8-9-2013 Headed from the Glenn Highway down the Richardson Hwy to Valdez

In the morning we headed to Glenallen then south to Valdez. The weather was mostly cloudy, something that we have not seen much of on this trip. We have been surely blessed. They haven’t seen a summer like this in quite some time. Timing is everything.

On the way to Valdez you skirt the Wrangell-St. Elias national Park & Preserve. We will go farther into the park after we depart Valdez. We stopped at the Visitor Center to gather some information on what the Park has to offer. After watching the introduction movie we can’t wait to get there. It is the largest National Park in North America, over 10 million acres. There were many displays and articles to read. We are ready for the adventure. It will take some doing to go deeper into the park. That will be a whole other story in the next few days.

We continued south toward Valdez and drove in the rain most of the way. We stopped at the Worthington Glacier. The rain persisted but did not deter us from hiking to the glacier. We had purchased rain gear for just this occasion and boy did we need it. It was a little challenging but we enjoyed the adrenaline rush as we got closer to the glacier.

Foot in a glacier stream again!

Up close and personal, standing on the glacier.

See the same hole in the ice up on the left corner?

We took some fantastic pictures. The glacier splits into 2 arms. We hiked to only one of them. The other was not accessible. The one that we did hike to was not necessarily accessible either but we went around the fence and made the hike. Sometime you just got to step around those fences to see what’s there. 

We still had to go about 30 miles to get to Valdez. When we finally got to Valdez it was pouring. We set up the RVs in the rain and settled in for the evening.

The fireweed blooms are gone.  It will snow in 4 to 6 weeks.