June 6th, 2024 Part 2 - Travel to Valdez

We continued our journey south from Glennallen to Valdez and the scenery - OH MY!  This is another picture intensive blog.

This area was just amazing - pictures just do not do it justice:

We continued south:

Can you imagine having a cabin/home here - this is Willow Lake:

Active volcano - WOW!

So many rivers:

And the pipeline:

Heading to the pass:

Love the daffodils and this little guy:

And the waterfalls - OH MY!  We are so blessed to be here when all the snow is melting!:

We have seen many signs that say " Do not stop! Avalanche area."  Here is an area where there was an avalanche:

We made our way to Thompson Pass - Look at that snow:

The top of Thompson Pass - pictures do not do it justice: 

Going down - those poles are snow poles.  They mark the edge for snow plows.  This area can get up to over 900 inches of snow (75 feet) of snow per season.  

Those gates are for road closures:

Going into Keystone Canyon - can you count the waterfalls:

It is hard to see here but the river was "grayish" - what is known as glacial silt or glacial flour.  Meaning this water is coming from the glaciers:

I will ask you to remember this bridge in a future blog - yes, we did explore it!:

We made our way into Valdez:

We will be here for at least a week or more.  We checked in to the Chena RV Park.  What an great place!.  There are 10 sites and we were lucky to get a site for 8 nights.  The owners, Judy and ?(sorry, forgot his name), were full timers before they set up this park and it shows.  It is roomy and homey and I cannot say enough good about them.

Once we set up, Judy stopped by and gave us some frozen salmon from their catch.  How wonderful.  As we chatted with them, we found out that they winter in Parker Arizona.  

So if you read my blog and are going to Valdez, Alaska for a length of time (more than 2 days), this is the place to stay.

So since we were be here for a while, stay tuned and enjoy today!

Stats for today:

Miles Traveled: 253 Miles

Routes Traveled:

Alaska: AK-1 (Tok Cutoff Highway/Taylor Highway); AK-1; (Richardson Highway); AK-4 (Richardson Highway)

June 6th, 2024 - Part 1 - Travel to Glennallen

We woke to another beautiful day, packed up and headed south.

If you look at an Alaska Road Map, the major roads go in a circle around the cities/towns.  Many folks do the counter clockwise version - Delta Junction, Fairbanks, Anchorage, Kenai, Valdez and back to Tok (with many side journeys in between.)  We did that in 2007 and 2009 but this year we decided to do the counterclockwise version.  One of the reasons is that we did not spend much time in Valdez.

In 2007, we spent a few days and in 2009, we skipped it totally.  This year my intention was to spend at least a week there.

So I am getting a little ahead of myself here but my plans were to spend 2-3 days getting to Valdez.  Our first night plans were to stay at a state campground near Glennallen, the second night would be spent at another state park near the Thompson Pass and then we would be in Valdez.  WELL! that didn't happen because both state parks were closed because of the snow - LOL!  (Yes, I did check the websites and both said they were open as of mid-May!).

We did stop at both state parks, also in Glennallen and did end up going all the way to Valdez.   We had reservations to stay a week in Chena RV park in Valdez and, Thank God, she (Judy) had openings for us to come in early!

This blog will be broken into two parts: from Tok to Glennallen and then from Glennallen to Valdez.  All I can say (I know, again and again), the scenery was SPECTACULAR, AWESOME, BREATHTAKING, and very emotional for me!

So this blog and the next will be picture intensive.  

Enjoy.

The mountains, the trees and the rivers:

Spectacular, isn't it!

Yes, we did have bumpy and dippy roads.  Some areas were not good BUT this was a piece of cake compared to what we did previously on this trip:

The St. Elias Mountain Range - it looks like a picture, doesn't it?!:

One of our stops:

Many trees:

WOW!:

This is the Subauroral  Geophysical Observatory in Gakona: 

I put this in here because this is a really interesting program being done by the University of Alaska.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-frequency_Active_Auroral_Research_Program

We were going to camp at Dry Creek State Recreation Area but as we approached, the gates were closed.  So we went on to Glennallen where we stopped for fuel and lunch.  I made a stop in the local Safeway but, WOW, the prices were much too high.

We decided to continue our journey south and check out other places to stay.  That journey continues in Part Two.