Valdez, Alaska

Valdez is in the southeast part of Alaska on the Prince William Sound.  It is a commercial fishing harbor, an Alaskan Ferry terminal, and the terminus of the Alaska Pipeline.  Unfortunately, the weather was too bad for us to see much of the pipeline terminal; only a blurry image of the storage tanks.

On the Richardson's Highway into Valdez you can see the Worthington Glacier.  We saw it up close and personal.  The last 100 yards was a tough climb over the glacial moraine.  Marilee didn't want to make the climb but, being part mountain goat (among other things), I went ahead up to the glacier.  I chipped off a piece of it and brought it back.  I didn't think the glacier would miss it.

We took a sight-seeing cruise.  The initial sights were not encouraging.  Fortunately, the fog cleared considerably once we cleared The Narrows into Prince William Sound.  The Captain told us that often you could see more wildlife in the rain and fog than on a clear day.  Such was the case this day.

There is a good deal of commercial fishing in Prince William Sound.  The nets are pulled out from the stern of the fishing boat by another small boat and taken out in a big circle returning to the fishing boat.  This boat has nearly completed hauling the net back in.

This is the catch he pulled in.  The look like mostly haddock.  I don't like fish but Marilee tells me that haddock are very good.

Soon after clearing the Narrows, we saw this group of three Sea Otters.  They didn't seem to mind the ship coming within 50 yards of them.

They were just having a lazy morning with, seemingly, not a care in the world; except maybe for cold feet.  The sea otter does not have a layer of subcutaneous fat to keep him warm as do most sea mammals.  He depends on his thick hair for warmth in the cold water (about 55 degrees this morning). Unfortunately, his feet do not have as much hair as the rest of his body.  So, he holds his feet up out of the water when he can.

A little later we saw two young humpback whales.  One of them put on quite a show for us.  I must confess that I took a lot of pictures before I got this one.  He was very patient with me and just kept jumping until I finally caught this one.

He even stood on his head so I could take this picture.  If the truth be told, he stood on his head several times so I could take this picture.

The captain called this a sea lion "lay-out".  It was up a narrow fjord off the sound.  They were just enjoying the warmth.  Since these were mostly males, they were probably bragging about the size of the fish they caught yesterday.

There were both young and old sea lions here.  It is not a rookery.  There were few, if any, females.  The big bull in the foreground has some kind of marking on his side.  No one seemed to know for sure what this was but it is probably a mark put on him by some research group for tracking purposes.  It is hard to read in this view but they seemed to be letters and numbers.

We saw one more variety of wildlife before reaching the glacier.  This bald eagle was sitting on an iceberg.  He paid no attention to the ship passing no more than about 50 yards away.

As we got closer to the glacier, there was more ice in the water; from small ice cubes to good sized icebergs like this one.  The artic terns found it to be a convenient resting place.

In fact, there was so much ice in the water that we couldn't even get close to the Columbia Glacier.  This was ice that had broken off from the glacier and hadn't yet been blown out to sea.

This was as close to the glacier as we could safely go.  You can just barely see it at right center at the edge of the large berg in the center.

By the way, the blue color of the icebergs is not some sort of contamination.  The ice is perfectly clear.  The color is due to part of the color spectrum being absorbed by the ice and only the blue end of the spectrum is reflected.

This was our last stop in Alaska.  Tomorrow we start back for "the lower 48" as the say here.  Coming to Alaska was a dream for both of us for years.  We were disappointed but not in Alaska.  It is a wonderful place full of proud, friendly people.  Our disappointment came from the hype in the advertisements.  Alaska is far out of the ordinary and very beautiful but it is not the "magical wonderland" claimed by its PR people.  I only wish that General Dynamics had such great salesmen.  My stock would be worth a lot more.  Both of us are glad we came but we will probably not return.