Prince William Sound

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I'll write about two days in this blog, both centered around Prince William Sound

We left the err... delightful Camelot Cottages on the way to Whittier. There are three ways to get to Whittier; plane, boat, or car. We drove for a couple of hours to the access to Whittier. To get to Whittier by car you have to go through a tunnel. The tunnel serves traffic in both directions, and a train. So far so good. The thing is, there is only one lane for all of that! And it's just barely wide enough for a train! Crazy!

So, they have a time schedule. We paid the fare and stood in line for the 10:30 opening to Whittier. They put the vehicles in waiting lanes; the first three or four lanes for cars, then small trucks and SUVs trailing boats, and last larger, slower vehicles like semis. We were in lane #2. After a 15 minute wait our lane was let through the tunnel. A 10 minute drive through the tunnel brought us to the booming metropolis of Whittier. Ok, a slight exaggeration. Whittier is a port with a couple of little restaurants and souvenir shops. Downtown is composed of four or five wooden shacks with some shops. Seward is big by comparison.

We found the cruise harbor easily enough - it's the first building as you come into the town. We stood in line for our reserved tickets, and a short while later we boarded the Klondike Express, a large and comfy catamaran. Our reserved spots were on the second deck by a window. Shortly after the launch we were served a lunch of fish schnitzels and chips while the boat made way towards the glaciers surrounding Prince William Sound. Along the way we got explanations of the surroundings by a forest ranger named Jim. He gave good explanations of the different kinds of glaciers, the animals and birds we saw and the human effects (he explained how the fishermen work, showed us the boats, and a little about the history of the sound). He pointed out sea lions, birds, otters. The captain of the boat stopped whenever he noticed something interesting like a bald eagle in the trees, otters or harbor seals, even a humpback whale.

The boat took us all around the fjords, right up to some of the glaciers. We were on the outside decks for much of the time, just gazing at the most amazing, powerful scenery you could imagine. deep blue to azure and green seas, brown and green hills with forests and waterfalls, snow covered mountains and crags, ice fields and glaciers. Tolkein couldn't do it better.

We zigzagged between the fjords and islands, and crept up very close to some of the glaciers. We saw some calving on Surprise Glacier, saw lots of otters playing in the water, harbor seals sunning themselves on floating ice, skyscraper-high waterfalls, and even a humpback whale on the way back to the harbor.

We finally got back to the harbor at about 6 in the evening. Most of our shipmates got off the boat and out of town as fast as they could. They didn;t want to miss the tunnel opening. We opted to walk around town. That didn't take very long! So we got back to the car, the only one left in the lot, and drove around. Also not very time consuming. We shopped at the local supermarket along with some folk off duty from the fish processing plant (the aroma was...well...use your own imagination). Then we went in search of June's Whittier Condos. Not hard to find, as June's home/office is on the 15th floor, and there's only one building tall enough to have one of those.

June is a very sweet lady who showed us our room - the Vice Presidential Suite. Actually a really nice place. She told us a little about the building and the history of Whittier, brought us a breakfast basket of bagels, cream cheese, juice and bananas (organic! Sweeter than the usual ones, she says. We'll check it out in the morning).

After a few board games the kids put on a tape (yes, an actual real VCR) of Star Wars, but went to bed (voluntarily, I might add) about half way through.

I'm going to follow their example... Tomorrow we're taking the ferry to Valdez.

So, the ferry.

We got up and packed, had breakfast in our room. Then we had to rush to the ferry. Kind of like the army - hurry up and wait! We were told to be there no later than 10:30 for the 11:30 ferry, so we rushed, got there on time, and waited. During the check-in Gilat and I had to show our IDs. We put them in with the ferry tickets, and they managed to find a secret hiding place in the car! Panic ensued for a while, until Tamar with her sharp eyes and little fingers found them.

Whew!

We drove on to the ferry, parked and went upstairs. The passenger area is very nice, lots of comfy chairs with loads of leg room, tables, windows, an outside deck, a cafeteria, very nice. We had our lunch at one of the tables and then wandered around the vessel, went outside on the aft deck, explored, and I even managed to get a little sleep on the two and a half hour ride.

We landed in Valdez and were pleasantly surprised that it didn't look at all like Whittier. Far more inviting, people moving around, more hotels (albeit small ones), shops. Altogether more alive.

Still, not much to do there, so we drove right out of town. Just on the edge of town is a small information center, but it's closed on Mondays. Just our luck. We continued around the bay to a salmon hatchery across from Valdez. At the entrance to a river are tons of pink salmon. Literally tons! We watched them and a family of sea lions who were gorging themselves. We walked around, exploring the hatchery, but there is no tour or explanations for visitors, which is a shame.

We returned to the hotel – the Totem Inn, a roadside motel with no AC and dysfunctional WIFI. We did some shopping and had supper in our room, then returned to the hatchery hoping to see a bear, maybe. No bears but the tide was going out and we could walk further into the bay, closer to the sea lions. They were just relaxing, playing with each other while Daddy sea lion watched over his domain. Once in a while they'd swallow another salmon that got too close.

The kids had fun catching their own salmon with bare hands while we enjoyed the sea lions and birds. Later we returned to our room and to bed.

Have a look:

Tomorrow we're off to Wrangell St. Elias National Park.

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