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We left Homer on Saturday, August 18 with Anchorage as our destination. We needed a couple of days in the city to resupply and get ready for our next push to Valdez. From Anchorage, we drove to Palmer for the night. We had originally planned to spend two nights at the Mountain View RV Park before heading for Glennallen. We wanted to drive the Hatcher Pass road, a highly recommended side trip to scenic alpine country and the historic Independence Mine. However, we received an email notifying us that our September 3 ferry from Haines to Skagway had blown a motor and would be out of service for the rest of the season. After looking at our options, we decided to take the 4:45 a.m. ferry on September 1 which meant only one night in Palmer and one night in Glennallen before the final trek south to Valdez.

Palmer is an interesting little town for a couple of reasons. First, it in Alaska’s only community that developed primarily from an agricultural economy. Secondly, it was the site of one of the most unusual experiments in American history: the Matanuska Valley Colony. The Federal Emergency Relief Administration, one of the many New Deal relief agencies created during Franklin Roosevelt’s first year in office, planned an agricultural colony in Alaska to utilize the great agricultural potential in the Matanuska Valley, and to get some American farm families – struck by first the dust bowl, then the Great Depression – off the dole. Social workers picked 203 families, mostly from the northern counties of Michigan, Wisconsin and Minnesota, to join the colony, because it was thought that the many hardy farmers of Scandinavian descent in those 3 states would have a natural advantage over other ethnic groups. The colonists arrived in Palmer in the early summer of 1935, and though the failure rate was high, many of their descendants still live in the Matanuska Valley. The growing season averages 80 to 110 days a year with long hours of sunshine. It is in this valley that the record-size vegetables are grown, as in 90-pound cabbages!

We followed the Glenn Highway from Palmer to Glennallen and, all along the way, continued to see many large and small lakes. We have concluded that if Minnesota is the land of 10,000 lakes then Alaska must be the land of a million lakes! They are everywhere and are beautiful. The Glenn Highway has many frost heaves so we had to drive a little slower. But it is a beautiful drive with many rivers and views of the Wrangell Mountains including Mount Sanford, Mount Blackburn, Mount Drum, and Mount Wrangell, the range’s only active volcano. It was on this stretch that we saw trumpeter swans in one of the lakes. We also saw a number of glaciers including Tazlina, Nelchina, and Matanuska.

We spent Tuesday night at the Northern Nights RV Park in Glennallen where we discovered that Bubba had some battery issues. Jerry had noticed that our inverter had been overcharging for a couple of days and couldn’t figure out why. Then Tuesday afternoon, we began to smell a rotten egg odor and we knew we had problems. He opened the hood and discovered that the battery was sizzling. Oops. He disconnected it from the inverter and we made it through the night. But the next morning, it was dead. But Bubba, being the engineering marvel that he is, can be started from the "house" batteries with just the flip of a switch so on Wednesday morning, we drove to the local Napa dealer and Jerry installed the new battery. It sure is nice to be married to a man who can do everything!

We followed the Richardson Highway south then west to Valdez. About halfway, we caught our first glimpse of the Trans-Alaska Pipeline which begins at Prudhoe Bay on the Arctic Ocean and ends, some 800 miles later, at Port Valdez in Prince William Sound. There, the oil from the 48-inch pipeline is fed by gravity into tanks or directly into one of 52 oil tankers that dock in Valdez each month. All Alaskan oil is presently shipped to American ports, supplying 14% of all oil consumed in our country. The terminus has 18 storage tanks, each with a capacity of 9 million gallons of oil. These 162 million gallons of oil would supply the U.S. for about 8 hours.

Of course, we can all remember when, in March 1989, the oil tanker Exxon Valdez ran aground on Bligh Reef, some 30 miles from town, causing an 11-million-gallon oil spill. The heart-wrenching photos of animals covered in nasty black crude are indelibly etched onto our hearts.

This is not the first disaster to hit Valdez. In 1964, the most destructive earthquake ever to hit south central Alaska virtually destroyed the town. The quake, measuring 9.2 on the Richter scale was centered in Prince William Sound. It, along with the tsunami that followed, killed 33 people. Following the quake, the town was relocated about 4 miles west of its original site.

