Thursday August 5, Bear Paw Camp, Valdez, AK

95 Miles

The rain has been with us again this morning, although thankfully the guys in Palmer have truly fixed the leak and not a drop came in.

Somehow we are excepting that rain and grey skies are just what Alaska can be like and just getting on with enjoying it as it is.

This mornings drive into Valdez was stunning, and that was with the pouring rain…fingers crossed that when we leave the rain and cloud will have disappeared. The road passed by numerous glaciers, waterfalls, rivers and huge mountains and we were up in alpine pasture again going over the pass.

Just before coming into town, we took a side road that lead out to the oil refinery, the end point of the Alaskan Pipeline. Amazing to think that we have seen both ends, from Prudhoe Bay on the Dalton Highway and now to where the oil is loaded onto the tankers. 

But before the refinery area, which you can’t access, the salmon were coming in to the streams to spawn and we have never seen anything like it…..wall to wall salmon trying to get up the weir to the stream.  There were thousands of dead ones that didn’t make it and the seagulls were having a real feast. 

Also there was huge signs about the bears and sure enough as we were driving back we saw a black bear down by the water, but by the time I got my camera out it was heading back into the woods….just my luck! Will check it out again tomorrow.

We got into town early afternoon and booked into a campground, and by the time we had lunch the rain had eased right off. So donned our coats and went walking around town, but it really is a small country town. The earthquake of 1960 wiped the town out so it has been completely rebuilt in a new area. The buildings are all of the same era.

We then headed down to the boat harbour which was a hive of activity, the charter boats and private boats were coming in with their days catch….many varieties of fish from salmon, cod and halibut to 2 huge sharks. 

They have cleaning benches set up all around and it was great to see the guys cutting up the fish. We watched one chap fillet some salmon, he charges $1 per fish and hardly leaves a piece of flesh on the carcass.

The sun finally come out, and on our walk back to the van we saw a sea otter basking on its back in the harbour, enjoying the sun. Such neat little creatures, so intriguing as they spend most of their time on their back, just doing revolutions every now and again.