From Alaska to the coast of Maine........: Valdez- Incredibly hard times for a special place

Our travel route along the magnificent Richardson Highway from Fairbanks to Valdez, Alaska

There is a lot special about the Alaskan city of Valdez. First, it is the United States’ most northerly ice-free port, with the best access to Alaska’s interior as well as to the US Pacific Northwest, Northern Canada, and the Pacific Rim trade routes.

Mountains surround the Valdez harbor.

Deep in the heart of Prince William Sound,Valdez is also the southern terminus of the trans-Alaska oil pipeline. Supertankers navigate the deep, ice-free waters of Valdez Arm each day, handling more than 1.5 million barrels of crude oil.

Valdez Visitor's Center

For the past 6 weeks I had been looking for a bear to take a picture of the four of us armed for battle! Either the bear wasn't perfect, or someone didn't have their bear spray. Dennis and Vickie found this guy at the Visitor's Center so we all went back later prepared! This was our last chance! The bear looks scared, doesn't he? Or is it a "she"?

With a population of about 4500, it is definitely an outdoor adventurer’s dream destination. No matter what the season, there is no shortage of things to do. In the summer there is hiking, boating and endless fishing possibilities. Glaciers abound there – so are the opportunities to kayak, hike or extended camping trips (and I am sure some crazy stuff I have never imagined ) to give you an up-close and personal icy experience. In the winter, there are creative skiing opportunities. Heli-skiing ( takes you by helicopter to the top of the mountain and you ski down)snow cat skiing (a snow grooming machine that gets you up the mountain), kite skiing (sounds really dangerous), snowboarding, and snow machining? You can even, for a mere $90,000 take have a yacht/ heli-skiing /boat adventure! http://www.blackopsvaldez.com/alaska-yacht-skiing/ With an average snowfall of 325 inches, it’s no wonder they think up all kinds of things to do in/with it!

I would be remiss in not mentioning Valdez's worst hour. A tsunami following an earthquake on Good Friday, 1964 completely destroyed the town. It was rebuilt on more stable bedrock 4 miles to the west. After flourishing during the building of the pipeline, Valdez to this day boasts, restaurants, hotels,shops and museums.

The following fascinating information was obtained from this website: http://www.usc.edu/dept/tsunamis/alaska/1964/webpages/1964valdez.html

'The map above shows two different locations for Valdez. The first, Old Valdez, represents the town's location before the 1964 tsunami, and the second, New Valdez, its location after the tsunami. The reasons for this move are clear if one examines the chain of events that occurred following the 1964 earthquake.

The town of Valdez (Old Valdez) was built on unconsolidated deltaic sands and gravels, which are extremely unstable during shaking. Thus, the shock waves from the 1964 earthquake that struck Valdez immediately caused the sediments under the waterfront area to spontaneously liquefy (a condition where sediments essentially behave as a liquid, loosing all load bearing capacity), which caused a large section of the delta (approximately 4,000 feet long by 600 feet wide) to slump into Port Valdez. Aside from sending most of the Valdez Port Facilities to the bottom of Port Valdez, the slump displaced a large volume of water, generating a local tsunami. Since all of this occurred before the earthquake shaking ended, the town had no warning at all, and all people on the town docks at the time were killed by the tsunami. The combined effects of the earthquake, and the 30- to 40-foot local tsunami, destroyed most of the waterfront, and caused damage a considerable distance inland. To make things worse, the forces caused the tanks at the Union Oil Company to rupture, which started a fire that spread across the entire waterfront, finishing off the few structures still standing. The photos below illustrate the scene at Valdez in the days following the tsunami. Smaller waves from the main tectonic tsunami struck Valdez several hours after the local tsunami, but their effect was minimal, as there was nothing left to destroy.

Coincidentally, on Good Friday 1989,( 25 years to the day ) The oil tanker Exxon Valdez, traveling through Prince William Sound's Bligh Reef, spilled 11 million gallons of oil. it is estimated to have killed hundreds of thousands of animals as well as fouling 1000 miles of shoreline.

Now back to our rather “ordinary” Valdez visit:

July 2nd – Today we checked out the lovely town of Valdez, resting up for the 10 hour kayak adventure scheduled for tomorrow. I had been researching for months which adventure tour we might select and after many hours of reading and talking to the tour companies we decided to spend our special day in Valdez with Anadyr Adventures. What was particularly appealing, was that we would be kayaking amongst the icebergs very near Columbia Glacier. How cool is that? (Literally).

We don’t typically take commercial tours ( too cheap, or should I say “frugal”, and we don’t like large tour groups).There is so much you can do that doesn’t cost an arm or a leg to do it. But there are some activities you would otherwise not be able to do, and certainly not safely. This is one of those times.

The tour operator assured me that this tour consisting of 6 hours of kayak paddling would not prove physically too much for us, but I was still a bit apprehensive about it. Did I lead him to believe we might be in better shape than we are? After all, we are all in our 60's (some late 60's).

This picture was taken from the RV window well after midnight.

It was the 4th of July weekend, so the town of Valdez has a lot of entertainment planned and our campsite was perfectly located in the harbor close to the festivities, so that was a huge plus.