Prince William Sound AK - Whittier boat tour

Another early start as we drive to the railway station, park, buy parking permits for $10 that we understand will cover us until our late return, find it really requires $15, buy more permits and put them on the dash, sit around and wait, and finally board the train for Whittier.

The train ride leaving Anchorage borders the Cook Inlet and is beautiful, but the train moves rather slowly.  Yes, majestic views have become so routine you wish the train would speed up. 

The ground settled 8 feet in the 1964 earthquake, killing the trees.

Whittier, called the Gateway to Prince Edward Sound by residents, is maybe 65 miles from Anchorage, on the east side of the Kenai Peninsula.  Home to a number of spectacular glaciers, Prince William Sound is also famous for being the point of origin of the 1964 Great Alaskan Earthquake and related tsunamis, not to mention the area most damaged by the Exxon Valdez oil spill.  It is truly beautiful, with no sign of spill damage, at least, from the boat.

We board a tour boat and things start going down hill.  Marcia and I are seated in the center of a six-person table, with another six-person table on each side.  All seats are taken. The people and the frame of the windows on each side limit visibility.  The noise is high and the ranger narration is pointless, as it cannot be heard, except apparently by the tour guide for an Asian group on our right who in a very loud voice translates at least the safety instructions.

The good news is that after the first half-hour the crowd settles down and individuals wander about, greatly reducing the noise and vision problems but the narration remains unintelligible. The tour includes a salmon buffet which is actually quite good.

The highlight is probably our slow approach to a gigantic glacier, its toe in the water before us.  I am outside on the bow and most everybody is fairly quiet as the boat made its way through ice, with a rhythmic thud-thud as ice strikes the hull.  The joking, inevitably, is Titanic.  Later the crew nets chunks of ice and makes iceberg margaritas for those (like me) willing to fork over $4.  Pretty good, but definitely not Californian.

We return to Whittier and kill time until our return train.  I notice a large low stained concrete building at the end of town and later read it was built by the military and at one time was the largest building in Alaska.  The military left and the building was severely damaged in the earthquake, but nobody could figure out what to do with it.  According to Wikipedia, where you can find everything on anything, ”bears are often found inside the building in the spring, and it is full of ice and precariously dangling pipes, wires, and substructure… The building is a local hang out for kids.”

Abandoned government building in Whittier.

Martha, Marcia, Jane.

Back in Anchorage we go to our cars, finding $35 parking tickets on our windshields.  Those few who bought $15 parking permits in the morning had no problem, but those of us that put permits for $10 and a separate permit for $5 on our windshields receive tickets.  Our leader, who originally told us the charge was $10, actually took a wrong turn and parked in a free lot.  As the “fixer” won’t be in until Monday, he suggests the people with tickets come back Monday.  Someone points out Monday is a drive day and we can’t very well all drive to the station with rigs in tow.  No reaction, but the next day he collects our tickets and goes downtown and gets the problem resolved.

Pink parking tickets.  David, Marcia (in truck), Judy, Linda, Jack, Randy.