Week 154 - Valdez, Alaska - 07-26-2009

Views of Valdez,

Leaving Victory Bible Camp last Sunday, we joined about 80 camp workers for a service at Glacier View Bible Church. While hearing the message you could gaze out the windows at Matanuska Glacier.

While you can drive right up to this glacier, we chose to drive to the Long Rifle Lodge. And we were rewarded with the best burger in Alaska! Pete enjoyed his Bleu Cheese Burger so much, he broke with a lifelong tradition and paid for a Long Rifle T-Shirt with their name imprinted, to advertise this great restaurant with the fabulous view of the Matanuska Glacier.

A view out the restaurant window, the glacier is off to the left. The restaurant is filled with bears and other animals.

This black bear and the Petes, both enjoying the view of the glacier.

The landscape on the Glenallen Highway is typical awesome Alaskan.

Even the forest fire smoke in the air could not blur the vision of a frost-heaved highway that once had straight paint lines.

Turning south at the community of Glenallen, the Old Richardson Highway passes the Worthington glacier on the way to Valdez.

Valdez was blessed with 30 continuous days of sunshine prior to our visit. This was reported to us as an usually sunny summer. We however, stayed six days with four of them drizzling rain. Still Valdez and the 30 miles leading to it has the most fabulous scenery we have ever seen rivaling trips to Hawaii.

Below is Valdez bay a few miles from the city of Valdez. The city is surrounded 350 degrees by incredible mountains.

This is the Valdez harbor. The ship in the lower right corner is the Lu Lu Belle. For six days the Lu Lu Belle takes to the ocean for sea life and glacier tours. On Sundays, the captain loads the boat for a free cruise and church service with Pastor Chad. We joined in with our SOWERS friends who met up with us on our sixth day.

Ellen, always up for a good hike, got this photo of fireweed, the harbor and the mountains.

Valdez, unlike most of Alaska, has no free dry camping near the city. We stayed at the Elks, Bayside RV Park and Allison Point across the bay. Our Verizon Aircard worked erratically, from no reception to limited use. Therefore, we appreciated the free and strong WiFi at the library. Every day we parked, as seen below, and stayed until work was over. The statue across the street adorns the campus of the Prince William Sound Community College.

A north facing picture of the harbor and a southern photo from the same viewing point.

This pilot experimented with his aircraft as we experimented with lunch at The Harbor Cafe. Experiment results were excellent.

Again the mountains are visible from Allison Point across the bay south of Valdez. Our SOWERS group parked here for the day.

The bay was teeming with animals, birds, SOWERs and bears.

The Lord blessed us in our last week in Alaska with this bear. He visits the fish hatchery most days.

After eating the salmon caught by fisherman on the shore, he picked up some dessert at the hatchery.

Some bystanders thought the bear to be a two-year old. He dropped most the fish he caught . . .

but finally got this one to the shore. With a gentle paw push, he squeezed the eggs out and licked'em up. Yum!

After his snack he wandered along the water just 30 feet from the camera.

Here he focused on Pete and began to climb the rocks toward him. But seeing how skinny Pete was, he went back to the water. . .

to do a little scratching! This was truly an awesome experience.

Next week we will leave Alaska and head south through British Columbia. We will return briefly to Alaska at Hyder, hopefully to see more bears. Alaska has truly been amazing and each week just gets better.

Be blessed. Love, Pete and Ellen

Photos from Jul 2009