Nestled peacefully at the head of Orca Inlet in Prince William Sound, Cordova has a mystique all its own. You will be dazzled with glacier-carved mountains, wildlife rich wetlands, lush forests and numerous waterways. 

"Cordova isn't just off the beaten track it's not on the track at all. There's no road to the rest of the world, and the town is an afterthought on the ferry system. Boosters call their town 'Alaska's Hidden Treasure.' For once, they're right," wrote Arthur Frommer from his travels to Alaska. He continued "Cordova has the qualities small towns are supposed to have had but lost long ago in America. Walking down First Street, you pass an old-fashioned independent grocery store, the fisherman's union hall and Steen's gift shop, run by the same family since 1909."

Cordova is a fishing port where you can watch commercial fishermen bring in their catch or try your hand at Alaska-style sport fishing. Tour the salmon canneries, visit the famed "million dollar bridge", walk on Sheridan Glacier, or ride the chair lift to the top of Eyak Mountain. From Cordova, the Copper River Highway provides the best bird watching, glacier viewing and magnificent vistas to see wildlife.

These glaciers parade down, some of them 3,700 feet to the mile, from the steep mountains. No place else is there such a density of tidal glaciers.  In the summer of 1899, railroad magnate Edward H. Harriman, president of the Union Pacific Railroad and the Washington Academy of Sciences upon advise from his physician to take a sea voyage as an antidote to stress, funded a scientific expedition along the Alaskan coast. The two-month expedition, intended initially as a family vacation, eventually gathered an illustrious group of scientists, naturalists, writers, and artists, and combined scientific research with leisure activities.

It was the Harriman Expedition party who named College Fjord as well as the glaciers that line it. The dozen or so glaciers lining this fjord were named for the Ivy League schools that members of the party attended. On the northwest side of the fjord, the glaciers were named after the women's colleges, such as Smith, Bryn Mawr, Vassar, Wellesley, Barnard, and Holyoke. On the southeast side, the glaciers are named after men's colleges Harvard, Yale, Amherst, and Dartmouth.

Some of these glaciers have retreated since the original Harriman Expedition, but not the largest of them: Harvard. Harvard is 1 1/2 miles wide, approximately 225 feet high at its terminal face, stretches below the waterline up to about 120 feet, and reaches back to the Chugach Icefield nearly 24 miles away. This giant of College Fjord is slowly advancing, calving literally tons of ice into the fjord each day. These glaciers parade down, some of them 3,700 feet to the mile, from the steep mountains. No place else is there such a density of tidal glaciers.

People from Anchorage go to the peninsula for the weekend to fish, hike, dig clams, paddle kayaks, and so on, and certain places can get crowded.  There's a special phrase for what happens when the red salmon are running in July on the Kenai and Russian rivers: combat fishing. At hot times in certain places, anglers stand elbow to elbow on the bank, each casting into his/her own yard-wide slice of river, and still catch plenty of hefty salmon.  Information from this section found at www.frommers.com

The surprising turquoise color of many of the Kenai Peninsula’s rivers and lakes is very unusual and is caused by just the right blending of glacial waters and snowmelt. Just about everywhere on the Peninsula there are rivers and lakes to enjoy. Home to spawning salmon, these rivers and lakes can be explored by rafting, fishing from drift or powerboats, or finding beautiful trails along the shores. Some of Alaska's wildest whitewater, as well as some of its most placid and scenic waterways, can be found on the Kenai. The Kenai River and its network of lakes and tributaries extend from virtually the eastern edge to the western shore. Canoe fans world wide travel to the Kenai Peninsula to portage and paddle the 150 miles of canoe trails of the Swanson River System. The quaint settlements of Moose Pass and Cooper Landing, along with the larger communities of Sterling, Soldotna, and Kenai, owe a substantial portion of their livelihoods to the bounty of fish, scenery, and wildlife that the Kenai watershed provides. Information from this section found at www.kenaipeninsula.org

