Flying, Diving, Cruising, and RVing!

Fall has arrived in some areas of Alaska and the scenery is more beautiful than ever.

Click on the photo to see more of our Alaska fall foliage and Mount Denali photos taken on our drive up the Parks Highway to Healy, AK near Denali National Park.

We liked Valdez, AK so much we extended our stay to two weeks. Three nights at Bayside RV Park then four nights at Eagles Rest RV Park then back to Bayside for another week. It was Coho (Silver) Salmon spawning time in Valdez, so the RV parks, which offered 50 amp full hook up sites were pretty full. The RV sites were closer together at Bayside than Eagles Rest, but we much preferred Bayside over Eagles Rest, because we had a front row view of Prince William Sound Bay at Bayside, instead of our view of tents at Eagles Rest. Of course the beautiful mountains were fully visible from both RV parks.

We took advantage of the fantastic weather in Valdez and took two boat tours of Prince William Sound (PWS). The first cruise was the Stan Stephens Columbia and Meares Glacier nine hour tour on the Valdez Spirit, which was a catamaran and was very smooth and the second cruise was a seven hour tour on a smaller boat called the Lu-Lu Belle. Originally we had planned on just one boat tour of Prince William Sound, but we didn’t see any humpback whales on our Kenai Fjords tour or the PWS cruise on the Valdez Spirit and since the weather was forecast to be clear, I booked us a tour on the Lu-Lu Belle. On our cruise on the Lu-Lu Belle, the weather was beautiful, the seas were calm and we finally saw four beautiful humpback whales.

Click on the humpback whale photo to see more of our photos from both of our tours of Prince William Sound.

While in the Valdez area we made a trip out to the Valdez Glacier and many trips to Allison Point to view bears, bald eagles, harbor seals, river otters, sea otters, and thousands of gulls fish for spawning Coho (Silver) Salmon.

Also Valdez is the place to buy Alaskan seafood. The prices at PeterPan Seafood, Inc were the best we found in all of Alaska for salmon, halibut, and King Crab legs.

Click on the Black Bear photo to see more of our photos of the Valdez area.

From Portage Valley we headed toward Valdez, which took two days. We spent one night at Grandview Cafe and RV Park in Glacier View, which was just east of Matanuska Glacier and then drove on to Valdez the next day. The drive to Valdez was spectacular and probably our most scenic to date.

From Seward we traveled back north to Portage Valley. We stayed in the Portage valley area three nights in a campground with just 50 amp service, but with great views of the surrounding mountains and surprisingly both our satellite dishes managed to work. Portage Valley is a beautiful valley with many glaciers. The weather was crappy the entire time we were there so we cancelled our hike to view Portage Glacier, but did manage to check out the valley and saw lots of glaciers and salmon spawning in a steam. We also traveled through the Anton Anderson Memorial Tunnel to tour around Whittier, which is the longest combined vehicle-railroad tunnel in North America.

Our next destination after Kenai/Soldotna was Seward, AK. In the Seward area we stayed at Stoney Creek RV Park, which was six miles out of town. The RV park offered 50 amp full hook up sites and was on a creek and surrounded by beautiful mountains. We stayed ten nights hoping to get at least a few sunny days, but it rained every day we were there. I was told a few days ago Alaska set a new record this year for the number of consecutive days it has rained. While in the Seward area we checked out the surrounding area, hiked two miles round trip to Exit Glacier and took the all day Kenai Fjords Northwestern Glacier Tour. Even though the weather was crappy, we enjoyed the tour and saw many animals.

Click on the first picture to see the Seward and Exit Glacier photos and click on the picture of the Sea Otter to see our Northwestern Glacier tour photos.