Whittier

You can only get to Whittier by driving through the Anton Anderson Memorial Tunnel. The interesting thing about the tunnel is it is only one lane – for inbound and outbound traffic and the train. It’s open for 15 minutes on the half hour going to Whittier and 15 minutes at the top of the hour coming to Girdwood. We needed to pay attention to the schedule so we’d arrive by 10:00 for our trip to Prince William Sound. We left Girdwood with beautiful blue skies. Instead of driving up and over the mountain the tunnel takes you through the mountain. On the other side of the mountain, in Whittier, it was misty and foggy. Not ideal conditions for our boat trip.

Before the boat we “toured” the small quirky town of Whittier. We watched a National Geographic Special before we left about Whittier – most of the town lives in one apartment complex. The complex contains everything the 400 residents need so they never have to leave – post office, school, medical clinic, grocery store, movie theater… Can you imagine?

This town was a strategic army post during WWII since it was so close to Russia – you can practically see it! There’s a huge abandoned housing complex that could hold 10,000 troops. Again very friendly Alaskans stopped Jon while we was taking photos. Both asked if we were visitors, just their way of being friendly because I’m sure they know all 400 people who live in those apartments! The woman told us about her favorite places along the shore – Smitty Cove and Salmon Run. A few minutes later a guy stopped Jon to tell him about a break in the fence so he could get into the abandoned army complex and walk around…”park your car over here and no one will even know you’re there!”

We chose this boat tour because it was a smaller boat. Only 4 other people joined us. It highlighted glaciers over wildlife. Captain Mike looked at the forecast and thought the fog was lifting in College Fjord so that was our destination – about 85 miles away. We stopped along the way at a bird rookery on the side of a cliff. These black footed kittiwakes only come on land to lay their eggs, otherwise the stay strictly on the open water. We watched a bald eagle feast on their newly hatched babies or tarrocks.

Since the boat was small we were able to get off on Hobo Cove and walk around. It reminded us of the North Shore since the fog was still hanging on and we couldn’t see the mountains beyond the shore. We found some ruins that were part of an abandon gold mine about 3 miles inland but sadly we didn’t find any gold.

The fog was beginning to lift as we entered College Fjord. We were headed to the end to see Harvard Glacier, which was next to Yale Glacier as we passed Vassar… Harvard Glacier is the second largest tidal glacier in Alaska. It’s 1 1/2 miles across and we could see it 12 miles away. It took us awhile to get there because we had to navigate through the ice. Captain Mike knew the names for the small and medium size ice. I knew the big chunks – icebergs! Some of the icebergs would’ve been trip-enders if we ran into them. I couldn’t help but think of Titanic as we made our way through. We were only able to get as close as 2 miles but we could still hear and see it calve. The chunks of ice are all from the calving glaciers in the fjord – some as big as school buses.

The glaciers were very cool to see but I can only imagine how jaw-dropping the scenery would’ve been had the skies been sunny and blue!

To end the day we went to the Swiftwater Cafe right on the dock. We had their fresh, locally caught halibut fish and chips. The cook broke the rules and fried Jon’s halibut in the French fry oil instead of the oil used for the shrimp. It was the best fish and chips of the trip!