Day 35 - RAINY day in Valdez

Small Boat Harbor in Valdez, AK

Baleen (teeth) from Baleen Whale

----------------------------------German Bus at Eagle Rest RV Park----------------------

Salmon spawning at Salmon Gulch in Valdez

-------------------------------------Harbor in Valdez

Charlie chilling out on our bed!

Monday August 9, 2010. Today has been a lazy day. I was sleeping beauty this morning and didn't get out of bed till 8:30. I have been so exhausted, which I think is mostly that I don't go to bed till after midnight, and partly the rainy weather.Even the cats do nothing but sleep. I can't get Charlie off the bed long enough to make it in the mornings. We both sat around here and read and I am also still doing laundry. Larry is reading in his RV Library!!! We have a huge file of books for every item on this thing. He has been reading since we purchased it back in March. There is really a lot to know about this 'home on wheels'. Driving to Valdez yesterday in the bright sunshine, our 'check engine' light came on again and the exhaust break quit working briefly. This has never happened other than when we are driving in the rain and the exhaust break never works when the engine light comes on. However, we have a new twist on the problem, the break started working again even with the 'check engine' light on. Also we have never had the engine light came on in dry weather. Soo-- here's an opportunity for Freightliner to make another $400-500 bucks running their computer checks again!@# I can see that this issue will never be resolved because there is now no pattern for the fault. I should rename my blog to the Issues with motor homes!.

We finally got showers and drove into town--this was about a 2 second trip. The town is small with only one grocery store.The lady in the campground office says she hopes we have plenty of supplies because the store is really high priced. We drove on down to the waterfront and found a museum that was all about Valdez. We watched a video of the history of Valdez and the earthquake. It was pretty interesting. We then drove to the harbor and walked around awhile. Down at the small boat harbor they had the top catches of the fishing derby posted. On August 8 a local guy caught a 363 lb halibut. He broke the previous record which was 312 lbs in 2009. I was reading in a Valdez booklet that the derby winner received $15,000 in prizes. Not too bad for a days work huh???

Neither of us had eaten today so we first stopped at Harbor Cafe and when we looked at the menu and found that a hot dog was $9.75 and a hamburger was $14.95 we decided to move on. We ended up at a harbor side restaurant called Mike's Palace. We went in and decided we'd at least have a beer. We looked at the menu and decided to order a small pizza and spent almost $40 for the pizza and 3 beers(total-NOT 3 each). So don't know if we made a better choice or not. The pizza was good anyway.

We drove out of town about a mile to a small building that was the Alaska Department of Fish and Game. We went in and read a lot of information regarding whales and different marine life. They had a Baleen on display. A Baleen is basically what a Baleen Whale has instead of teeth and is used for straining their food. It is made out of Keratin, the same material as our fingernails are made from. It is very strange looking. Outside the little building is a Salmon spawning stream and we could stand on a deck and see many Salmon trying to swim up the stream.

The ranger at the Fish and Game building told us to go out of town about 5 miles to Dayville Road to see Salmon. We drove out to a place called Salmon Gulch and as we were getting ready to cross the bridge, there was a lighted sign saying Bears were in the area. We parked the car and walked down to the water and the smell was unbelievable! It was worse than any garbage dump I have ever smelled. This area I believe is a fish hatchery and also a fish processing plant. The salmon were everywhere in the stream that ran into Port Valdez. They were so numerous they were just piled up on top of one another along the edges of the stream. The only thing more numerous than the salmon were the sea gulls. There were thousands of them hoovering and flying all over the water. There were many dead Salmon lying on the rocks and the birds were having a gourmet meal. I can see why the bear are really bad in this area as they could eat fish both dead and alive for weeks!!

We drove back to the RV park and I stopped off at the office to try to get on the Internet. I tried several times to connect last night from the motor home but couldn't. I sat at the office almost 2 hours trying to post my blog and check my email. I finally gave up and walked back to the RV. I decided to walk across the grass, which is the tent camping area since it was so muddy walking on the road. As I stepped into the grass, I was over my shoes with water as the ground is saturated. WOW would I love to be tent camping there!! I also took a picture of a bus that is here. We stopped by and talked to a guy setting beside it this morning and he said their group was from Germany. We haven't figured out what this bus is all about as it has regular windows about half way back and then it is little windows on both side almost as if they have sleeping berths inside. The one side has an area that has a canvas coming out to make a shelter for eating. I have never seen anything that looks like it before.

Tomorrow, I'm not sure what we will do. There are a couple of places that I still want to see. One is another museum and the other is a place that shows a movie about the building of the pipeline and also the earthquake. We'll see what tomorrow brings. Hopefully it will quit raining. Today it rained all day and it was so foggy, we could not see the boats out in the harbor.