because we were taking part in a music trivia contest on the ship. (took second) We would spend the night there in the harbor before disembarking at around 9:00 in the morning. We would then have a 1-1/2 hour bus ride to the Anchorage Airport where we would pick up a rental car. I kept wondering why our ship wasn't going all the way to Anchorage as some cruise ships do. It turns out that a lot of people take the train tour up to Denali National Park and then further north to Fairbanks. The train ... read more

This morning we were up early and disembarked in Whittier. Not much of a town here - mostly industrial. There are no homes in Whittier - there is one old high-rise military barracks and everyone in town lives there. It was rainy and cold and a little depressing. Having to leave the ship - our home for the past 7 days - was hard, even though we knew we had more adventures ahead of us. We boarded a bus for our ~300 mile drive up to Denali, and met our driver, Dan, who was a music teacher. Dan was an interesting fellow who liked to sing. He said he got bored giving the same old safety speech every time he drove, so he wrote a song which he then proceeded to sing for us. Hmmmm, this ... read more

Another day of adventure. We decided to drive to Whittier, which is a port town. We drove along Turnagain Arm, which is an arm of the Cook Inlet which comes out of the Gulf of Alaska. It has some of the highest tides in the country at 28 feet and a tide called a bore tide. The “Arm” is quite shallow. At low tide, it is mostly a mudflat, but beluga whales are said to frequent it. With our luck with moose, we don’t expect much. Anyway, it was a lovely drive with snow-capped green mountains on both sides of the long bay. Before we could get to Whittier, we went by Portage Lake. Portage Glacier meets the lake, so we got to see a few mini-icebergs floating around. We also passed a couple of other ... read more