Saturday and we awoke to cloudy skies but
no rain. We broke camp, and took our
bikes out for a tour of the town. That
is part of our journey, to see how other towns live and work and just “are.” Every town is unique but these towns of these
past weeks have the most phenomenal view of mountains or eagles or bays or
oceans. Don’t get me wrong, I love
waking up and looking out our windows in Kyana as well, sitting on our front
porch, or watching the sun set off our back desk. The hills of southern Indiana will always be
home (for some of you wondering if we’ll ever really come back)!!
The cloudy skies along with the rain from during
the night created fog, crawling down the mountains, and up out of the water and
plains—adding another layer of beauty.
We drove down past the harbor and through the town itself, stopping to
walk ½ mile up to a “viewpoint” even though every point is a viewpoint. We passed factories that processed fish
products and the accompanying dormitories for the workers (along with rec
hall/laundromat and mess hall), the “small harbor” with TONS of different kinds
of boats readying for the day or resting in the gentle waves, a group of
rabbits nibbling on some grass next to the harbor (yes, regular small black
rabbits-definitely not native to this area—assuming someone just let them go
“free”), a pond that warned that no life guard was on duty (!), homes of
varying sizes and materials, and yet another Thai restaurant (We have
encountered zillions of Thai restaurants everywhere in the middle of
nowhere!). We heard the music that is
fog horns letting the boats know where the harbor lies.
A question that has come to mind several
times this trip: When towns are SO far
from other towns, how do, or even do the high schools compete with one
another? That would be some really,
really long road trips! Valdez has a
skiing team, and there were several high schools we’ve passed that have rodeo
teams.
We chanced upon a metal building “museum” (most
buildings are made of corrugated metal or “Morton”-type) that had an inviting
message to come see some of old Valdez.
March 27, 1964 was a day that changed many lives as it was the date of
the Good Friday earthquake that rocked Alaska.
It was a 9.2 quake centered in Prince William Sound. Many communities lost many and Valdez lost
their wharves and 32 people, and the town was “shaken” so badly that it was
deemed unsafe to live there so the town council opted to move it up the road
four miles. They did it in two years,
many building new, and some opting to move the old. They then burned the rest of what was left so
really all that is “old” Valdez are some roads and the concrete slab that the
library once stood on. It was sort of
surreal driving through it after seeing the detailed model inside of this
museum and watching the video of the history of the area and the devastation of
the earthquake. The area has been
abandoned since 1967, so that is 49 years of re-growth of trees and other vegetation,
and memories.
We packed up our bikes and watched two
eagles soar round and round until they landed in the field near the water. Then another eagle got too close to a gull’s
area so that gull showed him/her who was boss by chasing it away!
We took the road that led us to the end of
the Alaskan Pipeline. It is hard to
fathom we saw its beginning and its end!
On the way to Valdez we noticed a
restaurant touting “Authentic Russian Food”.
So, of course, since we’ve never had authentic Russian food before, we
stopped on the way to Tok. The owner is
truly Russian, having coming to the USA 16 years ago and buying this lodge
seven years ago. The “original” lodge
had been here for a long, long time before that and needed major updates and
renovations and she found it was cheaper to build new. The old one is still there, leaning a bit to
the right, a testament to its former glory if you close your eyes! She said she keeps really busy as they are
the middle of the journey between Glennallen and Valdez. The food was EXCELLENT! People come from as far away as Anchorage just
to eat there and just a few weeks ago she was sold out with bicyclists from
Germany that stayed for several days.
She said they are open year round but it starts getting busy in February
with snowmobiling, heli-skiing (she has a place for a helicopter to land and
they take skiers up to the pass and drop them off and they ski down from there-my
mouth dropped open at that!), and ice fishing.
People can do the DUMBEST things; today
there is a truck parked in the opposite lane pulled over. The shoulder isn’t very wide on this road so
his driver’s side wheels are actually on the highway side of the white
line. He did have his flashers on-give
him credit for that. A semi comes around
the corner and has to veer over the center line slightly to pass him and I saw
this all panning out so I got closer to my white line. I wondered if the guy in the truck was okay
but then I saw him walking with a camera around his neck. “Okay,” I think to myself, “surely not a
wildlife sighting.” It was a moose maybe
30 feet off of the highway, and this man was walking towards it! I mean everywhere you stop there are warnings
about not bothering the wildlife especially the bears and moose! Moose are like freight trains and pack a
powerful punch, and can run pretty fast!
And he wanted a picture. Sigh.
And, speaking of dumb things people do,
something else happened yesterday, and please, please, let me know if I am out
of line I thinking this was dumb because just maybe I am overreacting. When we were at the glacier that we could
walk on, there were two other couples that were walking on the white part and
were slipping around a bit. When they
got closer I realized that one of them was carrying a baby in a front pack, on
the ice, complaining how slippery the ice was!
I realize that I am a worrywart when it comes to kids (Ask our own (!))
and the entire gammits of “What if..” but this was slippery enough for us on
the white surface and she didn’t have the pointy sharp things on her
boots! I guess it takes all kinds. Sigh.
Thanks for listening to my venting. Andrew has had to listen to me several times
already. :)
It had started raining while we were
finishing up our bike journey and kept raining pretty consistently the entire
drive. We arrived in Tok and it stopped
raining long enough to set up camp. We
are now 90 miles from the Canada border, our last night of sleeping in
Alaska. We will sleep in Canada tomorrow
and then drive back into the USA to catch a 4 night / 3 day ferry to Washington
state (Haines-Juneau-Sitka-St. Petersburg-Wrangell-Ketchikan – all ports of
call in Alaska “panhandle” -then through Canadian waters to then end at
Bellingham, Washington).
As we were reviewing this entry, I glanced
over to our neighboring campsite. He was
wearing an Indianapolis 500 shirt from this past year! Go figure!
He actually lives in Florida near his grandchildren most of the year and
works for Amazon out of Kentucky for part of the year and then travels wherever
he wants the rest. It turns out he was
in Seward when we were, and he walked on the same glacier we did on the same
day. Small world!
No comments:
Post a Comment