Portage Valley

Last evening we were reviewing our trip thus far and sharing what we wanted to see and do over the next few weeks. We also checked our calendar to see how much time we have to spend in Alaska. We still don't feel that we have experienced our vision of Alaska. We keep looking for the wild, untamed parts, the exciting fishing or the wild animal encounters. Up to this point, and excluding Denali, we feel like we just keep going into the cities. With that in mind, we decided that we needed to skip our tour of Anchorage for now.

  

So we drove a whole 50 miles from Wasilla and thru Anchorage to the south end of Cook Inlet on the Turnagain Arm to an area called Portage Valley. The drive along Turnagain Arm is beautiful! Across the arm we can see the Kenai Mountains, some still have snow caps, and catch a glimpse of glaciers. The inlet itself is a mud flat as we go by but when the tide turns it will fill with 33 feet of water. We looked, but did not see, beluga whales who call this home in the summer. The whales follow the fish and salmon into the inlet then in the winter, when the fish leave, the whales move to a different part of Cook Inlet.

Portage Valley is only about 10 miles long and is the isthmus one crosses to get to the Kenai Peninsula. Across the isthmus from Turnagain Arm is the little harbor town of Whittier on the Prince William Sound which is the gateway to all the glaciers in Prince William Sound. The road to Whittier shares the longest highway tunnel in North America with the Alaskan Railroad and it in one lane! So eastbound traffic goes on the half hour, westbound traffic goes on the hour, and the train goes whenever it wants to. We'll try it out tomorrow.

We are staying in the nicest National Forest campground I have ever seen! All paved roads, huge picnic tables and big sites. We rode our bikes on the Trail of Blue Ice which follows Portage Creek. All the water comes mostly from the Portage Glacier but there are other smaller glaciers that feed into it as well. We stopped at the Begich, Boggs Visitor Center situated on Portage Lake across from Portage Glacier but also looking at Burns and Shakespeare Glaciers. Out in the middle of the lake was a large iceberg that was as big as the tour boat!

The clouds finally moved aside and let the sun shine for awhile this afternoon -- love it!