Sunday was a day of 'rest' with no flying adventures. Our day was largely a five hour cruise from Whittier, AK to view many of the glaciers in the Prince William Sound - which you may remember as the site of the Exxon Valdez oils spill. Jim and I took and early start so we could stop somewhere along the 90 minute drive out to Whittier to have breakfast. Part of the drive was through the 2.5 mile Anton Anderson Memorial Tunnel, the only way to get into Whittier by car outside of the Marine Alaska Highway Ferry. The tunnel is one lane only, and is shared by both directions of traffic as well as the train. Getting through the tunnel by car in a given direction was only for a 15 minute period once every hour. http://www.dot.state.ak.us/creg/whittiertunnel/
On the way we stopped at Gerdwood, a place Jim was familiar with from a previous visit to Alaska, and had breakfast at 'the bakery.' Whittier is one of the largest cold water ports in the U.S. and was a major hub during WWII as well as the cold war (military base) and still moves over 1/3rd of the shipping of goods and products into Alaska. That, plus the beautiful mountains and glaciers is pretty much all that's there. You don't want to miss the last tunnel out. By way of example, one of the locals was wearing a bright orange hoodie with the words on the back that said 'Prisoner of Whittier.'
The weather was beautiful the day we were there, which is not always a common occurrence. Rains is common, often blowing sideways. I can't do justice in describing the glaciers and wildlife we saw on the cruise, and we had a chance to take some great photos - but I will have to wait until my return to be able to post them to the blog (using only an iPad to blog does have its limitations - in case you were wondering I do have a keyboard which makes a world of difference).
Until the pictures then.......
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