Back to the Russian River by way of Whittier and Hope

July 8, 2012

Up early today – around 3:30 a.m. – couldn’t sleep, so got up and read and watch the sun rise at 4:00.  Actually turned on the furnace – it was quite chilly down in that valley.

  Charlie got up around 5:30 so we were on the road by 6:15.  It was so still and quiet – I drove Didi separately due to the rather large mountains we were going up and down, and thoroughly enjoyed driving through them as the morning broke.  There were hardly any other cars, so we had the highway to ourselves.   Charlie saw two black rabbits, but I missed them. 

Filled back up at Palmer and loaded Didi up at Sutton.  We got to see another moose on the side of the road --a male with a few antlers, but not a full rack yet.  I am still holding out for a big bull moose!

 

Drove to Whittier – To get to Whittier, we had to go thru a 2 ½ mile tunnel that is one lane and is shared with traffic and trains going both ways.  So you pay 20.00 and line up and every 45 minutes or so you get to go through.  It is a pretty place to wait so time passes pretty quickly. We made lunch and and it worked out great.  

We had stopped at the visitor center just prior to the tunnel and there was a huge piece of glacier ice floating in the river!  AWESOME!  At first we thought they may have just made an ice sculpture and put it there, but nope, it was the real thing.

Whittier is not much – it is a tiny town, and is a true working harbor.  When I say these towns are small, I really mean small, there are probably 10 streets - maybe?  I also read that most of the town folks live in a building built during WWII – we saw it and did not know what it was.  It is 14 stories, and just plain concrete on the outside, we thought it was deserted. 

It rained the entire time we were there, but we had on our rain gear so we stayed nice and dry.  We had a chance to walk all over the town and got to see the ferry pulling out and several glaciers – made some coffee to warm up and then headed back to the tunnel. 

Some facts about Whittier:

They get 20 FEET of rain a year, 16 feet of snow, temperature tonight was supposed to be in the 30-40’s, and there are 150 glaciers you can see on a 5 hour boat ride around here. Cruise ships do stop here, but I cannot imagine what the people do when they get off the boat.  

Drove down to  the town of Hope on the way back to the Russian river.  The road just stops there - kinda cool.  (We are trying to drive on any blacktopped road we can find, but staying away from the gravel ones....  )There were some great views of Cooks Inlet though – so it was a pretty ride.  Stopped and mailed some postcards at the post office there and then headed to the Russian.

We actually got a camping site at the Russian River campground!  We will be able to stay for three nights, which is great for us, but definitely means there are not many salmon running right now… 

On the way here we saw more traffic than we have on the entire trip, mostly headed back up toward Anchorage – guessing it was folks leaving Seward or Valdez after the July 4^th week.