Valdez

So, to continue he saga from Anchorage, our trailer was finally fixed at 4:45 p.m. on Thursday, we are pretty sure they never even looked at it the day before. Anyway I thought “Great, we’ll make it to Valdez before dark”. But of course, it took us until 5:30 for them to pull it out, Tom to hook up to the truck and for them to complete the paperwork.

We hit the road at 5:30 and hoped the traveling would be good. For the most part it was, but then just before dark (about 10:30) we came across construction, and they were running a pilot car and escorting us for a couple of miles. The first issue was we missed the escort and had to wait 15 minutes or so for the escort to return, then drive that 2-mile stretch at 25 mph. Once we got through, we could see ahead of us the fog was settling in and sure enough between the cloud cover and the time of day it was almost dark now as we drove down a mountain road in the fog. Oh! And we were the first car, so no break lights to follow. It was disappointing as this drive was through a portion of the road that had glaciers all around us (so they said).

We made it to Valdez safely at about 11:30, we just plugged into electricity, since in all the shuffling we never threw the charge switch, and our batteries hadn’t been charging. We didn’t unhook from the truck, just came in, poured a drink, relaxed for half an hour, and went to bed!  Wow we were tired.

The next day, Friday August 4^th our caravan group was very happy to see us, and we retold the story numerous times. But enough about that, we had Valdez to explore! We took a drive to the Solomon Gulch Fish Hatchery which was an amazing thing to see. When the salmon return to spawn, the hatchery collects the eggs, and raises them until early spring when they are released back into the ocean, as young salmon, to complete their life cycle. The hatchery is interesting to visit, but the huge seal lions also love the abundant source of salmon. They come in at high tide and gorge themselves until the tide flows out, then return the next day. Interestingly, the sea lions grab a fish, eat only a small portion of it then toss the rest, so a low tide the area is covered in dead fish. There is a massive amount of sea gulls in the area and although bears are said to frequent the area at dusk, we did not see any fishing. We waited one evening until it was almost dark and never saw a bear. We did see a young black bear on the hillside the day before.

Since we were here during their annual Gold Rush Days we joined in the celebration. Some of us bought “Wet your Whistle” tickets that gave us a glass and 5 drink tickets, kind of a cross between a wine walk and a pub crawl. Some establishments offered wine, some beer, and some a signature cocktail. We laughed a lot and joined in on the fun atmosphere around Valdez. Just to put this into perspective, the downtown area of Valdez is about 2 blocks long.

After the event we met some friends at the Elks Lodge for a steak dinner. As we got there late, they had run out of potato so the gave us an extra ear of corn and reduced our cost. We had a drink at the bar after dinner and met some local characters whom we, of course, struck up a conversation with. Since it stays light here so long, it is easy to lose track of time, we finally made it home around 10:00 and called it a night.

Saturday had more fun Gold Rush Days events and we rode our bike over to the U.S. Forestry building where they were having a demonstration on cast iron cooking over hot coals. They were making moose stew, so we watched them get it started, took a 20-mile round-trip bike ride to the fish hatchery, returning just in time to sample the stew and have some hot peach cobbler!

Since we missed seeing the glaciers, we took a drive up the mountain to see them and stopped at two beautiful waterfalls, bridal vail and horsetail falls.

The caravan held a potluck Saturday evening and since there are so many of us, we have split the potlucks into to groups. This was not my group to cook, so we ate and enjoyed the food and friendship and then had a campfire. This is the evening we waited for the bears that never showed up at the fish hatchery. Guess salmon wasn’t on the menu for Saturday night!

Sunday was cold and rainy all day, so we took advantage of some down time to do a little housekeeping, we are leaving tomorrow morning to go back to Tok for one night and essentially begin our trip home. We’ve now been gone eight weeks, however there are still some things to see when we return to British Columbia before returning to the lower 48.