Wednesday, July 25, 2012

July 24 – Around Valdez

It was another fairly quiet day. It finally stopped raining around 11. After lunch we decided to at least take a walk around town. There is a small hill in the middle of town with a trail and observation deck.

The small boat harbour.

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Our RV parking lot is in the lower left near the curve in the road in the picture below.

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Across the bay to the pipeline terminal.

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Down the hill.

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We stopped at a sporting goods store. We were looking for a slightly larger backpack with more pockets. They happened to have their packs on sale at 30% off. We found one we liked and when we took it to the register it came up as 50% off and there is no tax here. A good deal.

The weather was improving, not sunny but brighter so we decided to drive up a scenic road north of town. The Mineral Creek Road is a very potholed dirt road that follows the creek 5 miles up a glacial valley. About 2 miles in we came to this spot where the choice was to drive through this:

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or park and hike onwards first crossing what we assumed was the old bridge.

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The creek wasn’t that deep and we could have probably made it across but we needed some exercise so we walked for a while.

There was a nice waterfall above the bridge.

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There were very tall, thin waterfalls in just about every valley in the mountains beside us.

We walked about another kilometer down the road. It looked like we would have to go along way to see anything different so we turned back.

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Thank goodness for waterproof hiking shoes.

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After dinner I went back to the fish hatchery. It seems that the bear family is making nightly appearances and I was just too early yesterday. Everybody seems to know about it.

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The town even has a “community safety officer” that comes and sits over here every night. When the bears show up he makes sure everyone behaves. This mama bear must be very used to people. At Denali they said to keep 300 yards away from a bear. We were a lot closer.

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Lots of easy pickins.

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The eagles were also getting in on the action.

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Trying to keep those pesky seagulls from the food.

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Heading back around the end of the Sound into Valdez. At least someone off in the distance is getting some sun.

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We are heading north tomorrow.

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