We’ve had the best day ever here in Vadez! This morning we slept late – well I did. Tom walked the dog and had breakfast. We went over to the Old Valdez museum – all about Valdez when it was in a different location on the bay and then got destroyed by the 64 earthquake. The entire city was not destroyed but much of it was and the place it was in has since been sinking – 1 inch a year. So over a period of two years they moved the entire town and rebuilt in another location. Kinda like Chevak – except Chevak’s problem was flooding. The museum was really interesting - many old photos of the town and lots of letters, descriptions of the earthquake, etc. The director let us take photos with a huge blunderbuss.

Next, we drove down to this salmon hatchery – but the salmon had not come in yet. There was a bet on when they would be coming in – too late for us to see. We traveled on out to the location of Old Valdez – a perfectly flat place, many areas fenced off since parts of building were still there, part of the dock was there and many mosquitos.Very quiet and eerie. I believe about 33 people from Valdez were killed during the earthquake. Tom was very interested in the location and enjoyed exploring – I was a little concerned that we might not get back to the main road with out a blowout.


We headed out to the glacier viewing area beyond the airport and had a real surprise. It took us a while to get there but we were rewarded with huge floating pieces of the glacier – or iceburgs - lots of them. I had been worried about the road to Old Valdez – but that road was noting compared to this one – full of potholes and gravel.
There weren’t too many people out there either – very quiet.

Back in Valdez we went to a park and had ham&cheese sandwiches, potato chips and cookies for lunch. So nice – the weather was wonderful. Sort of sunny – but not quite. Sort of cloudy but not quite.

In the afternoon we went to the main museum in town and it was just fascinating.That is a very rare fish mounted in the photo - one of a kind.
Lots of great displays and artifacts - we both looked and looked and read and read. Those were some pretty brave and hardy folks who came to Alaska back when. I was feeling bad for those gold miners while looking at all this stuff and started reading some comments one of them had made. One man went on about the long boat journey they had just finished and then about buying supplies Valdez to go on up to the gold fields and he and four other men were sleeping in one tent and they were so tired and exhausted and were leaving to go north to the gold fields the next morning and they just were so excited they couldn’t sleep and ended up talking half the night. He wrote that they were like school kids on a camp trip having so much fun and loving every minute.

We headed out of town again to the other side of the bay. We were told to get there at about 4:05 because that was high tide. As we drove up this long bay – we could actually see the salmon jumping up our in the water. There were oodles of folks fishing and everybody was catching them! We parked and sat on a bench to observe the action - this man with three sons came down, threw their poles in and started reeling them in. Most they put back – there was some kind of bet as to who would catch the biggest fish. We really enjoyed the excitement! We made one more stop on the way back at a salmon hatchery – well actually we drove right by it. I saw a sea lion, and Tom saw a waterfall - so we had to run around and go back to that spot. We parked and noticed several folks down at the hatcherie and realized immediately that there were literally thousands of pink salmons there - feeding I guess. I don’t really know. Anyway the two sea lions were catching them and then fighting with the sea gulls over the spoils. It was wild – a sea of activity – folks taking photographs and ooing and ahhing – I loved it. What luck we turned back! In the photo the sea lion has a fish in his mouth and the gulls are tring to get it from him and the salmon are going nuts. That whole black are to the front is full of salmon flapping about.

We are beat but are looking forward to the trip to McCarthy tomorrow. We’ll leave early and hope to get to McCarthy by the middle of the afternoon. This last 60 miles of the journey is where we had that flat tire last year. Tom had the dealer remove the tire from the hoist and we have it in the back of the truck. We have to get that thing fixed. Anyway – at least we will be able to get to the tire this year. He promises that the spare is a good tire….

We have figured out that our hotel must have been a place that just had rooms for sleeping and a common bath area down the hall. The bathrooms have been added on recently. I believe I would have enlarged the rooms at the same time.

What a wonderful day! I love Valdez.