Worthington Glacier and Valdez

[glacier_kitty]

We made it to Valdez! (Amazingly, this is Ryan's first trip to Valdez!) It was too cloudy in the Alaska Range to see Mt. Hayes, Hess and Deborah, but we did see Black Rapids and Gulkana Glaciers, both of which have definitely retreated. :( There is so much amazing scenery on the way to Valdez, even if it is cloudy. When we finally came up on Worthington Glacier, I was saddened to see how much it had retreated!! (I last saw it in 2016.) It's a much longer hike to get to the face of it now, and you can't (safely) walk right up to the ice and touch it now..sad!! I also found out how out of shape I am, yikes!! Haha (walking on a rocky moraine is hard anyway though..I filled my pocket with rocks, which didn't help either :P). A couple other people hiked to where we were, and when one guy saw me, he said something about forget-me-nots, but the river drowned out the rest, so I was confused as to why he was calling me a forget-me-not LOL, and then finally realized he said he saw me at Forget-Me-Not Books! I was like "oh! Ye-yes, I work there!" He said he works a couple buildings down at the Soup Kitchen! Wow, Alaska is small haha. Thompson Pass was really foggy, which was sad because it's so beautiful and you can see lots of glaciers up there, but Keystone Canyon was awesome. There are definitely new things in Valdez, like a big sign over the road saying "Valdez, Alaska" when you first drive in. We're staying at a bed and breakfast we've stayed at a couple times before, and the lady remembered me! Cool haha. We were going to go on a glacier cruise tomorrow, but one of the crew members got covid and may not be operating for a few days..sad!! There's another company we might try on Tuesday or Wednesday, depending on the weather and stuff. I imagine we'll find something to do haha



Gulkana Glacier making its own weather! It has definitely retreated since I saw it last :(

Wow, Worthington is so far up there now!

Hanging out

It's so blue!

Adventuring up

The glacier used to cover this whole area!







Look at how much fun Ryan is having! LOL

It took work to get Ryan to smile haha

The closest you could safely get, unless you wanted to ford the raging cold river or walk on unstable moraines near the edge..nope, I'm good LOL

I love this one of mom!

Glacier-carved rock!



So weird walking on such new ground!


24. What's the first thing you do when you get on the computer? Open Firefox..haha

25. What's one item that you wish you owned right now? Hmm..a camper would be cool!