Day 16 – Tok, AK to Valdez, AK

It was another great day on the road today, with bright sunshine the entire day, and temperatures that reached 29C along the way. It’s very interesting that we actually had to come all the way to Alaska to find the warm temps!

After breakfast at Fast Eddy’s, we headed out on the Tok Cutoff road (AK1) towards Glenallen. The road offers some nice scenery and within the first hour we had seen 4 moose – 2 does, a fawn and one very large bull that crossed the road right in front of us!

The rest of the ride along AK1 alongside Wrangell St Elias National Park was quite nice, although there were a few stretches that had some decent sized potholes and those were quite well marked with ROAD DAMAGE signs. There was also an 8 mile stretch just east of Chistochina that was bad need of repair and required a pilot car to take us through.

After fueling up near Glenallen, we picked up the Richardson Highway (AK4) south towards Valdez. We did make a short detour on the old Richardson Highway into Copper Creek and then took the Edgerton Highway into Chitina. We walked around the town for a bit and then headed back up the 40 kms or so back to the Richardson Highway, since the road into McCarthy in unpaved.

We then followed AK4 all the way into the Worthington Glacier (a bit of construction just before that point) and then took the beautiful road into Valdez past a couple of beautiful waterfalls (Bridal Veil and Horseshoe) and our destination for the night – the Keystone Hotel. After checking in, we took a drive around town and came back to the Fat Mermaid for dinner and drinks right at the harbour.

For the day, we logged just over 533 kms for a total to date on the trip of 8,080 km