Early Tuesday morning, we got up and drove to Whittier, 90 miles North of Seward. The little town is only accessible via the Alaska Railroad. A 2 mile long tunnel through a solid mountain.
A few years ago, they fixed the tunnel, so that cars and the train...share the tunnel. At an appointed time, the cars are lined up, and released...then they are stopped and the train goes through.
I was fascinated to find out the Whittier was originally a secret military installation. There is cloud cover,most of the time, it is surrounded by mountains and Glaciers and no access, except by hidden tunnel. The entire town is not touched by direct sunlight
from November through February. Pretty wild, huh? Anyway, we loaded onto the "Emerald Sea" for our 5 and a half hour cruise to see wildlife and Glaciers (hopefully calving)....we saw bald eagles, rafts of sea otters and all kinds of birds. There was one cliff-dwelling bird in particular....there were thousands of! We were in Prince William Sound, a very protected, calm area of the sea, where we saw about 10 or 12 Glaciers.....2 in particular, that were active in calving.They served a Prime Rib or Salmon Buffet, which was really good, and cheesecake, carrot cake, or brownies for dessert. A very enjoyable cruise, one of the best things we've done. Afterward, we got back to the bus and Jimmy decided to drive, for awhile. We ended up stopping, for the night, in Mt.Pinnacle RV Park, so I could do some laundry (very overdue!) We may just chill here tomorrow.....plan to be in Valdez (pronounced val-Deez) on Thursday.