Anchorage to Valdez

We stayed Sunday night in Anchorage at the Joint Base Elmendorf Richardson Army campground. Vince & Lisa grilled the Black Bass filets for dinner. The fish had good firm texture and big flakes. It reminded me of Chilean Sea Bass. 

Monday, July 20^th, we ran a few errands to provision for a week or so. Julie and I then washed the motorhome at our campsite at JBER.

We headed out at noon, with an overnight stop at the Grand View Café and RV Park on the Glenn Highway. It was only about 100-miles from Anchorage, but took over 3-hours to drive because of the narrow, windy road.

Along the way we stopped at a pullout to see and photograph the Matanuska River, another Alaskan braided river. Further up the road we stopped to see the Matanuska Glacier, the main source of the Matanuska River

 

The Grand View Café and RV Park was a very nice RV park with a small lodge and café where we enjoyed pizza for dinner. We watched several Dall sheep on the mountains behind our campsite.

Tuesday morning we enjoyed breakfast at the café before heading out. We stopped in Glennallen to refuel and then turned south down the Richardson Highway, heading towards Valdez.

We passed the entrance to the Wrangell-St. Elias National Park and Preserve. It is America’s largest national park at 18.2 million acres. Four major mountain ranges meet in the park (Wrangell Mountains, St. Elias Mountains, Chugach Mountains, and the Nutzotin Mountains, which are an extension of the Alaska Range). The national park includes nine of the 16 highest peaks in the U.S.

Further down the Richardson Highway we stopped to take photos of the Worthington Glacier and later, the Bridal Veil Falls before reaching Valdez.

We checked into Bear Paw RV Park II, a small RV park next to the Valdez marina on the Port Valdez bay off of Prince William Sound. We watched many commercial fishing boats leave and return to the marina throughout the day and night from our campsites. Three sea otters entertained us as they played in the marina just a few yards up from our campsites.

After dinner, and a stop for ice cream sundaes, we drove around the bay to the Solomon Gulch Fish Hatchery to watch the salmon. There were hundreds, if not thousands, of coho and pink salmon in the water trying to make their way back to where they were born at the hatchery after a year in the Gulf of Alaska.

We spotted a juvenile bald eagle in a nearby tree and another on the beach eating a salmon. We also saw four sea lions off shore, who were waiting until the tide came in and with deeper water, they could go get some salmon to eat.

 

We were watching for bears that frequent the area around the fish hatchery, especially when the salmon are spawning, but they had not shown up by the time we left around 10PM (and still very light out).      

Wednesday we washed our truck, then enjoyed lunch with Vince & Lisa at a local Chinese restaurant. After lunch we went to Peter Pan Seafoods, on the other side of the boat harbor, to look in their retail store and buy some seafood.

Peter Pan Seafoods, headquartered in Seattle, has been in business since the early-1900s, with four processing plants in Alaska. The Valdez plant is their newest processing plant. It is the only fresh/frozen/cannery operation in Valdez, processing all varieties of wild salmon as well as halibut and black cod.

Vince went fishing out by the fish hatchery after we got back from lunch. He caught his limit of six salmon in less than two hours. He "snagged" six pinks (Humpie salmon), cleaned them and plans to smoke the salmon once he gets back to Colorado.

 

We leave tomorrow (Thursday) morning for Tok, Alaska, about a 250-mile drive. It'll take some time to drive as we go back over Thompson Pass and the highway between here and Tok has many frost heaves that we slow down for. There is also some road construction between Glennallen and Tok.

Steve & Julie Cornelius