March 9, 2026 – johnboystravelblog

September 22, 2025

Having finally reached Valdez I discovered that the Visitor Center was closed. It is not a very big town, and of course being on the water it had a nice harbor. I believe cruise ships dock further out of town but I think their season had now ended as the town was very quiet. The place where the Trans Alaska Pipeline terminates is across Port Valdez to the south of town. I read that they have 18 storage tanks there which can hold millions of barrels of oil.

I ate lunch at a restaurant just across the street from the harbor. I told myself that I would enjoy fresh Alaskan seafood every time I was in a coastal city. Valdez isn’t out on the Gulf of Alaska but is tucked away in the Valdez Arm of Prince William Sound. That’s close enough for me. I had fresh broiled halibut and it was delicious.

My big mistake was not booking a room down here for the night. I had to drive the theoretical 2 1/2 hours back to Gakona and didn’t really have much time to explore.

I left town around 4 o’clock but did stop to take a few photos on my way back to Gakona, and I would have a surprise waiting for me when I got back there.

Although it had cleared off into a beautiful day while I was in Valdez, the clouds and rain were still over the Chugach Mountains.

I saw this weather station next to the road at one point. There was also a camera fixed on the red & white pipe which indicates how much snow there is during the winter months.

When I got back close to Gakona I spotted two huge mountains which I had not seen in previous trips up and down the highway. Evidently they had been “hiding in plain sight,” shrouded in cloud cover when I had been in places where I should have been able to see them. Both were snow-covered and were extremely visible against the blue sky.

The first is Mount Drum, which rises to 12,010 feet elevation

With the zoom lens this is a closeup of the shorter peak on the left side.

I didn’t see the other mountain until I had turned east on Hwy 1 at Gakona Junction, just a short distance from my Airbnb. There was a pullout area where I had stopped two or three times on various passes through the area and today was the first time I saw this big, white mountain to the southeast. It is Mount Sanford and is 16,237 feet tall, but is further away so it doesn’t look quite that big.