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Friday, June 1
Whittier and the 26 Glacier Tour
As I said, last night we camped near Whittier, just outside the Anton Anderson tunnel. This tunnel is very interesting. In the early days, in order to get to Whittier, you had to take a boat, plane or dog sled over the mountain. About 1942, they built a tunnel through the mountain for trains to take supplies in. About 10 or so years ago, they opened up this 2.5 mile tunnel to cars, but it is still just wide enough for a train car to pass through, barely wide enough for an RV. So, on the hour, all vehicles line up to go out of Whittier, and on the half-hour, vehicles line up to go into Whittier, each group allowed 15 minutes. It takes some good planning if you plan to go into that town. However, most are tourists and I think the tour boats plan around the tunnel schedule. Anyway, you drive your car on the train track though the tunnel, and they make sure that you allow enough distance between you and the car ahead of you.
Time for a quiz. Look at the picture at the heading of this posting. See the high rise building? It is in Whittier and I am going to give you multiple choices to guess what it is: (1) a hospital that services the whole Kenai Peninsula; (2) Office building for the shipping industry in Whittier, or (3) Homes for the whole community. I will get back to you on that in a minute.
We took the 26 Glacier Tour, about 6 hours on a jet powered catamaran (fastest in Alaska), which was one of the highlights of the week. (I somehow failed to get a picture of the catamaran from the outside, but there is one of Eddie and me inside it.) They explained what makes glaciers different than a big chunk of ice. Very simply put, a glacier starts out as snow on a mountain that is high enough that it never melts. Over time, more snow is added and the weight compresses it, making it harder and harder. Eventually gravity takes over and the huge block of compressed snow starts sliding down the mountain. It acts like a bull dozer, forming moraine (the bull-dozed rock) and basically carves out the rounded valley. If it reaches the sea, it is called a tidal glacier and can cause a fjord. They are constantly moving. They often have brown streaks on them from the moraine and some have streaks of ice which look like layers and holes in them, which give them a jagged edge look. Sometimes you can look at the glacier and see how many stripes of moraine are on it and know how many glaciers moved together to form this one. Anyway, they are sometimes amazingly huge, and when the spring "thaw" comes, gravity acts on them, they start breaking loose in huge hunks and falls into the water. This is called "calving". It is very loud as it breaks and then makes a giant splash. This day tour was in Prince William Sound and was smooth as glass. We saw 26 named glaciers and many smaller ones, as well as eagles, a harbor seal, and a bunch of sea otters, one of which was helping carry its baby across the water. They use the chunks of ice almost as boats, and the mom will put her baby on it while she dives for food since it can't dive for 6 months, which makes it vulnerable to predators.
Another interesting animal at the Sound was the black-footed kittiwake. You will see a picture that looks like a ton of white speckles. Those are birds that "nest" in the rock on the side of the mountain. If I understand right, they lay one egg in a whole in that mountain and then are gone. See why there are " " around the nest part?
Back to the multiple choice question now. Almost all 300 or so people in the town of Whittier live in this building. That means few (if any) houses. There are probably 500 boats in the dock, a few business, an interesting tunnel with a story of its own, but not houses in this town. I just found that interesting.
After the cruise, we timed our exit from Whittier through the tunnel and went toward Seward to camp for the night near Cooper Landing at the Kenai River. Everyone has a favorite part of Alaska they want to show you, and Matthew was right about the river and Cooper Landing. It was a gorgeous setting.
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