Day 17 – Valdez, AK to Whittier, AK

It was another good weather day on the roads of Alaska, with comfortable temperatures and bright sunshine. The only issue we had was when we got close to Anchorage, the haze from a nearby wildfire gave the air a different colour.

After a coffee at the Keystone Motel and fueling up in Valdeaz, we backtracked along the Richardson Highway (AK4) from Valdez back to Glenallen, this time bypassing the sidetrips to Chitina and Copper Centre and stopped for a maintenance break at the Tesoro at “The

Hub of Alaska” at the intersection of AK1 (The Glenn Highway) and AK4.

We were back on the road along the Glenn Highway and along the base of the Chugach Mountains – the road was very nice and in good shape as well. Eventually, we came back into “civilization”, also known as the town of Palmer (pop ~ 7,000) where we stopped for fuel and coffee (well, some of us actually had ice cream).

We then headed towards Anchorage and you can tell it’s a bigger city (pop ~ 300,000) but the traffic wasn’t terrible bad as we made it through town and eventually onto the Seward Highway (AK1),

through Potter’s Marash and along the Turnagain Arm with all its' excellent views. The only damper was that the haze from the nearby wildfires covered up some of those views.

At Portage, we picked up the Portage Glacier Rd and eventually reached the Anton Anderson Tunnel – where all traffic (transports, trailers, cars, motorcycles AND trains) use the same path to cross the 2.5 miles underneath the mountain... in both directions! It was a very neat experience.

We eventually arrived at the port town of Whittier, an old cold war army post, and our destination the Anchor Inn. Fishing is still very

much alive in this town and tourists can board or leave their cruiseships here as well.

We walked around town some, and wound up having some fresh fish (cod) and chips at the Swiftwater Seafood Café right on Price William Sound. After dinner, we took a short drive around town to explore some of the places a little further from the centre.

For the day, we logged just over 586 kms for a total to date on the trip of 8,666 km