A Trip to Valdez, AK

Bright and early the day after Reindeer Yoga we packed the (barrowed) van and headed south. Paxton was likely thinking about how big the state was and how annoying it was to have to road trip every time you want to see something other than planes and pine trees and swamp land like we have where we live. But in spite of the 7 hour drive (without stops) ahead of us, we still had to stop and enjoy some of the views.

The bright morning sun of Alaska in the summer

Our first stop was Castner Cave. If you scroll back through time you will see that we visited this cave this last winter. We were told to hike along the other wise of the river and not seeing a trail we did that literally but hugging the side of the river. Half way through Zach had a melt down and wanted to run away from us. It was a bit terrifying as a parent to see your son try to run away from you into the wilderness of Alaska. I chased him down and picked him up and felt him fight me and struggle against me for the next 30 minutes until his beautiful mind could calm down from the emotional surge he was experiencing. After employing much distraction, our Zach was back with us mentally and safe.

When one arrives at the cave in the summer there is no real path into the cave. You simply climb over the rocks and go in. We had never been there before in the summer so when we found spurts of rocks falling from the ceiling I assumed this was normal. There were some larger rock falls so we spent very little time inside the cave as I was nervous as were everyone else. Little did we know that the cave was working on collapsing and would do so just 2 weeks later

Taken from online report on 14 July

So glad this did not happen while we were there!

As it turns out, there was a trial that led back to the parking area...

Zach found some trash that he decided to pack out

A few hours later we pulled over for some photos. Charlotte has a natural smile she can share on demand.

Photo Shoot with the kids. The mountains make southern Alaska so amazing.

One thing that makes the Valdez region so amazing is the series of waterfalls in view as you drive the last 20-15 miles of the road prior to entering town.

We stayed at a camping trailer which is permanently in place at a camp ground there and rented out to Military members only and their families. We had heard of several people going to Valdez that had contracted COVID that stayed in the trailers but did not think anything of it until a week later we all had COVID...

The trailers were located a short walk to the port where we could watch people brining their catch in and cleaning it prior to packing the fish.

The following day we took a boat tour of the glaciers. Jari and I were smart enough to bring Scopolamine patches and meclizine for the adults and Benadryl for the kids to help with motion sickness given our track record of getting sick the last 2 boat rides we have taken as a family.

Its hard to capture the beauty of the area but we tried with our cameras and phones.

The sailing was much smoother on this ride vs the boat trip we took out of Seward the year prior.

Watching otters float and play and eat in the ocean. We also saw seals and even some wales. The seals were all on a beach like section that is not easy to reach and were very loud even from a few hundred yards away.

As we started to get closer to the glacier the temperature dropped.

The boat captain educated us that the ice chunks we were seeing would only last about 24 hours once they had broken off from the main glacier due to how rapidly they melt.

I was hoping we would get closer to the glacier but due to how early we had come in the season, we were not able to get as close to the large glacier we had come to see :(

Kids love to take pictures, and are so sad when they see me delete them. Here is 1 of about 100 that I kept. Everything else was crooked or blurry or highlighted a nostril.