Anchorage to Valdez

We got up at 7:30 to get any early start and it was 48°. It had quit raining during the night and the clouds were clearing. We stopped at the dump station before leaving the campground to empty our tanks. We stopped to get gas in the RV at the post gas station and found out that gas prices had come down 6¢ since yesterday to $3.799 a gallon. We left the gas station at 9:40 and then drove downtown to the post office to see if our mail was there at General Delivery.

We found a parking lot near the post office and I walked over to check on our mail and it was there. We were going to have to have our mail forwarded down to Skagway if it wasn’t there this morning.

We drove through Anchorage on AK-1 and stopped for lunch a little before 11:30 at a scenic lookout above the Matanuska River. After eating lunch we walked up the path to the Matanuska River overlook. As you can see, the rain is gone and we had blue skies and lots of sun.

From Anchorage to Valdez

The drive east along the Glenn Highway from Anchorage gave us great views of mountains, rivers and lakes.

When we were about 100 miles from Anchorage we saw the Matanuska Glacier which is almost 27 miles long and is a stable glacier – it is neither advancing nor retreating.

From Anchorage to Valdez

From Anchorage to Valdez

We ran into some road construction at MIP 114 and one lane traffic, so we had to wait for 10-15 minutes.

From Anchorage to Valdez

When we were about 80 miles west of Glennallen, we started seeing these snow-covered mountain in the distance.

From Anchorage to Valdez

We had planned on spending the night at Glennallen, but we decided to go on to Valdez today.
After turning south onto the Richardson Highway at Glennallen, our scenery started to change.

From Anchorage to Valdez

We still saw a lot of glacier rivers (the grey water is due to glacier silt or glacier flour).

From Anchorage to Valdez

From the highway we were able to see the Worthington Glacier.

From Anchorage to Valdez

As we were getting closer to Valdez the temperature started to fall and it was 48° when we saw this woman jogging.

From Anchorage to Valdez

We passed by the Bridal Veil Falls which is so tall that it took 2 photos to capture it.

From Anchorage to Valdez

From Anchorage to Valdez

Then we saw Horsetail Falls.

From Anchorage to Valdez

We arrived at Valdez Glacier Campground at 5:45. The campground is managed by the Ft. Greely MWR (Morale, Welfare  & Recreation), but is open to the public. There are 21 sites here with electric, but all of them were occupied. We stopped to fill our fresh water tank and then parked the RV in site #27 which is a pull-through.

From Valdez Glacier Campground

As retired military we are paying $10 a day to dry camp. Dry camping may not be accurate for here, since it started raining shortly after we parked the RV and has been raining steadily ever since. We'll have to get photos of the campground tomorrow.

I checked the weather forecast and it is supposed to rain for the 3 days that we are here. We are close to our monthly limit on our internet usage with Verizon, so we are going to the Valdez Library tomorrow. I will update our map, Picasa web album and post today on our blog then.
We took 186 photos today and we narrowed them down to 73 photos and we’re putting 59 of them in our Anchorage to Valdez album – it was hard to trim it down any more.