Valdez by way of Palmer

I have some catch up to do.  I left you in Anchorage and since then we have been to Palmer for a few days and now are in beautiful Valdez.  We got all our errands done, and had a nice unexpected visit with friends, Keith and Jessica.  They are getting ready to head back down to the lower 48 and back to reality for awhile until they can come back to Alaska, hopefully in September.  Keith leaves his plane up here which makes it real nice for them to travel around and see the sights.  A few things caught our eye while we were there.

A kite surfer on Turnagain Arm

One more amazing view

And even the Thunderbirds were in town for a show

We went all of 45 miles up to our next stop in Palmer for a few nights mainly to put us in position to drive over Hatcher Pass.  We remembered it as a beautiful spot when we were here last time.  The campground was pretty nice especially after being packed in like sardines in Anchorage.

Never had next door neighbors either!

I should make mention that it is quite the anomaly that here in the "Last Frontier" with all this open space the campgrounds are pretty poor.  Most are not much more than gravel parking lots that jam in as many people as possible.  Of course real estate is expensive and their season is very short so it is somewhat understandable, but boy, you sure alter your standards up here.

Hatcher Pass is a beautiful ride, we went west to east from Willow to Palmer so as to put the pass towards the end of the ride.

Once you crest the pass at 3886', you start down and enter the Willow Creek drainage area where a lot of mining took place.  The Independence Mine has been made into an historical park.  Robert Lee Hatcher staked the first claim in the area in 1906, and it developed into a very productive mine with 1350 acres, over a dozen miles of tunnels, and 22 families living in the area.  When the US government shut all gold mining down in 1942, it operated another year or so mining scheelite, but finally was forced closed in 1943. The ban was lifted in 1946, but gold mining was tough as the government set the price of gold at $35/oz, and gold could only be sold to the government.  The mine closed in 1951.  It was very interesting walking around the site, in the rain, I might add.

The site of the mine

A mining train

They just left everything when it closed

Some buildings in ruins that haven't been restored

All in all we had a nice day even with the rain.  Then the next morning we drove on to Valdez, 260 miles, a long day.  The roads are such that you can't make any time, not that you want to with all the scenery, they are windy, rough in places, and you have to watch out for the frost heaves, but the views, wow!

Here comes Karen trying to catch up:-)

An example, Mt Sanford, 16,237, looking close enough to touch!

We stopped for lunch along the highway and happened on a native display of an old restored wooden fish wheel.

A bonus at lunch.

The Richardson Highway down to Valdez is just amazing with it's towering snow and ice covered jagged peaks.  You get a glimpse of the pipeline every once in a while, and just before the Thompson Pass, the snowiest place in Alaska, on average gets 551" of snow each year, you pass the Worthington Glacier just before you crest the pass and start the long downhill into Valdez.

The Worthington Glacier

Then on the descent you go by two fantastic waterfalls, the Bridal Veil and the Horsetail falls.

Bridal Veil

Horsetail

Now we are in our campground here with incredible views all around, with 50 amp power, something we haven't had in quite awhile.  We walked into town, went to 2 very interesting museums that dealt with the Gold Rush, the pipeline, the Exxon Valdez spill, and of course the Earthquake of 1964 that destroyed the then town of Valdez, before they moved the entire town to its present location.  Across the harbor from town is the oil terminal at the pipeline's terminus, and a very active salmon stream.

The roiling in the water is caused by the thousands of salmon trying to
get upstream.  The birds are pecking them and eating the ones that have
already spawned and died.  A glimpse of nature at work.  The bears come here often we are
told to dine on fresh fish although we didn't see any when we were here.

These two behemoths were in the parking lot.

And two sentinels watching over the feeding frenzy