The Kenai Peninsula is world renowned for its wide-ranging fishing opportunities. Four species of salmon by the thousands —no, make that by the hundreds of thousands—find their way into the Peninsula's bays, rivers, and lakes to return to where their lives began. Virtually any time of the summer is salmon fishing season on the Kenai. The largest King Salmon of all, weighing close to 100 pounds, are sought on the famed lower Kenai River. Salmon is only part of the draw. Most seacoast towns on the Kenai Peninsula offer charter fishing for halibut and other saltwater species. What an experience to spend a day out upon the water, to feel the sea breeze, and to reel in that barndoor size halibut! The mountain lakes, rivers and streams of the Kenai Peninsula are home to Rainbow Trout, Dolly Varden, and Arctic Grayling—fly fishing at its finest.  Information from this section found at www.kenaipeninsula.org

Spread across an impressive 3.2 million acres in southeastern Alaska, this treasure trove of scenic coastal islands, narrow fjords and substantial wildlife offers an inspirational glimpse of what Mother Nature does best.   How does it feel when a monumental chunk of ice splits off a glacier and crashes into the sea? The sound is like thunder. The impact shoots water hundreds of feet into the air. You hold your breath as you catch the moment on film. Then you wait for it to happen again. And it does. Glacier Bay has more active calving glaciers than anywhere else in the world.

Cruise by Reid and Lamplugh glaciers to the mighty John Hopkins - surrounded by rugged peaks and sheltering a seal pupping ground. Linger at Grand Pacific and Margerie glaciers for the grandest spectacle of them all. Margerie is an Ice Age giant a mile wide and 25 stories high. You will marvel at nature's unrelenting power as you witness the birth of one massive iceberg after another.

Search for humpback whales returning from their wintering grounds near Hawaii, killer whales feeding in the park's near-shore waters, Steller sea lions resting on rocky islands, and harbor seals nurturing their pups. Glacier Bay is the setting for an unforgettable wildlife search.

The highest concentration of tidewater glaciers on the planet can be found at Glacier Bay National Park and Preserve. Spread across an impressive 3.2 million acres in southeastern Alaska, this treasure trove of scenic coastal islands, narrow fjords and substantial wildlife offers an inspirational glimpse of what Mother Nature does best.

Prince William Sound is a spectacular fjord, that was first surveyed in 1790 by British Explorer, Captain George Vancouver. Glacier Bay –The bay John Muir discovered in a canoe in 1879 –didn't exist a century earlier.   This area offers you a chance to see Dall sheep, mountain goats, sea lions, sea otters, whales, seals and bald eagles, as well as the Trans-Alaskan Pipeline Terminal in Valdez. The sound is also home to more than 100,000 glaciers, including breathtaking Columbia Glacier, near Valdez, which is more than 40 miles long and more than 200 feet high at the face.

Montague and Hinchinbrook are its largest islands. The area is a fishing, mining, and oil shipment center. In March 1989, the oil tanker Exxon Valdez ran aground here, spilling more than 42 million litres/11 million gallons of crude oil in one of the world’s greatest oil-pollution disasters. Commercial fishing, birds, sea mammals, and hundreds of miles of shoreline were devastated.

Hubbard Glacier is the largest and most active tidewater glacier in Alaska, with its face stretching over 7.5 miles in length and moving as fast as 100 ft. per day.  It is the longest tidewater glacier in North America, begins its 76 mile journey to the sea on the slopes of Mount Logan, the tallest mountain in Canada and part of the largest non-polar icefield in the world. At the point where it enters Disenchantment Bay, at the head of Yakutat Bay, it is 6 miles wide.

Blue ice at the face of a glacier means that it is actively calving.  As Hubbard is advancing, it creaks and groans as it moves and is a very actively calving glacier. This makes for some exciting moments when the huge chunks of ice crash into the Bay creating a wonderful sound called 'white thunder' by the Tlingit people.

Situated at the head of Yakutat Bay, in Disenchantment Bay, the sail up to Hubbard is both leisurely and beautiful. Small ice bergs, sometimes with sea birds or seals resting on them, float in the water which is glacial blue. Seals calve on the ice bergs here as Orca whales do not visit the bay. Disenchantment Bay was named by the Spanish explorer Malaspina who was disenchanted that he had not found the Northwest Passage.