We spent a few days in Valdez, where we saw the beginnings of a salmon run, touched a glacier, and learned why the railroad goes to Cordova and not Valdez.
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Valdez
Valdez is another port city on the Gulf of Alaska. Like the Kenai Peninsula, the weather is heavily influenced by Pacific currents, making it mild in the winter (considering the latitude), and cool in the summer. And it rains almost every day, but it's usually just a sprinkle or two, and then it is gone. Because of the chilly weather, the Valdez version of the ice cream truck also carries hot soup and espresso.The End of the Pipeline
We saw the beginning of the pipeline when we were in Deadhorse. Now we are at the end of the line, where the oil is loaded into ocean-going tankers for shipment.Salmon Run
The salmon were just starting to run in Valdez when we were here. Naturally, this attracted a lot of attention - gulls, sea lions, otters, people, and of course eagles. The say the bears even show up in the area, though we did not see any while we were here.The dark shadows in the water are schools of salmon. You can see all the fins in the closer picture. They are bunching themselves together to try to fool their predators into thinking they are a single very large object. Safety in numbers or something like that. It wasn't working. The brown blobs are sea lions tearing into them, and the gulls were feasting on what the sea lions left. Meanwhile, the eagles carried their meal back to the trees. The last picture shows some gulls having words about who gets what spot on the bridge rail. It loses something without the squawking.
Keystone Canyon
Like most towns in Alaska, there is only one road that goes there. Near Valdez, the one road passes through a steep, narrow canyon known as Keystone Canyon. The road follows the Lowe River through this canyon. How narrow is it? The braided river doesn't even have gravel bars as it passes through the narrowest part of the canyon. The first picture shows the wide river before it enters the canyon. 
Waterfalls
Keystone Canyon is noted for its beautiful waterfalls. Horsetail Falls and Bridal Veil Falls are two of the most notable. 
If this waterfall has a name, I don't know what it is. The water is crystal clear, indicating it is probably spring-fed. The river, on the other hand, is milky gray, indicating it is mostly glacial melt. You can see them mixing together in the second picture.
Railroad Wars
When they discovered rich copper ore deposits in the mountains north of Valdez, it was natural to think of building a railroad to the coast for shipping the ore. Valdez was the closest port, and the canyon would help keep down the cost of construction. So they started building it - this tunnel was to be part of the line.Unfortunately for Valdez, the railroad was never built. There was a territorial dispute over who had the rights to build in Keystone Canyon, even going to the extent of having gun battles in the canyon. Meanwhile, the railroad was built across the mountains to Cordova, and Valdez lost out.
Thompson Pass
It was cloudy and drizzly when we got to Thompson Pass, and we started to get up into the low ceiling (around 3000 ft). This made the pictures a little hazy, but it was still a beautiful view. At its highest point, Thompson Pass is above the tree line. The road is nice and wide now, but in the past, heavy snowfalls made the pass pretty treacherous in the winter.
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