August 11, 2010

I have been wanting biscuits and gravy so I made some this morning. We mailed mom a book about a family homesteading in Alaska for her to read. Mary belongs to Toastmasters and they had a meeting today and she gave a speech so I went to listen. Jim went to Costco and Best Buy while I was at Toastmasters. Marv and Vicki gave him a gift certificate for his birthday and he used it to buy pair of really nice ear buds for his mp3 player. Mary told us about a great museum and we went to see it. It is the Alaska Heritage Museum at Wells Fargo, one of the largest private collections of native artifacts and fine art by Alaskan artists. They have a nice research library. They also have a 46 ounce gold nugget and a huge mammoth tusk. We then drove to get me some more material for my quilt and ended up at a gay bar. Everyone told me to go to the Raven. I looked it up and got the address. No material there! What they neglected to say was the whole name. The Quilted Raven. We finally found it on our own. On the way home we went back to Midnight Sun Brewing for some beers. While we were there Jim talked with the marketing representative from Alaskan Brewing. Phil grilled steaks and Mary fixed potatoes and salad. Phil welded a receiver hitch onto the back of the Casita so we can use our bicycle rack or attach a box to carry gear. Phil took Mary and Jake to the airport to fly to Colorado to visit her mother before school starts for Jake next week.

August 12, 2010

We did some errands today in preparation to leave Anchorage. It rained again today -- if it rains again tomorrow it will tie the record for the most consecutive days of rain up here. We stayed one more night at Phil and Mary's and met Phil at Midnight Sun for dinner and a beer. Their special was Posole. It was fantastic! They made it with green chilis and it had some sliced radishes, avacado and shredded cabbage on top. After we returned to the house Phil got ready for a two night boat trip to Prince William Sound with his boss to fish. They are leaving out of Whittier.

August 13, 2010

We found a place to dump and take on fresh water at the Tesoro gas station. We only drove 112 miles today and stopped on the Glenn Highway at King Mountain State Recreation Site. This campground is on the Mantanuska River. We got the only pull site through right across from the river (everything else was back-ins.) We played dominoes at the table until it started to rain. We took a short drive up the road to Long Lake and saw a porcupine. On a side road we found an old covered bridge alongside the road. It didn't go over anything -- maybe another one of Alaska's bridges to nowhere?

We got a paper today and it said that this summer has been one of the coldest, gloomiest and wettest on record for South Central Alaska according to the weather service. This is because of a low pressure system that has been stagnant over the Bering Sea since early June funneling tropical moisture in over the state. There have been 26 consecutive days with a trace or more of rain in Anchorage. The weather service has not tallied a fair, cloud-free day in Anchorage since April. So they tied a record today for rain.

August 14, 2010

We woke up to patchy sun!! We left camp and headed down the road to see Mantanuska Glacier. On the way we stopped off at Long Lake and had lunch. We had a beautiful site right on the lake. We thought about staying there tonight but it was too early to call it a day and camp. We stopped at a number of pullouts along the road and since we had a fair amount of sun, we decided to take a hike at mile 118.5 at a trailhead for Chickaloon-Knik-Nelchina. The Knik Glacier was where the people from Galveston were just stranded and rescued. We hiked two hours to the top of a hill and back. Along the way we picked blueberries. I put some in the freezer and tomorrow we will have some with our cereal. We saw a lot of bear scat and had to be on the lookout bears love blueberries. This trailhead has a large paved parking lot with pit toilets and picnic tables so we decided to camp here for the night. A couple of other campers also pulled in. It warmed up to 71 degrees today, the warmest we have had in a month or so.

August 15, 2010

We woke up to sun this morning, two days in a row! We had cereal and wild blueberries for breakfast. We drove the rest of the Glenn Highway to Glennallen where we got gas. Then we drove south on the Richardson Highway toward Valdez. We took pictures along the way of Mt. Sanford - 16,237 feet, Mt. Drum - 12,010 feet, Mt. Wrangell - 16,390 feet and Mt. Blackburn - 16,390 feet. These mountains start at sea level. This time we got to see them with blue skies -- last month when we were in the Wrangell-St. Elias National Park it was rainy. The clouds started to roll in around 1 pm and soon it was completely cloudy again. We made a stop at the Worthington Glacier and walked all the way to it. I made Jim stop when we got to the part of the glacier that was covered with dirt. I didn't want to fall into a crevice. We took pictures of Bridal Veil and Horsetail Falls. We saw these the last time we drove out of Valdez a few years ago. We also saw a swan by a lake today. We got an RV site at Valdez Glacier Campground. Today's Sunday paper said that Anchorage did break the record for the most consecutive days with rain. It got to 78 degrees today.

