Travels With Carol and Ned: The Sounds of 4th of July and the founding of Cordova, AK

Hello Everyone,

We have returned from our second wilderness outing of Rafting on the Copper River from Chitina to Cordova. The highlight of the trip was rafting past two very active glaciers. The Miles and the Childs. The mountains and sand/gravel bars along the way were fantastic. There were many Grizzly tracks on all of them!!! A first for us is to set up the tent within a few feet of some pretty huge tracks! Yes, Carol survived that!!!!!!! We only saw a Black Bear one morning by the privy, and he ran off when he became aware of us. Now for the glaciers. Again words or pictures will not do justice to the experience. We were in 3 rafts, we tied them together to use a motor to go up to the face of the Miles Glacier and past house sized icebergs that had recently calved off. Then we used the motor to go against the wind to the Million Dollar Bridge from the old Copper River Railroad where we put on wet suits under our many layers of clothing for the row past the face of the Childs Glacier. The River hits right up against the face of the glacier as the river curves to the west. The river is about a half mile wide there and the rafts went down the center in the stronger current. It took about 10 min. to go past the active face, with the hope that nothing really big came off at the time. It was a long 10 min.!!!! It was breath taking and beautiful and scary at the same time!! We made it past with a few small bits of ice crumbling off. The 6 day river trip was a mix of rain and wind and lesser amounts of rain and wind. It was colder in southern Alaska than in the Arctic!!!! It was a fantastic trip.

We had the van ferried to meet us in Cordova, that all worked out. We drove the Copper River Highway back to Childs Glacier and camped there overnight. There is a very nice National Forest Service campground/picnic and viewing area there. It was 4th of July Weekend and it seems most of Anchorage came down to do glacier calving watching. Who needs fireworks when the sounds the glacier makes is much louder and more vibrating!! The Glacier would rumble, crack, sound like thunder and gun shots all wrapped together. What a way to spend the 4th!!!!! It seems that when we went back to the van for food the caving would be huge and even shake the van in the campground, then we would go back to view and not much would happen, it would wake us up at night with the thunderous sounds. On Monday, we went to the viewing area before we drove out and finally saw a really big calving with waves and all. I got it on movie video and will send it as an attachment if I can. Please mute the sound as I said "Oh my gosh" way too many times.

Tomorrow morning we take the Ferry from here to the Kenai Peninsula and then head to Homer and the trip to Kodiak Is. The weather has been constant rain and rain mist with wind since we came south from Fairbanks. Even the locals say it is rainier than usual, even though it rains all the time here!!!!

We talked to a local about the area and he said that long ago when the natives came down the Copper River, it was raining so hard that they decided to pull over and wait till it stopped raining to go on, well that is how Cordova was founded, they are still here!!!!!

Take Care, Carol and Ned