Our arrival at the Kenai Peninsula was uneventful. Our campground has nice, long, paved sites and if we look up, we see one of three glaciers right along this ridge.
There is also a fish-viewing platform, where the salmon pass through but we are a couple of weeks too soon for them to arrive. We have wanted to do some hiking and there are several trails right out from our campsite. However, there are also posted signs warning of bear in the area. We spoke with one of the campground hosts and she confirmed they see bears quite frequently. They carry guns with them all the time. Since we don’t have any bear spray (and of course, no guns) we opted to stay close to camp and not hike. We did make a trip out to the nearby National Forest Information Centre where we saw a great film about this area. It also told the story of one of the native tribes that was forced to move because of the 1964 earthquake and the resulting tsunami and what it meant to their village. Later that night, reading over the literature we picked up at the Information Centre, we noticed that the town of Whittier, Alaska was having July 4th fireworks at midnight on the 3rd. Whittier is a small town that can only be reached by boat, air, train or via car that drives through the 4 km train tunnel. After checking the tunnel schedule, we decided to make a trip in to see the fireworks.
The train tunnel is open once an hour each direction for vehicular traffic. Every hour on the hour, traffic leaving Whittier can drive through and then every hour on the half hour, traffic can go into Whittier through the tunnel. The town had made special arrangements to have the tunnel open later so people could leave Whittier if they wanted to after the fireworks. There wasn’t much activity when we arrived in town – we ended up driving around, found the firehall and the local law enforcement was out on the road talking with some of the firefighters so we found the location for the fireworks and then since we had time to wait, we headed up some back roads for some nice views of the town.
There was a ferry in dock that was waiting to leave just before midnight to travel to Valdez. They pulled out of their dock about 1130 and then sat out in the harbour to watch the fireworks.
About the same time, people started arriving down at the waterfront and we found a place and got set up. The weather was cloudy, with low clouds, but for a small town, they did a reasonable job of the fireworks. For probably the first time, Paul was actually in the US on his birthday for the firework celebrations!
Following a lazy morning sleep in (it was about 2 am when we got back and settled for the night), we headed out for a day trip to another small community of Girdwood, AK. Not much to see in town, but we drove out a back country road and had some nice views. Girdwood is a skiing community – large chairlift and gondola ride and lots of chalets. If the weather clears, we’ll head back over to go up the gondola.
Next town – Hope, AK and another day trip up to the mountains.
Following Joyce & Paul's Travels in Retirement 