Sunday, August 9, 2009 Lorraine’s Report
The days here are just flying by for us. Here it is August already, and in a few short weeks our time visiting here in Alaska will be over. That makes me feel extremely sad, I’ve just loved our whole time here. It has been just great! This will be a summer I will never forget, and it sure will be hard to beat, as far as summer’s go.
Last Sunday, we packed up the motor home and moved from the Golden Nugget RV Park in Anchorage, to the Elk’s Lodge in Palmer, where Tom and Dorothy were staying, since the GN RV was sold out for the following week.
We set up the coach, and Chuck & I headed back to Anchorage to go to the Alaska Native Heritage Center. We arrived there just before the 2 pm show of Alaska Native Dance Group from Metlakatla. It was a very nice show, made me kind of homesick, remembering home in Ketchikan. We toured the museum and enjoyed it all and the wonderful sunshiny day. We closed the museum and headed back to Palmer, where Dorothy had made a big pot of stew for all of us for dinner. Thanks, Dorothy.
Monday, we planned to go back to Anchorage for Chuck to fish in Ship Creek, and I wanted to look in Nordstrom’s. But, we ended up staying home. Chuck washed the mud off the coach; it was so dirty from all the rain and muddy roads in Seward, while I paid medical bills from our visits to Drs, in May and June. Norma and Dorothy went out on the lake at the Elk’s, in Rob and Norma’s kayak boats. Rob was still feeling under the weather from his cold. Chuck decided to fish off the dock there at the Elk’s and I just sat in the sun, letting my bones warm up. We all went to the Elk’s for the cook your own steak Monday night.
Tuesday, we packed up and headed for Valdez. It was a tough decision, head north to Denali/Fairbanks, where the fires and smoke are bad, or take our chances on the weather in Valdez. We came south. The drive in was hazy from all the forest fires, but at least we could see some of the mountains, the farther south we came.
This drive is the prettiest drive in Alaska, is what we’ve been told; everyone was right! It is incredibly pretty driving in to town, with all the glacier topped mountains all around, the waterfalls and fast flowing streams. We were told that it should take four hours to get here, but we took over seven hours, with all the stops we made to take pictures.
We came into Eagle’s Rest RV Park here in Valdez. Chuck found the car had a dead battery, and couldn’t move it to unhook and reposition the motor home. He had to call Coach Net to get help starting the car. I couldn’t get my cell phone to charge or stay on. And Misty was having the run’s and a bad tummy,she had picked up a water parasite and is on medicine to clear that up. I said that was our three things that could go wrong, and that was it.
Wednesday we visited several museums here, the Earthquake museum and Old Valdez museum. Then, we drove out to the end of the road to see the humpy’s coming up the creek to spawn, and hopefully the bears; no bears.
Thursday was my birthday and I was on Chuck’s phone all day with phone calls from my family and friends. Chuck took me to Radio Shack to try and fix my phone, but no luck. So I bought another one; it is hard to hear and it gets fuzzy, so I’m returning it on Monday. In the afternoon we went to another museum, then over to the Totem Inn for dinner with everyone. It was certainly a nice day for me. Thank you everyone who made my day so wonderful.
Friday, the group went their own way. Chuck and I went up to Valdez Glacier, then out the Old Valdez Town site. Then we went to the Elk’s lodge here in town for their Friday night steak dinner. The town was a buzz with everyone coming in for the Women’s Silver Salmon fishing derby on Saturday.
Saturday was the day the group decided to take our cruise out to the Prince William Sound glaciers. So we were up bright and early. We were picked up here at the campground and driven to the harbor. We boarded the Valdez Spirit for our 8.5 hour cruise. We went to the Columbia and Mears Glaciers and saw Bligh Island where the oil spill happened. We saw seals, sea otters, porpoises, eagles, and many other birds. The Mears glacier didn’t calve as much as the Kenai Fiords glacier did. This cruise was a lot easier for me; I didn’t get as seasick as I on the Kenai cruise as Prince William Sound is more protected than the Gulf of Alaska where the Kenai cruise goes. But, I loved all the sea life we saw on the Kenai tour, and the calving of that glacier.
