We spent the night at our favorite turnout on Dayville Road until 11 PM and then we drove over to the Solomon Gulch Fish Hatchery parking lot to, hopefully, watch the bears come to feast on salmon. We stayed up to midnight and, alas, no bears. Denis got up again at 3AM to try to catch that big salmon but all he managed to do was feed the mosquitoes. I got up around 5 AM to peek out the windows hoping the bears arrived but no such luck.
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| This is what they use to clean the wax build up in the oil pipeline |
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| Painted mural on a downtown Valdez building |
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| Still trying |
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| It was very exciting to see so many Eagles on the shore and in the trees |
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| All the side roads have these beautiful purple flowers called Fireweed which changes color to a bright orange in the Fall |
With a quick breakfast of coffee, banana and toast, we headed into town to visit the Maxine and Jesse Whitney Museum at Prince William Sound Community College. We were impressed with this state-of-the-art facility with an extensive array of Alaskan animal mounts, including polar bears, brown, black and grizzly bears, musk ox, moose and some smaller animals and birds. The story about Maxine and Jesse moving to Alaska was an interesting one. She had a passion for collecting native and prehistoric artifacts, native dolls, and carved ivory. I'm glad we decided to stop for a visit.
We also stopped at a thrift/gift store that continuously plays a movie about the 1964 earthquake. This Good Friday earthquake measured 9.2 on the Richter scale and lasted five minutes. It is the most destructive earthquake ever to hit south-central Alaska, virtually destroying Valdez.
The only way to get to Palmer from Valdez is to re-trace our travels back up the Glenn Highway passed Copper Center and Glennallen. I went into the Glennallen visitor’s center and they had some very impressive animal mounts there too. We drove about 160 miles before we decided to call it a day and find a place to stop for the night. We climbed the Eureka Summit at 3,222 feet which is the highest point on the Glenn Highway and pulled into a double-ended turnout. From our turnout, if we look south, we have a view of the Chugach Mountains and the Nelchina Glacier which winds downward through a cleft in the mountains. If we look northwest, we see the peaks of the Talkeetnas and to the west the highway descends through river valleys which separate these two mountain ranges. This is the divide of three rivers systems, the Susitna, Matanuska and Copper. Just beautiful!
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| Our picture window view |
As soon as we settled in, I boiled some water for angel hair pasta, grated fresh garlic, parmesan cheese, butter and olive oil with a tossed a green salad for a nice quick dinner. Which reminds me, I’m getting low on my wine supply.
That’s all folks! Thanks for stopping in.
Another bust day, but better find some wine soon, could be a major disaster.
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