Randall Delivers

We headed South from Anchorage for four hours towards the port town of Whittier.  The drive South from Anchorage goes through the Chucach National Park and provided some amazing coastal mountain views.  We had some time to kill before the ship arrived, so we stopped at the Portage Glacier Visitor Center.  The boat tours to the Glacier were not operating in the bad weather, however, MacKenzie and Laura braved the frigid conditions in kayaks.  After that, MacKenzie was kind enough to answer a "quick" survey for the local Rangers, we met her back in the RV 20 minutes later. 

From the visitor center it is a quick drive through a one-way tunnel over to Whittier.  The weather was even worse on the other side of the tunnel, and with the car not arriving until close to midnight, we hunkered down in the RV and got cozy.   I boarded the boat wondering if Randall had kept his attention span long enough to properly load the car onto the ferry in Juneau.  After a few frantic moments of pacing up and down the rows of cars, I found our beautiful baby on board. 20 minutes later I drove off the boat, with Hueona.   We decided to just park the RV in Whittier for the night, and be in line for the tunnel first thing in the morning.

The tunnel only runs in each direction every hour.  The local crew sends banks of cars, RVs and buses through the tunnel and must get everyone through in 15 minutes to not mess up the schedule.  A bus driver had signaled the Captain to go, and so he proceeded to pass through the tunnel, only to be stopped on the other side and threatened with a ticket, but in the end, let them pass.  We headed straight for the Toyota dealership in Anchorage, to handle the aforementioned transmission problem with Heuona.  We dropped her off for servicing while we headed up to the native cultural center in Anchorage.