Valdez

July 23, 2012  Valdez

What an amazing day!

 First of all, it is my daughter Stephanie's birthday--the anniversary of one of the happiest days of my life!  Happy Birthday with love from Alaska!

We left our lovely roadside campground in time to be at the Wrangell-St. Elias National Park Visitor Center when it opened.  After a quick tour around the center and watching a very good film called "Crown of the Continent", we headed for Valdez in cold rain and driving through clouds.

Native fish wheel at the Visitor's Center

It was such a beautiful drive!  I can't imagine how wonderful it would be to see it on a clear day!  We stopped to photograph the gorgeous Bridal Veil Falls and the several smaller falls beside it, then were stunned by the even more beautiful Horse Tail Falls around the next curve!  We will return to take pictures of those falls tomorrow.

Bridal Veil Falls

Valdez is a small town located on Prince William Sound surrounded by majestic mountains, glaciers, marshes, and abundant wildlife.  More about that later.  The mountains are shrouded in clouds and fog today, but we can see bits of them here and there.  This is also the southern terminal of the Alyeska Pipeline.  Our campground is situated downtown, overlooking a marsh and an inlet off of the Sound.  It has full hookups and is very convenient to everything.

The marsh from our campsite (there are mountains in those clouds)

Another view from the campsite

We took a drive around town and the pretty harbor and stopped at the Peter Pan Seafood Store to buy some fish.  The guys have decided not to take a charter from here because the weather is bad and the halibut being caught is not very big.

In the early evening we drove out to the Solomon Gulch Hatchery to see the salmon returning to spawn.  What an amazing sight it was!   Thousands of salmon were churning in the water trying to get back into the hatchery where they were born.

The ladder the salmon have to swim up

Thousands of salmon in the water

A big salmon

A salmon swimming up the ladder

Also in the water were many sea lions--some of them HUGE.  The big ones were just sitting there as if they had eaten too much, and the little ones were having their turn at the salmon. Then there were the seagulls and eagles waiting for any leftovers.  It was fascinating to watch.

We ran into Jim and Lana again at the hatchery, and had a nice chat with them.The terminal for the pipeline is just beyond the hatchery, but it is securely fenced and guarded so we were not able to get close enough to see anything of interest there.

As we started to leave, we saw people gathered on the other side of the hatchery and stopped to see what they were looking at.  It was a mama grizzly and FOUR cubs fishing for salmon on the rocks!  What an awesome sight it was!  We stood there in the rain for a long time watching them.  Mama kept an eye on the people as she and the cubs had their fill of fish.  The cubs were getting pretty good at catching them and once mama even took a fish from one of the cubs and ate it herself.

Further out in the water, several sea otters reclined on their backs while also dining on salmon.  This was a once in a lifetime experience that I will never forget.  I feel so blessed to have had the opportunity to see the things we have seen on this trip.

After a dinner of halibut and chips at the Old Town Diner,  we returned home to admire the 10,000 pictures (just kidding) that we took today.