Start from 22 curated places around Valdez, AK, then choose the recommendations that fit your guests.
Restaurants & cafés
Old Town Diner
The closest thing Valdez has to a local institution — a cheerful diner where the booths are full of fishing crew and long-haul truckers and the burgers come with proper hand-cut curly fries. The funny signs on the walls and the quick-banter service make it feel like someone's idea of what a perfect small-town diner should be, and the prices match. Cash transactions move faster here.
The Fat Mermaid
A waterfront spot on the harbor with a menu that swings from fish tacos and gourmet pizzas to proper Alaska seafood — the salmon burger and the locally caught halibut are the anchors, and the kitchen is willing with modifications. The room has more of a pub personality than a restaurant one by evening, when the bar fills up and live music occasionally runs in summer.
Trails & outdoors
Dock Point Trail
An easy 0.8-mile loop that leaves from the small-boat harbor and climbs a forested bluff above the port, delivering wide views of Valdez Arm, the surrounding Chugach peaks, and the busy commercial harbor below. The trail is short enough to fit before dinner and serves as the quick-hit walk Valdez locals do when they need thirty minutes of forest and altitude. Moose are regularly spotted in the alder thickets below the viewpoint.
Shoup Bay Trail
A moderate 6.5-mile round-trip through beach, meadow, and forest that ends at the marine lagoon fronting Shoup Glacier — a tidewater glacier that you can reach on foot from Valdez rather than by boat. Harbor seals haul out near the glacier face, and the lagoon fills with small icebergs during active calving periods. The trail crosses several streams and the terrain in the final approach is rough.
Things to do
Prince William Sound Glacier Cruise
A full-day boat tour out of Valdez into Prince William Sound that spends hours among tidewater glaciers, floating icebergs, and extraordinary concentrations of marine wildlife — orcas, Dall's porpoises, sea otters, and puffins appear regularly, and the glacier calving events are physically thunderous up close. This is the core experience of visiting Valdez and the reason most visitors drive or fly in.
Sea Kayaking Valdez Arm
Guided sea kayak tours out of Valdez range from a 3-hour Duck Flats paddle among harbor seals and river otters to multi-day trips into Prince William Sound among glaciers and uninhabited fjords. The calm inner harbor and Duck Flats area is appropriate for beginners; experienced paddlers can access serious expedition terrain. Valdez is where the Trans-Alaska Pipeline ends and tankers load, making the industrial waterfront an unusual backdrop to wilderness kayaking.
Landmarks & sights
Keystone Canyon
A dramatic river canyon carved through 600-foot rock walls just north of Valdez where the Richardson Highway squeezes alongside the roaring Lowe River and two spectacular waterfalls — Bridal Veil and Horsetail — plunge directly over the cliff faces onto the roadway. The canyon has a Wild West history to match the scenery: rival railroad companies shot it out here in 1907 in an actual gunfight over rights to build the route to the Interior.
Worthington Glacier State Recreation Site
One of the most accessible glaciers in Alaska — a short paved walk from a pullout at mile 28.7 of the Richardson Highway leads to the toe of a valley glacier you can actually touch without a guide or helicopter. The ice is actively retreating and the lateral moraines document decades of shrinkage in visible layers of exposed rock, making this both beautiful and scientifically arresting. Thompson Pass just above it gets some of the heaviest snowfall in North America.