Alaska - Day Eleven: 3198.9 miles to Valdez, AK

For the first time we woke up to rain. Rain and 55 degrees. Lucky for us we had my winning pancake token that we took to the restaurant to redeem for my free sourdough pancake and reindeer sausage breakfast. I let Chris get one, too... ;)

We ran to the Three Bears grocery store to pick up some water and paper towels and ended up buying a new cooler...

With all the rain there wasn't much of a view on the way to Valdez. Eventually the weather cleared and warmed up to 71 degrees.

On a clear day, you can see the Wrangell Mountains (ranging from 12,010 to 16,390 feet) over the Copper River.

We stopped at the Wrangell-St. Elias National Park Visitor's Center, very nice place with flushing toilets and lots of cool bones... ;)

In the corner was a picture of a copper mine that is a National Historical Site. It was quite a cool looking building. We asked about it and the ranger said it was 60 miles down an unimproved road, but once we were there we could tour the mill. We had to go!

The Richardson Hwy goes from the junction to Valdez over Thompson Pass. The weather also started to cloud up again. We stopped at a few more viewpoints for some pictures...

 Then we arrived at Worthington Glacier.

 The glacier was incredible! The blue color was so vivid!

In the distance we could see people hiking up to the ice and waterfalls. Then we remembered our pact that a little rain wouldn't stop us.

We put on our coats and hats, grabbed our trekking poles and set off towards the glacier...

The trail was basically a faint trace in the rocks. And there were a LOT of rocks! And the rain stopped after about 20 minutes...

The higher we climbed the thinner the rocks got and we realized that we weren't walking on rocks but on the glacier covered with a layer of rocks...

It was like being explorers, blazing trails and seeing things we'd never seen before.

When we finally got back to the creek, we decided to head up to the glacier on the other side...

The glacier was even more incredible up close!

With the glacier exploration complete, we continued up to Thompson Pass. It was only 2,678 feet but we definitely climbed into the clouds. In fact, the clouds became so thick we could hardly see. It was a bit scary!

 But eventually we descended out of the clouds to Valdez...

The waterfalls were everywhere along the side of the highway...

Before going into town, we took a detour out on Dayville Road to Solomon Gulch and the Alyeska Pipeline Terminal.

This little grizzly was just wading through the creek...

The road stops at the Solomon Gulch fish hatchery and the Copper Valley Dam...

Like all fish hatcheries, it attracted lots of seals there for the all you can eat salmon buffet. We saw about five swimming near by.

Then we drove out to the Old Valdez townsite where the town of Valdez used to be. Gold stampeders made the perilous climb over the Valdez Glacier and set up a camp that later became Valdez. But on Good Friday 1964 a 9.2 earthquake struck and sent a series of waves that swept over the warf, taking 33 people with it and destroying the town. In 1968, the remaining residents moved to the townsite's current location.

It was a little tricky finding a place to stay with all the road construction and the weekend and all. But we managed to get a spot and do a few loads of laundry (although it didn't get completely dry) all before walking over to the Fat Mermaid for drinks...