June 30, 2018

Beginning of the End

It is an early wake-up this morning.  Like any morning that the alarm is set early we both wake up every hour during the night so as not to oversleep.  When it finally does go off at 4:30am, the getting up is merely a formality since we have been laying awake waiting for our cue.  he car needs to be in the ferry boarding line at 6:00 for our trip across Prince William Sound from Valdez to Whittier.  We make some coffee in the room and John grabs a couple back-ups from the breakfast room downstairs.  Breakfast doesn’t start until 6:00 but they have coffee, rolls and cereal out for the ferry folks.

The ferry is about 2 minutes from our hotel and the line-up is an exercise in hurry-up-and-wait.  We’re near the front of the line but the loading managers have a different plan.  All of the big vehicles, buses, RVs and camper trucks are loaded first and we make it aboard at 7:20.  An hour and twenty minutes of our lives we will never get back.  The on-board seating is pretty lush, we have all of our electronic devices and our tuna Subway sub—life is good.

The weather is of course overcast with heavy fog as we roll out of Valdez Harbor.  It seems to us that some other ship had a problem here once but we make it out OK.  If there is some question of the score in the large animal race, it was 4 whales to 4 moose until Mary saw the moose on the road 2 days ago pulling them ahead 5-4.  We start getting a break in the weather about halfway across the sound and there is a whale sighting off the starboard side.  Sure enough there are a couple orcas playing about 100 yards out making the updated score Whales 6, Moose 5 in an unexpected comeback.  Only a day and a half for the moose to make a move.

We reach Whittier on schedule at 1:15 and get off fairly fast to make the 2:00 tunnel opening with

ease. Our car says we have about 50 miles worth of fuel left and we’re pretty sure there is gas in Portage, so we move quickly to the tunnel line. There is no gas in Portage, but we are pretty sure there is gas at the Hope junction.  Nope.  Then at the Sterling Highway.  Nope.  Then at Moose Pass.  Nope.  By now we are 15 miles past our lodging for the night, we have 10 miles worth of fuel left and 20 miles left to Seward with no phone reception.  We later learn that there is no gas on the Seward Highway, packed with cars, from Girdwood to Seward, a distance of about 70 miles.  Business opportunity???

The semi-happy ending is that we stop at the Fudge shop in Moose Pass for gas directions and the fellow there says he has a couple gallons in a can for his lawn mower that he would be willing to part with. Hallelujah!  We now have enough gas to get to our lodge for tonight and back to Girdwood tomorrow. We’re in such a tizzy about the gas that we aren’t enjoying a beautiful day to the fullest.

Our lodging for tonight is the Summit Lake Lodge right on the Seward Highway.  These folks have 16 cabins and 6 motel rooms on a very pretty lake tucked in the middle of nowhere.  There is a full service restaurant and bar with a pizza-ice cream-espresso shack off to one side.  Meagan, with ancestral ties to Minnesota checks us in.  Our cabin is beautifully updated with all the amenities.  It all looks very familiar with the pine log furniture and woodsy décor.

We get a couple free drinks for happy hour in the bar with chatty Kendall and a fantastic dinner with server Tom.  John has a ribeye with horseradish-demi glaze, deep fried brussels sprouts and garlic mashed.  Mary has a parmesan crusted halibut served over a pasta with cream sauce and we gulp it all down with a Joel Gott Cabernet.  Very civilized.  Very familiar.

It continues to be a beautiful evening for the walk back to our cabin and we would love to see a sky full of stars if the sun wasn’t still out at 11:00 pm.

Todays Observation: Valdez is the terminus of the Trans-Alaskan pipeline with huge storage tanks on the hillside across the harbor from the town.  In the fog this morning we passed the reef where the Exxon Valdez ran aground and could see it happening in pre-GPS days.