Saturday was Dorothy and Tom’s 40th wedding anniversary. Happy Anniversary, thanks for sharing it with us.
Today is Rob and Norma’s 34th wedding anniversary. We went to brunch with everyone. Hope you all enjoy your day, Happy Anniversary.
Till next time…..Be well….Lorraine
Sunday 8/9/09 Chuck’s Report
We moved to Valdez from Palmer on Tuesday this past week. We are staying at Eagle’s Rest Campground, next time I would check into staying at Chena RV campground just around the corner. It’s a much smaller place, about 10 spots, has full hookups with cable TV and Wi-Fi but they only charge $25/day. Of course, they don’t have a laundry or anything but the price is right.
Last Sunday Lorraine and I went to the Alaska Native Heritage Center in Anchorage. This place has lots of information about the Alaska Natives, explains about the different tribes and their cultures. Lorraine once again found some of her ancestors in the displays.
Monday was to be a quite, down day for us. I used the time to give the coach a good washing, even got the roof this time. Lorraine finished going through our mail and paid our medical bills, they are coming in even from her visits in March. Rob carries two inflatable kayaks so he filled them up for Norma and Dorothy to go out on the lake. Later we went to dinner at the Elks Club with Tom/Dorothy and Rob/Norma, once again, a good time was had by all.
Tuesday was moving day for us. We were told it would take about 4 hours to travel from Palmer to Valdez, we were on the road for almost 7 hours. The road was rough in a few spots but the main reason it took so long was the stops. We stopped 4 or 5 times to enjoy the scenery and take pictures. We had heard to keep your camera ready when driving into here, they were right. There are mountains with glaciers and waterfalls seeming almost all the way around. Lorraine took lots of pictures, some of which we will post.
Once we got to Valdez and got set up, we were dismayed to find the battery on our car was dead. I called our road side service, they had someone show up in about 10 minutes, good service! We got the car started but needed to charge the battery so we drove through town and down to the small boat harbor. We then went across the harbor where we saw pink (or humpy) salmon returning by the thousands to a small stream. We were told the bears come down and eat at dark but we didn’t see any except for a small black bear laying on the side of the road, must have been playing possum as the police were there with lights flashing and all.
On Wednesday we got a late start but we did manage to visit two of the four museums in town. Once again, they are well done, very informative and don’t charge too much. We learned a lot about the old town of Valdez, the earthquake in 1964 that destroyed most of the town and killed 32 people here. They then rebuilt the town across the harbor to more solid, bed rock ground. To insure no one moved back, they burned any remaining structures in old town. We drove out to the old town area and as predicted, there isn’t much to see.
Thursday was Lorraine’s birthday!! Once again we visited a museum in the early afternoon then drove out to see some more salmon swimming upstream to span. Boy they sure have a large instinct to get upstream, they don’t let anything stop them. They will go around, under, over, or through whatever obstacles are in front of them.
Friday we got a late start once again. We decided to drive to Valdez glacier but found out when we got there it isn’t accessible by car, you have to cross a lake first. We also drove out to the fish hatchery they have it netted off so they can’t go beyond the fish ladder. There must be over 10,000 humpies trying to go up a stream about 40 yards wide by 300 yards or so long. And of course, there are some “fishermen” trying to catch them just the mouth of the creek, not much sport in that. Also, we still didn’t see any bears coming down to feed, bummer.
We have been wanting to go on another cruise while here but the weather hasn’t been very good. Friday night the forecast was for clearing skies, calm seas and no wind. Deciding to take a chance on it, we booked our 9.5 hour cruise on Saturday morning, leaving the campground at 9:00. Our cruise was to take us to two glaciers, Columbia and Mears. The Columbia glacier is one of the largest bodies of fresh water in the world, over 40 miles long, 2,000 feet deep. It didn’t start receding like most glaciers until 1980, since then it has receded about 8 miles. The Mears glacier is actually one of the many that are growing.
