June 22 - Palmer to Valdez

We hit the trail fairly early - we were really excited to hit Valdez today. We heard nothing but fantastic rave reviews about Valdez from everyone we'd talked to who had been there. We also heard that the road in to Valdez is one of the prettiest roads in America so we were stoked!

As we headed East on the Glenn Highway, we meandered through a lot of agricultural land - small farms and ranches and noticed more cowboy hats and boots... After Sutton, the road starts to follow a big glacier wash and gets twisty and hilly - so much fun on bikes! We came swinging around one corner and suddenly, a brilliant blue glacier was to our right. WOW! Our first glacier this trip. From there, the road slowly started to level and straighten out and we were back into the endless tundra and a million square miles of black spruce. 

We eventually made it to the junction of Highway 4 and the town of Glenallen. We had a really good lunch at the Fireweed Cafe and then headed south. We stopped for gas at Copper Center which is really just a big fishcamp. We stood on the bridge and watched as dozens of people lined the banks of the river and fished for sockeye salmon. People come from all over the States (including the Lower 48) to get their yearly supply and this year, the salmon are hitting record numbers so Fish and Wildlife has increased the allowable catch.

Past  Copper Center, the road is more tundra and black spruce and then it starts to descend towards the coast. Suddenly, the terrain changes dramatically and you start to catch sight of the coastal mountains.

Valdez truly is a land of giants - we've seen some big mountains in our travels (both on this trip and others) and I grew up in the Rockies in southeastern BC and we were both gobsmacked by the mountains that tower over the valley that leads to Valdez. Around every corner is another postcard vista of knife point peaks covered in blinding white snow and lowlands of rich green. Gone is the tundra to be replaced with what looks like temperate rainforest - the trees include many deciduous varieties and the forest is so dense, you would be hard pressed to make a trail. 

Quickly, you come to Worthington Glacier which is the crown of this stretch of road - stretching across the horizon, lodged between a string of mountains. It's so stunning, you simply cannot help but stop at the pull-out and stare in amazement. 

From there, the road swings to the left and up a hill and then there is another pull out that perches over the magnificent valley you descend through to get to Keystone Canyon and the coast below. 

We can honestly say, this is probably the most stunning and awe-inspiring road we've ever travelled. If for no other reason (and there are many), go to Valdez just to travel this road... ESPECIALLY if you can do it on a motorcycle and can catch it on a sunny day as we were so lucky to do. 

Once into Valdez, we cruised the main street through town to get our bearings and then we spotted the Bear Paw RV and Campsite right beside the marina. The little known insider information is that the Bear Paw has an adult-only camping section that has about 2 dozen sites a couple blocks away, right on the harbour. We scored a sweet spot right on the beach...

We went to one of the local hangouts - The Fat Mermaid. The Mermaid is a bar and restaurant that looks out over the marina. It's basic pub fare but the food was really good. We had the fish and chips (the fish is all caught fresh right there) and it was some of the best we've had. 

Valdez is a very interesting town. It is the terminus of the Alaskan Pipeline which runs 800 miles down from Prudhoe Bay on the Beaufort Sea at the north end of the Dalton Highway. At Valdez, enormous oil tankers are filled up across the bay at the storage plant and then they sail to the Lower 48 where the oil is refined. The Alaskan Pipeline was moving 2 million barrels of oil per day but now, production has slowed and the pipeline is only moving about 600,000 barrels per day because of a lack of refining facilities so we were told.  

Prior to the pipeline, Valdez was a fishing village. In 1964, the huge earthquake that shook Alaska and down the San Andreas fault line as far south as California, completely destroyed the town. It was a 9.2 quake that lasted for 4.5 minutes at that strength. When they rebuilt, they chose a new (and the current) townsite. Valdez was fading quickly and was almost a ghost town like many of the small towns in the 1960s and 70s before the pipeline was built and created employment for thousands of people which has also supported a burgeoning tourist trade. 

The marina is an absolute hive of activity and there is still a very active commercial fishery here including 2 canneries and processing plants. In town, one of the packers has a retail shop where you can buy the fresh catch of the day and is very reasonably priced given that there are no middle-men. The docks are crammed with all kinds of boats from big commercial boats to small sailboats and everything in between. Many people from Fairbanks, Tok and other Alaskan places have boats in Valdez and come down on weekends and for holidays. It was really fun to hang out on the marina boardwalk and watch all the comings and goings and all the hustle and bustle of this vibrant little town. 

We talked to some locals and the consensus was that a boat tour was the must-do activity. There are two major boat tour providers - Stan Steves and the LuLu Belle. We had heard about the LuLu Belle from a lovely young couple we camped beside in Fairbanks who were from Valdez. In fact, they'd gotten married on the LuLu-Belle. She is a gorgous yacht, all hand finished in teak and mahogany by the owner and operator, Fred Rodolf. Fred has been plying these waters for 30 years and is a walking (or, in this case, sailing) encyclopedia of information about anything you might want to know. We opted for the LuLu Belle so we bought tickets for tomorrow. Can't wait!!