Day 88 – June 30

We were up early to allow us some time to explore Whittier in advance of our 12:45 sign in for the 1:45 ferry departure for Valdez. In hindsight we should have slept in. Not far from our campsite was the entry to the Anton Anderson Memorial tunnel to Whittier. At 2.5 miles long this one lane tunnel is the only land connection to Whittier. Serving both as vehicular and train access, traffic direction reverses every half hour. It is so straight that you can see the proverbial light at the end of the tunnel right from the start. My totally unfounded faith in technology, based only on a single flashing green light, assured me that in this case its was not the oncoming train – I hoped.

Because of the shared use with trains the road bed has rails installed which from time to time seemed to want to take control of steering the beast and point us uncomfortably close to the jagged edges of the blasted out tunnel, which despite its apparent capacity to engulf a train, still seemed very narrow at those moments. Emerging from the far side of the tunnel the high clouds of our starting point in Bear Valley were replaced with a thick wall of fog and heavy mist. We followed the only road available in search of downtown Whittier.

After some fruitless searching we came to realize that in fact there is no downtown Whittier. Whittier appears just to be a place where people park their boats as the hundreds and hundreds of boats, either in the marina or parked on every available piece of real estate on shore, seem to outnumber people 10 to 1. Despite glowing descriptions of the ‘Hamlet’ of Whittier in our guide and in the brochure produced by the Whittier Chamber of Commerce (clearly an unbiased source) there is, in my mind, no better description of Whittier than a God forsaken piece of asphalted and gravelled real estate. There is no reason to be here except to leave, even if just for a day of fishing.

Stripped of its undoubtedly spectacular view by the thick fog and heavy mist of this day, on its own Whittier is home to some of the ugliest buildings I have seen this side of early Communist China. The main residential building in town, a now condo-ized former military residential slab tower, houses half of Whittier’s population, the remainder being in the ‘new’ 1950’s’ building also originally built as military and civilian employee housing. Sandwiched in between these two residential hubs is the hulking derelict of the Buckner Building, a huge multi floor abandoned grey concrete building that looks like it came from the set of the movie Shutter Island. Rats would walk by this for fear of personal injury.

With an abundance of time on our hands we went into the Inn at Whittier, the only building that appeared to have had its exterior finishes touched in the current century, which had a lovely, well appointed white table clothed dining room and wifi where we set up shop for an hour, consuming several cups of coffee, some bagels and a reindeer sausage, all of which were very tasty, while we took advantage of the wifi to touch base. It was comforting to learn that Jane and Ike had just returned home safely (after their blog had gone dark for many days) well ahead of their drop dead date. Their reports of bug infested BC and Ontario however sound less than welcoming for our homeward journey. We are now officially the tail end of the armadillo.

Our boat left 10 minutes ahead of its scheduled departure, apparently, like us, eager to get out of Whittier as soon as possible. Any hope that the gloom that engulfed Whittier was a localized condition soon faded. As the trip progressed the best we got was brighter fog punctuated by the outlines of some of the coastline as we steamed along, a disappointment after reading of the great scenery that Jane and Ike had seen on their passage earlier in the month.

Large screens at the front of the lounge showed our vessel’s course along a coastline that we couldn’t see. At one point, when our position veered considerably from the posted course on the chart, Diane reasoned that the foggy weather was causing us to move further from the shore for safety reasons, I offered that maybe we were being steered by an Italian former cruise boat captain who used navigation charts as a general suggestion rather hard and fast data.

At points the monotony of the fog was disrupted by small pieces of ice that floated by, certainly not of Titanic proportions these aqua blue sculptures served as roosts to many seabirds. I saw several salmon jumping and at one point as we saw a tour boat racing by and then stopping we watched through our binoculars while a whale performed for the charter guests by rolling over and showing its fins, blowing and flashing its tail fluke.

Bergie bit

As we passed close to Glacier Island we saw two herds of dozens of sea lions, their brown fur contrasting against the grey beach rocks. Further out from shore a sea otter nonchalantly paddled past on its back.

As we approached Valdez Arm the coastline was dotted with commercial fishing boats dropping and retrieving purse seines for the salmon that were heading for the nearby rivers. Based on the proliferation of boats it is amazing that any salmon actually make it upstream to spawn.

Running the salmon gauntlet

We arrived in Valdez (Val deez) on schedule at 7:30. Our Milepost guide listed all the RV parks in town and a quick survey showed that the three located right downtown were pretty much the same, full service, including cable and wifi , with small gravelled lots so we chose the Eagle’s Rest which had a Good SamClub discount. We got a site close to the main lodge and quickly got connected before a light drizzle started. We had a second great meal of Indian food courtesy of Erin and then spent some time on the vvvveeeeerrrryyyy slow wifi checking weather for tomorrow, which will help us to figure out our schedule for the next couple of days, before going to bed.