Alaska, Part 3

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From Copper River, we continued driving south to Valdez; the scenery on the way was spectacular. We saw a mailbox complex - a mailbox high off the ground (in the air) for “air mail,” a mailbox on the ground for “snail mail,” one over a fire hydrant for “dog sled mail,” and one over a trash can for “junk mail.” Rather creative.

Throughout different parts of our drive, we saw the Alaska Pipeline. Construction on the pipeline began in 1974 and is 4 feet wide and 800 miles long, from Prudhoe Bay in northern Alaska to Port Valdez, in southern Alaska. About 380 miles of the pipeline run underground. At its busiest, it carried about 2 million barrels of oil a day; today it only carries about 600,000 barrels a day, because of dwindling supplies and as new sources of oil are opening up for drilling (Lonely Planet, Alaska, 2018).

Valdez is the starting point for trips to Columbia Glacier. It was a gorgeous day, with more beautiful scenery. The glacier has retreated “a total of 16 km (9.9 mi) at an average rate of approximately 0.6 km (0.37 mi) per year since 1982. The retreat has been accompanied by nearly 500 m (1,600 ft) of thinning at the present position of the terminus. In the next few decades it is expected to retreat another 15 km (9.3 mi), to a point where the bed of the glacier rises above sea level.” https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Columbia_Glacier_(Alaska)#Retreat

We saw a humpback whale, lots of seals, a few eagles and some otters on our boat trip.

Valdez is also where the Exxon-Valdez, the oil tanker owned by Exxon Shipping Company, hit a reef shortly after leaving port in Prince William Sound in 1989, spilling 11 million gallons of crude oil. “Initial attempts to contain the oil failed, and in the months that followed, the oil slick spread, eventually covering about 1,300 miles of coastline ... Nearly 30 years later, pockets of crude oil remain in some locations.” It was the largest oil spill in U.S. waters until the Deepwater Horizon spill, in 2010.

“In the months after the Exxon Valdez oil spill, Exxon employees, federal responders and more than 11,000 Alaska residents worked to clean up the oil spill ... Exxon paid about $2 billion in cleanup costs and $1.8 billion for habitat restoration and personal damages related to the oil spill ... Prince William Sound had been a pristine wilderness before the spill. The Exxon Valdez disaster dramatically changed all of that, taking a major toll on wildlife. It killed an estimated 250,000 sea birds, 3,000 otters, 300 seals, 250 bald eagles and 22 killer whales ... The oil spill also may have played a role in the collapse of salmon and herring fisheries in Prince William Sound in the early 1990s. Fishermen went bankrupt, and the economies of small shoreline towns, including Valdez and Cordova, suffered in the following years ... Some reports estimated the total economic loss from the Exxon Valdez oil spill to be as much as $2.8 billion.” https://www.history.com/topics/1980s/exxon-valdez-oil-spill

Our last stop in Alaska was the Kenai Peninsula, which is supposed to be great for outdoor adventures. When we got there, though, we couldn't bear to be outside because of the poor air quality; the Swan River fires were going on. The fire was ignited by lightening in early June; by June 13, it had spread to 7,700 acres. The fire had been relatively contained, but in mid-August, high winds caused the fire to flare up. The day we arrived (in mid-August), the air quality was so bad, we could barely breathe while outside. The next day, it had cleared up a bit, in the opposite direction of the fire, but the sky was still hazy. We left the next day, when the winds had changed again, and it was again hard to breathe. By the end of September, with the usual rainy season, the fire was 90% contained, but had burned 167,164 acres.

On the way back to Anchorage, we saw a lot of cars pulled over to the side; apparently this was a great spot to view beluga whales, and we saw quite a few.

And back to Seattle (temporarily).

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