We woke up today, looked outside, saw it had rained all night and high-fived ourselves again for not camping. As we drove the short distance from Girdwood into the Portage Valley, we got really thankful. The winds were blowing something awful and the rain fell steadily. We tried to take some photos from the car but the rain would just blow in. We stopped at the Begich, Boggs Visitor Center near Portage Glacier but we really couldn't see much because of the low clouds except for the still frozen lake. We waited around for a few minutes for the center to open so we could get some smashed pennies. We also chatted a bit with the park rangers and got to see ice worms.
Between Portage and Whittier is Anton Anderson Memorial Tunnel, a 2.5 mile, single lane tunnel through the mountains that is also shared by a railroad track. Traffic flows from west to east on the half hour so we intended to make the 09:30 crossing in case something happened to delay us. It costs $12 to go into Whittier (free to come back) and all vehicles have to line up in a staging area and drive single file at 25 mph. We made it to Whittier with plenty of time to spare as it turned out since when we checked in for the ferry around 10:00, she said we wouldn't line up until 12:45. We were told we needed to be there two hours early for our 13:45 departure.
This might be a good time to point out how messed up everything is here. That is, despite lots of planning, things rarely seem to go as planned. I think every one of our reservations has been wrong or changed in some way from what we were told. On the plus side, since it's early in the season, we have also been able to change our plans last minute and it all works out. Any way, we spent most of the rest of the day on a ferry crossing the Prince William Sound. As beautiful as the snow-covered mountains are, I am getting a little weary of trying to take photos of them with all these clouds around. It just doesn't make for interesting pictures.
We were able to see a variety of wildlife from the ferry including orca whales, porpoises, steller sea lions and many birds. No eagles today, though they have been quite common and I think you can probably tell an Alaskan from a tourist just by how much interest they show in seeing one. It continued to be cold and rainy for most of the passage but by the time we were approaching Valdez, the rain had stopped and we even saw some peaks of sun. We're staying in a B&B tonight (though I kind of take issue with any accommodation that has a shared bathroom trying to call itself a B&B) and even had time to do a little geocaching.
Frozen Portage Lake in the rain
Apparently Whittier gets a lot of snow
Driving onto the ferry M/V Aurora
View of Whittier from the ferry
Prince William Sound
Foggy mountain
Wes and Rachele on the ferry
The sun finally came out! (and so did this photo) We can see that view from our room.
The L&L B&B in Valdez, Alaska
Valdez Harbor