Whittier, AK

Whittier, AK
We arrived in Whittier today aboard the SS Aurora with a short ferry ride. The only exciting thing was trying to get the two RV’s ahead of me on the ship. It took and extra 30-45 minutes because they wanted to hank up on the ramp going into the ship. Glad I had the air bags pumped up on the rear springs of my Trek. The security level was 1 (high alert) so they were doing checks with a mirror under all the vehicles entering the ship.
Bev and I were able to have our picture taken out by the ship’s bell. Usually they have this area roped off but today I had gotten to know one of the ship’s crew and he took our picture out there.
The trip as usual went thru some beautiful landscape and scenery and we saw several glaciers and an oil tanker heading into Valdez. Also off Bligh Isl. Was Bligh Reef where the Exon Valdez ran aground. A disaster whivh hopefully will not be repeated as all oil tankers going into Valdez must now be double hulled, be escorted by a tug boat and have a pilot on board when they enter Prince William Sound. Valdez is also the most oil spill prepared port in the world with the oil companies having to have large barges (I mean as big as ships) with the capacity to recover 300,000 barrels of oil in 72 hours.
On arriving in Whittier it was realized that there isn’t much to do in town but it is July 3rd and they are having a fireworks display at 12:00 pm. This looks like a deserted military town, which it is. The condos (two large buildings) look to be former military housing and one very large building now deserted (also looks to be former military).
The campsite however is overlooking a river with snow on the other side of the banks and snow covered mountains all around us.
Tonight we are going to go see the fireworks display and then tomorrow we will queue up to go thru the railroad tunnel to the highway. Yes in Whittier you must go thru the railway tunnel to drive out of the city, as it is the only way in or out. So on the hour every hour till 11:00 pm for 15 minutes cars get to drive out of the city.
I will try to post this when I get a chance in a few days.
Lorne
1 Waiting in line for the tunnel at the railroad line
2& 3 A reindeer Bev liked