Tok to Valdez, June 25

Tok, Alaska is a crossroads for many roads going to different places. It is still on the Alaska Highway. Most people drive from here north to Fairbanks, but we decided to drive south to Valdez. Valdez is where the Alaska pipeline ends and the crude oil is loaded on tankers. At one time they loaded and average of 1.5 ships a day. Currently they are loading a little less than one a day.
This is the start of the Tok Cutoff, as it is called. Everything is always so far. You can see that Valdez is 254 miles from here. We never know the conditions of the road so we weren't sure we would make it all the way to Valdez since we didn't leave Tok until about 11 am after doing some blogging & banking using the WiFi in the restaurant near our campground. The nice thing about this long daylight is we don't have to worry about finding a park in the dark! :-) We havn't seen dark for more than a month.

This is a distant view of the heavilly glaciated mountains in the Wrangell Range.

Here is a view of the Copper River Valley. Notice the high ridge in the left background, which ran for miles along this valley. It was just another unique landscape!

This is the Klutina River Valley as seen through our bug-infested windshield. It still gives an idea of how beautiful it is here! (We could not keep the bugs off the windshield!)

I know, I know...another mountain with a glacier! But, isn't it beautiful! This is a view of the nearby mountains near the Tiekel River on Route 1, heading south to Valdez.

This is the famous Worthington Glacier at Thompson Pass before heading down the mountain into Valdez. It was drissly & rainy so you couldn't see the top of the mountain to the left of the glacier. It was covered with clouds.

As we descended, we came through a short canyon called Keystone Canyon. It was pretty, with the glacier river running alongside.

Here is a full view of Bridal Veil Falls in Keystone Canyon. (Every mountain must have a bridal veil falls, I think!)

This is a closer view of part of Bridal Veil Falls. It is over pretty rugged rocks!

A little further down the road in the canyon we encountered Horse Tail Falls. Cool, eh?

This is an unidentified bird, perhaps a Lesser Yellowleg, who was near where we stopped after Jim noticed a Tundra Swan family on a small pond. This bird seemed to be warning the swans of the danger of this lady with the funny black thing hanging around her neck. I guess she didn't know the difference between a camera and a gun! (Ha, Ha) Anyone know what this "alarm sounding" bird is?

This is an unknown wildflower near where I saw the Tundra Swan family.

This was just thrilling to see this family of Tundra Swans right near the road but obscured by bushes! Are they not the most beautiful thing you have seen? They were fascinating to watch as they "swam" by so gracefully and effortlessly! Now you will have to put up with some more photos of them.

I believe there were five babies! Sooooo cute!

Jim had to throw a rock ahead of them to get them to swim out away from the brush so I could shoot them with the camera. They did not seem too disturbed by it all. Thank goodness for my telephoto lens! What a treat that was!