Saturday reflections

Traffic waiting at the Whittier tunnel, as reflected in the side mirror of our van.

I've been tweaking the blog design a little -- after six years it's starting to look less than fresh. I like the look of this font but think it might be hard to read, so haven't made a final decision about it yet.

The waiting is the hardest part

Back at the Whittier tunnel, where a train exercised its right of way and the cars had to wait. I do love the sign at the tunnel entrance, "Watch for rocks." I'm not sure what you're supposed to do if you see one -- there's no room to maneuver.

I found a new reason to like my iPhone -- playing word games when going through scary tunnels.

A few more Whittier pictures

Whittier reflections

Whittier

We had an hour or so to look around Whittier before our boat ride, which, coincidentally, is about how long it takes to walk, very slowly, from one end of town to the other. 

It was fun to have something besides mountains to take pictures of, and I liked the quirkiness of the place. Its current population, according to Wikipedia, is 177, but it was at one time a major military outpost.

Sarah Palin jokes notwithstanding, Alaska’s proximity to Russia made it an attractive location for the Defense Department during the Cold War, and for a while Whittier was home to the two largest buildings in Alaska, built for housing soldiers and military families. One of them is now condos, where most of the current population lives, and the other has been abandoned since the 1960’s. It’s a kind of creepy presence in what is basically a tourist town.

Whittier Tunnel

I didn’t know this was coming, and that was probably a good thing. The town of Whittier, where we were boarding a boat for a day on Prince William Sound, has been accessible by road since 2000. Before that, it could be reached only by boat or by railroad, the railroad access via a long narrow tunnel under Maynard Mountain.

Digging another tunnel would have been prohibitively expensive, so they just upgraded the existing tunnel so it could be used by either trains or cars. But not at the same time. And only in one direction; there’s just one lane so the traffic changes direction every hour.

It’s a claustrophobe’s nightmare. The tunnel looks like it was hewed out of the mountain by orcs; the walls and ceiling are rough stone, and you drive right on the train tracks for roughly two and a half miles (or ten years.) I wasn’t reassured by the regular appearance of safe rooms, to be used in case of fire or earthquake, or by the fact that after a train passes through, traffic has to wait while the tunnel ventilation system runs and makes the air inside breathable again.

It’s actually very impressive. But if I ever go back to Whittier, I think it will be by boat.

Above the line of cars waiting for the signal to enter the tunnel. And because we hadn't eaten in at least an hour, our wonderful tour team produced snack trays for us to nibble on while we waited.