The Columbia glacier left a lot of silt, rocks and gravel when it started retreating and the ice breaking off is now trapped there before it gets moved by more ice. Therefore, were were only able to get within about 8 miles of it and we couldn’t see it too well. Even so, it was a massive hunk of ice with lots of ice chunks floating in the channel up to 20 miles away. They actually have names for the floating ice chunks, they’re named by the size of the ice above the water. It doesn’t become an iceberg until it’s 15 feet high or higher. Most of the stuff was smaller than that but I don’t remember the names for the different sizes.
The Mears glacier was more like the one we saw on our cruise out of Seward. We were able to get ~ 1/2 mile from the face and watch for calving. We didn’t see much from here, nothing like our earlier experience. There was lots of big chunks that looked like they were ready to fall but nothing big fell while we were there. The ice falls 24 hours a day so the face is different each time they go out, sometimes they see lots of calving, sometimes not so much.
On this cruise we were able to see some dolphins for the first time. They are black and white colored just like Orca or Killer whales and they like to “surf” the bow waves on the boats. We didn’t get any good pictures of them but enjoyed watching them play around. We also got to see Stellar Sea Lions for the first time too. They are a bit bigger than seals and some of the ones we saw were really having fun swimming and chasing each other. Then we went to the beach where they were gathering to rest where we got some pictures. We also got to see sea otters, seals, Puffins and a host of birds again. We didn’t get to see any whales this trip although we were told they were in the area.
Saturday was also Tom/Dorothy’s 40th wedding anniversary. After the cruise, we all went over to their coach for apple and mince meat pie that Tom had baked. After a short time, we all headed back to our own coach and quickly called it a day.
Because we were busy until late last night, Lorraine and I didn’t get our blog out very early today. We were working on it when Norma came by and asked if we wanted to go out for a breakfast/lunch/brunch. Today is their 34th wedding anniversary so we went with them. There are only about 4 or 5 places to eat here in town so it took awhile to get an open table but we all had a good time laughing and joking. We plan on getting together later to play some cards, Rob probably expects us to lose on purpose so he can win, just because it’s his anniversary.
We are scheduled to head up to Palmer on Tuesday then to Denali on Wednesday. Denali National Park is one of the must see spots up here and we have scheduled a plane ride up to view it and land on a glacier on Friday. Denali (or Mt. McKinley) is the highest mountain in North America and not visible most of the time. I read somewhere that it is only totally visible about 18 day/year. Here’s hoping we get one of those 18! The mountain is so big that it creates it’s own weather system, even if it’s nice all around the area, it can still be raining/snowing on the mountain. They only allow private vehicles inside the first 15 miles of the park,for a good visit you have to ride one of their tour buses for up to 11 hours. Most of the people I’ve talked with (or blogs I’ve read) saw wild life on their trip so here’s hoping we see some on ours too. After seeing Denali and visiting Denali National Park we plan on going up to Fairbanks, depending on the smoke conditions. There are lots of forest fires here in Alaska and the smoke has been very heavy around the Fairbanks area. We will decide on our plans to Fairbanks later.
And now for the pictures of our week. Once again, I have lots to post but they are only a small portion of the ones Lorraine took this week.
Pictures of Alaska Native Dancers in costume.
Dorothy and Norma in kayaks on the lake.
Drive from Palmer to Valdez.
Pictures of the humpies trying to get upstream. The water is boiling from all the fish.
Some pictures of the town of Valdez.
A sea otter was swimming in the small boat harbor while we were walking there.
Lorraine’s Birthday Party.
Valdez Museum
Our cruise out of Valdez harbor to the glaciers.
A picture of Columbia glacier.
This is Mears glacier, lots of blue in some of the pictures.
So that completes our week once again. We will not have too many more weeks here in Alaska, the days are getting shorter now. We still have a few places to see and things to do before we leave.
So until next time Chuck
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