Situated in a majestic fjord, where 5,000 foot-tall Chugach Mountains rise from Prince William Sound, Valdez is often called Alaska’s "Little Switzerland". The city’s other claim to fame, aside from outstanding fishing, is that it is the most northerly ice-free port in the Western Hemisphere, hence the chosen location for the southern terminus of the Trans-Alaska Pipeline.

Valdez has a population of about 4,400. There really isn’t much to do there except fish and soak up the beautiful scenery. And Valdez, like every other Alaskan coastal town, has a summer fishing derby. Fishermen (and women) buy tickets hoping to catch the biggest fish, the tagged fish, or the most poundage of fish during the summer. I guess it’s another way to "mine" the tourists and it seems to work. Since we don’t fish, they didn’t mine us.

We checked into the Sea Otter RV Park and secured a waterfront site. It was not a pretty park and the electricity was so weak that it wouldn’t even carry our hot water heater and refrigerator so we had to switch them to propane. But we were right on the waterfront and had a firepit – what more could one ask for? We were also right across from the pipeline terminus but it was far enough away that it didn’t diminish our beautiful view. We saw eagles, harbor seals, sea otters and fish jumping by the bazillions right in front of us. It was a delight, except for the fact that it rained almost the entire time we were there. Nothing like sitting around a campfire under an umbrella!

We noted a number of salmon dying in the harbor. We were told that the local hatchery shuts the gate after a certain number of salmon have returned to spawn. So, all those who didn’t make it in before the gates were closed will die in the harbor. How sad to think about the life cycle of the salmon!

On Thursday, August 23, we took an 80-mile, 6+ hour Columbia glacier and wildlife cruise through Prince William Sound. It was a cold and overcast day with intermittent rain so the photos don’t do it justice. But I will report that the clam chowder they served us was exquisite. I asked about the brand and was told that it was Ivar’s out of Seattle. I must look for it while we are there. We saw lots of wildlife during our cruise including 21 bald eagles, lots of sea otters and Stellar sea lions, harbor seals, a black bear, horned and tufted puffins, kittiwakes, and a humpback whale.

And, of course, we saw Columbia Glacier. As the second largest tidewater glacier in North America, the Columbia calves 10-13 million tons of ice per day. Wow! The terminal moraine was only about 30-40 feet below our boat. This is where the face of the glacier once was but it has retreated 10 miles in recent years. The glacier moves about 75 feet a day, calving enormous ice chunks into Columbia Bay. However, the moraine below us blocks the icebergs from floating out to sea. On the other side of the moraine from where we are, moving toward the glacier, the water is about 1,500 feet deep and filled with icebergs that have been blocked by the moraine. For that reason, we can only get within 10 miles of the Columbia but it is so enormous that we can see it, even that far away. The face of the glacier now has about 400 feet of ice above the water and about 1,400 feet below the water. Because the glacier moves so much in one day, it is estimated that the ice we see is only between 200-250 years old, much younger than most glacial ice you see in Alaska. The freshwater stream, flowing from beneath Columbia Glacier, is equivalent to the output of the Mississippi River on any given day. The Columbia was the last of Alaska’s tidewater glaciers to go into a retreat.

And we heard the real story of the Exxon Valdez disaster from our cruise boat captain. On March 24, 1989 the tanker left Port Valdez, escorted by a pilot boat, as usual. Because it was still winter, icebergs from nearby Columbia Glacier had crowded the outgoing sea lanes. The pilot in charge (not Captain Hazlewood) radioed the Coast Guard and asked for permission to use the inbound sea lanes to exit Valdez Arm. They made the turn and put the ship on autopilot. Later that night, at shift change, the new pilot came on duty. The new pilot knew he had to make another turn so he instructed the crew to make the adjustments. They did so but, what they failed to realize was that the autopilot was still on, overriding any adjustments they had made. Twenty-five minutes later, when they discovered the error, it was too late to make a correction. They hit Bligh Reef and the rest is history. The Exxon Valdez had to be dragged off the shoal and was sent to San Diego for repairs. It was renamed and plied the waters off the east coast for a number of years before it was retired.

We left Valdez around noon on Friday. The sun was finally shining and we would have stayed longer if we had not been facing the ferry deadline. We wanted to see Wrangell-St. Elias National Park and the old towns of Kennicott and McCarthy.

Until next time, happy trails to you . . . til we meet again!