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Is the water blue enough for you?
Photo: Clair Menck |
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After lunch we kayaked through the bergs, literally. One of the larger icebergs was a tunnel of ice, just large enough to paddle through. It’s important to remember that these are gigantic pieces of ice, and they are melting. The glacier itself is pushing forward, and ebbing back, and cleaves off ice bergs when they become too heavy to stay moored to the glacier. Paddling through the maze of floating ice sculptures definitely refines your ability to maneuver your kayak.
Playing hide and seek in the ice bergs is a strangely disorienting experience as the sun does not move through the sky here as it does in the Lower 48 and there is no way to gauge the passage of the day by the sun’s progress. And it’s easy to get lost in the bergs, but the mountains serve as compass points. Traveling with another kayak is imperative, as the bergs shift while you are amongst them and it is easy to get stuck, or lost in this floating gallery of ice.
Back on the boat to Valdez, we were all quiet. The glacier had a profound affect on all of us. The experience of paddling through an iceberg was astounding. The incredible virginity of the water and the landscape was truly awe inspiring in a way that we don’t often confront in our daily lives. The paddling was good, but physically tiring, and the day was as beautiful as it gets on the water in Alaska. We stopped only long enough to visit some sea lions on the navigational marker at the spot where the Exxon Valdez struck land in 1989. Once at dock, it was time to reflect and begin processing the whole experience. There are a lot of places to do that in Valdez.
Valdez is a port city. It is home to several major seafood processing plants, so the halibut and salmon are as fresh as you can get it anywhere in the world. You can watch the morning catch being butchered at one of the many fish cleaning stations on the pier. Ask anyone there where the best seafood in town is and they’ll point you to the Sea Moor Fish. Conveniently located next to Pangaea, they serve amazing food, but you’ll have to go around the corner to the Totem Inn for drinks as Sea Moor doesn’t have a liquor license. If you’re really into fresh fish, you can go on a fishing tour with one of several fishing charter companies, including the Lu-Lu Belle, and Fish Central.
When you’re ready to share your experiences with the rest of the world, stop at the Bad Ass Coffee Company, also on Harbor Drive (down a few doors from the Harbor’s Edge). They have free internet connections for customers. Getting online is surely worth the cost of a cup of coffee. There’s also an upstairs deck with an amazing view of the harbor, and the terminus of the Alaska Pipeline just across the way. If you are looking for some ice cream or really good tea, try the Inside Scoop on 321 East Egan Drive. You can get online, if you pay, at one of their computer terminals. For those of you riding the wireless wave, the Totem Inn just down the street at 144 East Eagan has a wireless restaurant. For the cost of a cup of coffee you can sit in the lodge-like restaurant surrounded by the heads and bodies of the owner’s hunting victims (all on four legs), and surf to your heart’s content. Ask for the waitress Ramey, she is the best source of inside info on Valdez, and she’ll let you know what is best on the menu. The Totem also has excellent breakfast. The reindeer sausage is worth a try, and the biscuits are out of this world. The service here is good, and the rooms are clean and come with microwaves and mini-fridges.
If your love of the water is not yet satiated, try a white water raft tour with Keystone Raft & Kayak Tours (800-328-8460). This is on the class three Lowe River, and promises more colorful young guides and a lot of very icy water. If you want to stay dry, try a tour on one of the Stan Stephens fleet. They will take you as close to the Columbia Glacier as you can get in a yacht, as well at the Meares and Shoup Glaciers, and they do it with a wet bar. An evening cruise to one of the glaciers is a great experience; watching the moon rise in the dusk of a never setting sun is ephemeral to say the least.
Whether you are dropping off of the grid in search of peace and a place relatively unscathed by man, or looking for adventure in a part of the world that still retains its original state despite all of the efforts of mankind, Alaska is the place to go. And if its glaciers and halibut you’re after, Valdez should be your destination. The wilderness is wild, and the fish is fresh.
