An Evening At Deadfish Cove
It was raining when we awoke and continued through the morning, finally stopping mid-afternoon. Not a propitious start to the day. We left Williwaw Campground around 8 am and stopped briefly at the visitor center,which was still closed. It was off to the tunnel.
The Whittier tunnel is a strange one. It is over four miles long, straight through a mountain. It is supposed to be the longest in North America. It is also one lane and is shared with the railroad. It was actually built as a railroad tunnel when Whittier was an Army Base, not a town. The use of it as a road is very recent. Ellen has a birding guide to Alaska from 2002 that said that to get to Whittier you had to drive your vehicle onto a railcar and it would ride the train through the tunnel. Evidently at sometime after that they had the idea to pave between and alongside the rails and let vehicles be driven through.
We were a bit lucky in our timing since there is only a 15 minute period each hour when they let vehicles in from the Portage side (except when there is train to delay passage even more). As we pulled away from the toll booth, $13 to go to Whittier round trip only, the light turned green in our lane and we were on our way. It only took about five minutes to go through. It was strange running through as the walls were just bare rock, there was very little lighting and the ceiling was very high, which made the tunnel seem even narrower. It was also a bit of a challenge to keep Speedy off of the metal rails which were a bit slick from the rain.
And then we were out and into what some call "The oddest town in Alaska". That it was dark gray and raining didn't help our first impression of Whittier. It is basically an ex-Army base turned into a railyard and docks, with a boat basin and a few shops. It was an army base and port from WW II until 1960. It became a city in 1969. They seem to have just repurposed all of the army buildings for other uses. There don't seem to be any houses in the town. Most of the residents live in either a 14 story ex-barracks turned condominium,called the Begich Building, or another 1950's block of apartments, also turned into condos. There is an even larger building on hillside just behind downtown called the Buckner Building, but is just derelict.
The center of the town is taken up by a large rail yard and an equally large parking lot used mostly by boaters and visitors. There is a big boat basin full of power boats, but even more boats are parked on trailers in huge rocky lot which doubles as the intown RV campground (this one makes the gravel lots in Seward and Homer seem luxurious).
There are only about three streets in the downtown on the far side of the tracks. The first block is mostly industrial buildings, many from the army post days. The second is the Begich Building and the third has the local school, one of the few modern buildings in town.
Aside from the rail traffic, freight being transferred to and from barges for transport south or to outer islands, and the Alaska Marine Highway ferry terminal, our reason for being here, the town has several charter cruise operations for either cruises out to the Prince William Sound glaciers or for fishing. It is also a spot where Anchorage boates keep their boats for cruising on the sound, hence the big boat parking lot.
We parked Speedy at the ferry terminal while I went inside to see if we'd made it off the waiting list. We hadn't. So, we have to show up tomorrow at 9:30 am to get on standby, but the young woman behind the counter said that they almost always manage to fit all onboard...fingers crossed. She also let us spend the day parked in their lot. All of the public parking in town is $10 a day.
We walked around town in the rain being quite depressed by the grimness of Whittier. Maybe it was the rain and the gray muddy roads, but it reminded us of photos of those grim soviet-era buildings in Eastern Europe from the 50's and 60's. The only bright spot was coffee and a pastry in the cafe of Lazy Otter Charters. We returned to Speedy and found that we could get rather slow mobile Internet access on our phones, but, incomprehensibly, not on the iPad. At least we could check mail.
We watched the ferry arrive from Valdez on its way to Cordova. It is the same ship that we hope to get on tomorrow on its return run to Valdez. By the time it left, the rain had stopped an the fog had lifted so the sound and the mountains and glaciers around the town were visible. There was even a bit of sunshine.
The ferry terminal was closing so we left for the other campground. This one is out of town at the end of the harbor near the tunnel. It is a smooth gravel lot overlooking the harbor. We took a site practically on the water.
The town and its waterfront actually looks a bit picturesque from here.
We took a walk along the gravel beach in front of the campground and, rather than birds, found many dead salmon washing up. They looked like natural end-of-life salmon, but we were not in a stream so it was a bit strange. As we walked up the beach, it turned inland an we could see a stream outlet into the bay. We could also see that it seemed clogged with logs and brush. One possibility is that these fish couldn't get into the stream.
Not knowing the name of the campground, we decided to call it Deadfish Cove. Given out impression of Whittier, it seems reasonable.
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