We were up at 4.30am this morning as we had an early ferry to catch. It was a 5.5 hour journey on the ferry from Valdez to Whittier. It was a stunning cruise through the prince william sounds.

There was a solarium deck which is a covered outdoor area with heat lamps and deck chairs. So we grabbed a couple of chairs and had a good snooze under the lamps. Even though it was outside it was toasty and warm.

We arrived in the tiny town of Whittier just before 1pm. It was drizzly and there wasn’t much to see. The port looked nice and there was some old army barracks.

There are only two ways in and out of Whittier. One is via a boat, which we did. The other is via a long narrow tunnel which was built in the 1940s.

It’s a one way tunnel and is shared with a train. They have scheduled times to go through it and we were scheduled for 2pm. I was a little apprehensive about it, being a tiny tunnel going through a massive mountain, but it wasn’t too bad. It’s 2.6 miles long and top speed is 25 mph, so we were through in just under 7 minutes.

We made our way toward the town of Seward, but got caught in a traffic jam. A fatal accident had occurred earlier causing a 6 hour delay. We chose to turn back and found a campground for the night in the forest.

It was cold and damp and another window has started leaking. We’ll look at that another day.