Saturday, September 16, 2017 – Valdez to Glennallen, AK

As we all know, when the water/ground is warmer than the air, there will be fog!  With all the water (port) in the area of Valdez, and with the autumn temperatures cooling down, it was foggy again this morning.  By the time we ate breakfast, had an extra coffee and posted the blog, it was mid-morning.  The sun was trying to warm the air and burn off the fog.  The clouds were lifting so that we could see many of the peaks around Valdez. There are hanging glaciers on almost every peak.  It is a beautiful area. Again, the weather changes every 5 minutes!!!

We drove to the base of the Valdez Glacier.  It has receded enough that we could just see the water at the bottom, running into the river/glacier lake.  However, another Glacier, which we could not see, had iceberg calves in the glacier lake at the bottom. Naturally it was cold around this iceberg lake.    

View from our B&B

Mountains around Valdez

Our Valdez B&B

The Valdez Glacier

Small Ice Bergs from the Valdez Glacier

We returned to the viewing area, looking for bears eating spawning salmon, but again no luck. 

After the clouds lifted today, we decided to leave Valdez, as this will be the best weather for the next few days.  Thompson Pass had more clouds today than yesterday, when we were going south.  Thompson Pass is a beautiful area and unless there is extremely severe weather, it is kept open all winter (maybe closed for a few hours). 

All of the higher mountains have what they call “termination snow”.  It is the first snow of winter, thus “terminating summer”! 

Glaciers from the Valdez Harbor

Keystone Canyon

Thompson Pass Glaciers

We took our time driving north on the Richardson Highway today, as we hope this weather system will move out of the area. Even with high clouds the landscape was beautiful. If it is clear tomorrow we will return to drive part of the Denali Highway.  So here again, our plans are determined by the weather!! 

We are at Glennallen, the junction of the Glenn Highway and Richardson Highway. Since we arrived here mid-afternoon we checked into the only motel in the area – yesterday they began their ‘winter’ rates – much more reasonable for the quality of motel. 

Again, today Cal listened to the Iowa football game on XM Radio. Since we were driving in the mountains, receptions was in and out, but the score registers on the GPS Monitor, so he could follow the game.

Wrangell Mountain Range from Glennallen