[Wild Blue]

Day 4: Valdez, return home

I slept in, enjoying the relaxing trip. In the middle of summers and winters, your sleep schedule can be thrown off by the abnormal light in the day. For summers, blackout curtains are key for sleeping. Alaskans get used to it, but visitors often get wayyyyy out of whack, seeing light way into the "night time".

After a (very) late breakfast and drive around the area with an unfruitful search for wildlife (again--pretty unusual for Alaska, not to see abundant wildlife around), I moseyed over to the Valdez Museum, which had some really interesting parts.





Right outside, there was this weird thing, that I wasn't sure whether it was art, or what. Only after reading the sign did I realize it's a cleaning tool that shoots down the Alaska pipeline.








Optic glass structure from the lighthouse:





Couple of old school fire trucks/carts from the original Valdez town, pre-earthquake.








Example exhibit of what a cabin would have looked like in the original western settler days.





If you ever thought you had it bad, getting your car stuck in the mud in a rough road, imagine taking an old school car through barely roughed-in trails halfway across Alaska wilderness, lol!





I found this both fascinating and really cool. An old-school wood crafted bar, that was the center of town night life. Bar was converted to a soda dispenser during prohibition, and then re-covered with a copper plate afterwards and went back to booze.

Once the great Alaskan earthquake hit, the saloon was irreparable, and the bar never used again. Awesome legacy piece.








The great Alaska earthquake of 1964 is included in any discussion of Alaskan history. 9.2 on the Richter scale, and 2nd largest earthquake ever recorded on the planet. You can read the rest of the signs in the pictures.

Earthquake and accompanying tsunami was beyond massive, destroying all sorts of infrastructure in south central Alaska, including both Anchorage and Valdez.

Valdez was pretty much literally wiped off the map. The community decided to demolish and burn the entire city afterwards, and moved the whole town of Valdez several miles down the road, to its current location.

The earthquake is still talked about with reverance across Alaska, mixed with a little bit of fear for the potential that we could get another big one again.








Aaaaaand then there's the Exxon Valdez, which you can't visit the town of Valdez without broaching the subject. Ironic that the tanker's name actually bore the name of the city, near the shores of which it would eventually run aground and rupture, causing the oil spill.

What an unmitigated goat rope disaster. Ugh... I remember being a kid and watching this on the news.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exxon_Valdez_oil_spill

Today, the Alaska coast has mostly recovered, but if you dig on the shores of the worst hit spots, the dirt still contains oil.

The fishing industry is strong and thriving in Alaska.





And then it was time to drive back home, but I had to fill up with gas before leaving. You might think that in one of the places in the world with the most oil, gas would be cheap, but... no. We don't have any refineries in Alaska, so all the crude oil has to be tankered all the way down to the lower 48 to be refined, and then shipped all the way back up as gasoline.

Rather silly, but with the small population market up here, I'm sure it's just not economically profitable to refine here as well.

Now, Valdez prices really aren't that bad, and for being a much smaller community than Anchorage, prices are only maybe $0.20 higher per gallon.

And I know, I know... no complaining here, because our European brothers here (and other places around the world) pay orders of magnitude much higher prices for petrol than we Yanks. Even in Alaska, although way out in the Alaska bush, prices can get outrageous, where every bit of of gas has to be trucked, or even flown, into villages.

One thing i talked about in my cross-continent road trip thread, is the available gas octane in Alaska, a sad maximum of only 90. BMW recommends 91. Not really a big thing in winter, when cold temperatures don't require as much octane. Yes, even in hot summers, the ECU will retard ignition to prevent knocking and engine damage. But I don't want my car to have to kick in protective measures because I'm putting mediocre gas into the tank. I've been trying just a bit of Boostane supplement to tanks here in the middle of the summer, with good results so far.





Some neat remnants of the initial road and attempted rail line to Valdez, left alongside the Richardson Highway 4. Rival railroad companies would get into literal gun fights over who could build rail.














Still neat sights on the way back, traveling along the same roads, but heading in a different direction, and seeing different stuff.





Unfortunately, Thompson pass was cloudy again, going over the mountains. Blue skies started to peek out the farther north I drove, though.

















And on the way back, i stopped through the Wrangell-St. Elias National Park and Preserve Visitor's Center, since it was closed by the time I drove by at the start of the trip.





As I mentioned at the start of the trip, Wrangell St-Elias National Park and Preserve is difficult to describe just how massive and impressive it is. Here's just some of the superlative factoids:

• By far the largest national park in the USA
• Larger than 9 US states
• 6 Yellowstone Parks could fit inside it, or more than 17 Yosemite Parks
• 4 mountain ranges in the park
• 70% of the park is wilderness
• From the park's lowest point to its highest point, there's an 18,000 foot atitude difference
• Nine of the 16 highest peaks in the United States are in the park, including the 2nd tallest of Mt. Elias. (tallest peak in North America is Denali, also in Alaska)
• Glaciers cover 35% of the park
• At 76 miles long, seven miles wide, and 600 feet tall, Hubbard Glacier is North America’s largest tidewater glacier, which is actually growing in size over time
• Covering over 2,000 square miles, the Wrangell Volcanic Field is made up of thousands of lava flows and some of the highest peaks in North America, and includes Mount Wrangell, one of the largest (by volume) active volcanoes in the world.
• Largest wilderness area in the National Wilderness Preservation System.
• The Nabesna Glacier, at approximately 53 miles (85km), is the longest valley glacier in North America and the world's longest interior valley glacier.

A few displays in the visitor's center people might find interesting:











I stopped again in Glenallen on the way back, same town I filled up at before entering the WRST park on the way in. Decided to take a chance on this Thai shack.

Note: "Tok" is the first town of any significance you meet when entering Alaska from Canada on the eastern border. Positioned at the intersection of two highways, where you can either turn to go southwest to Anchorage, or West to Fairbanks. If not sure, it's a major decision that will greatly affect how your life proceeds from that point!





Getting out of the car, I had to pause for a moment to ponder my poor ugly legs that had been gnawed on by the great Alaskan mosquitos. Ugh.





had some pork Pad Thai. Actually pretty good, for the middle of Alaska!





And then back on the road for the remainder of the trip.








A good portion of the Alaska interior looks like this, with some melted marsh. If trying to hike or even 4-wheel cross country, it can slow you down immesurably.