Valdez, AK - The Glacier Almost Ate my Shoe

Time to move on and we’re headed 93.5 miles down the road to Valdez on the coast of Alaska. Our route took us along the Richardson Highway, reputedly the most beautiful of all of the beautiful drives in Alaska. Altogether it is 366 miles long although we picked it up for only 119 miles today. It is designated an Alaska Scenic Byway and is ‘exceptionally beautiful … with magnificent views of the Chugach Mountains and some of the best glacier viewing in Alaska.’ Well, that’s only if you have a sunny day - which, we did not. We had some views of the sun and, here you can see a glimpse of blue sky, but, on the whole it was overcast.

One of the neat features of the road is an up and close personal viewing of a glacier, one of the most popular in Alaska, Worthington.

There is a viewing platform but also a trail that goes right up to the glacier from that. We took what I would call the ‘high’ trail and I learned later that there is a ‘low’ trail. Our trail took up further and further up and soon we looked down, saw some others and realized that we were on the wrong trail. OK: go back or hike down. We chose the closest: to go down. We learned that sometimes the closest takes the longest time. We were hiking down a muddy bunch of melted ice at the edge of the glacier - sticky, muddy goo. We tried to jump from bigger rock to bigger rock but landing only pushed the rock further down in to the goo. Then I stepped wrong and my shoe got covered. I tugged and tugged. Luckily I had my laces tied tightly - that was all that kept my shoe on my foot. Finally we got down. My shoes are grey - just like the goo.

But we did get up close and personal with the glacier.

On our way back - via the low trail, we saw this mountain goat maneuvering along the rock ledges.

The valley across the road was awesome.

Waterfalls along the route too.

And, you know, I always like sliding through canyons. Looks like the folks going the opposite direction are going out for an adventure. Note the people sitting in the kayaks in the back.

We got to our campground, hooked-up and got this: fog and rain. Now, the rumor is that Valdez is surrounded by mountains, that its harbor is lined with steep rugged slopes. Pictures online look like this.

Beautiful, don’t you think? I’d love to visit here. Well, we did and we saw nothing like these pictures.

Here is our view of the mountains from our campground.

The next morning it was worse. We couldn’t even see those vague shadows in back of the small boat harbor.

Ah, well. We’ve got 5 days here - it’s bound to get better.