May 17 - Whittier to Valdez to Copper River

This was our last view of the Diamond Princess, our home for the past week. We were somewhat sad to leave her, everything about the cruise portion of the tour was wonderful....the food, the amenities, the service, everything! But, it was time to disembark the ship and board the catamaran which would take us to Valdez. Valdez is in Prince William Sound and was destroyed in the 1963 earthquake, or the subsequent Tsunami was what took out the town. They rebuilt further away from the Sound and it was an interesting little town. Valdez is the northernmost deep water harbor that does not freeze on the continent, so it is the portal for the oil exports.

Prince William Sound is magnificent. We saw it only by cruising through it on the disembarkation day from the ship on our way to Valdez. We did, however, book a Prince William Sound Cruise for the following day which was to be devoted to the Sound totally. I LOVED the photos I got that day, which will follow here. I will only add a few to the blog and will hope you will visit my Flickr site when I can get that organized and finished since it will hold many more photos that I can have here.

We boarded a tour bus and headed from Valdez to Copper River, about a two-hour leisurely tour of the areas between these two places. We stopped at a rest stop, which had obviously had a recent heavy snow, and I took the photo of this one bathroom. We were all relieved to see they had shoveled out one set of rest rooms so we could use the facilities! This was an incredible sight, in some places the depth of the snow was deeper than I was high. we aren't in Arizona anymore, Dorothy!