August 16, 2010

We woke up this morning to low clouds and fog. It was cloudy all day and rained off and on. We drove Dayville Road to see how the camping was on it and stopped at the Salmon Gulch Fish Hatchery. There must have been 10,000 seagulls eating salmon. The smell was horrendous. We decided the camping there wasn't for us and stayed at the Valdez Glacier City Campground. We drove to the Old Valdez townsite. Valdez was heavily damaged in the 1964 earthquake and the town was rebuilt in a different location with more stable ground. The old town was burned to the ground. We drove down one of the roads next to a stream with spawning salmon and we saw a momma black bear and three cubs.

We drove to Valdez Glacier and there was ice floating in the lake. Kayakers were getting ready to paddle out to the glacier. They looked very colorful amid the low clouds, fog and icebergs. We drove into town and stopped at the USFS fish spawning view area where there was another bear. The Forest Service has a camera mounted under the water for everyone to be able to see the fish. We stopped at the information center and asked where the best place for fish and chips was and was told Alaska Halibut House. We went there and shared a large order for lunch. Then we drove to the harbor and looked around. Afterward we went to the Valdez Museum and the Remembering Old Valdez Exhibit. Both were very good and the latter had a 35 minute movie on the 1964 earthquake and the history of Valdez. We saw the Peter Toth Indian carving. He has carvings like these in all 50 states. Then we went to the Maxine and Jesse Whitney Museum that has artifacts from Alaska which include minerals, carvings, baskets, dolls, stuffed animals, and mammoth bones. They were collected by the Whitneys for their shop in Fairbanks and then were donated for a museum.

We decided to drive back out Dayville Road to see if there were any bears out this afternoon eating salmon. Sure enough we found a lone black bear stuffing itself with the abundant salmon. He was fun to watch -- he caught the fish with no trouble.

At 8 pm I was telling Jim if it wasn't raining I would go to town to get some vanilla ice cream to go with the raspberries we picked. Just a few minutes later we heard an ice cream truck's jingle. A bright pink Miss Peggy's truck came into the campground up and down every road. I stood by our drive and waited for her, just like we did as children. I bought her last carton of vanilla ice cream. She also has espresso, hot soup and some other food. She told us that Sarah Palin and Greta Van Susteren (of Fox News) would be in Valdez tomorrow. Maybe we will see them.

August 17, 2010

It rained all day. We hung around the Casita and went to the grocery store and the library. The library has a book exchange in the lower level. I traded and got three books. We wanted to go on the Stan Stephens glacier tour in Prince William Sound but it has been nasty weather for 3 days.

August 18, 2010

We woke up to partly sunny skies! We called the Stan Stephens office and made a reservation for their longest cruise -- 10 am to 7ish pm. The boat was only half full so we had a nice table all to ourselves. The cruise was great -- we saw sea otters, harbor seals, 200 or so stellar sea lions, both kinds of puffins, 3 humpback whales, marbled murrelet, pigeon guillemont, murre, cormorant, great blue heron, arctic tern, black bear, and bald eagles, one of which got a fish and was eating it in front of us. They served a great lunch and around 5 they had a bowl of clam chowder for us. We went to the Columbia Glacier. You can't get very close to this one because of all the icebergs it generates as it recedes. I held a piece of glacier ice that the crew netted and brought on board. We also went to the Meares Glacier and stopped really close to the edge. You could hear the crackling of the ice and it would calve off in front of you. This created a loud noise and splash. This glacier is advancing, one of the few that is. There were a lot of harbor seals laying on the icebergs in front of the glacier. We got back at a quarter till eight -- it was a 9 hr 45 minute cruise. We had a coupon for the shorter cruise (buy one get one free) and they let us use it for the longer cruise. Very nice of them. We have been on Prince William Sound three times now and then scenery in the different areas is always beautiful. The last time we took the 27 glacier tour out of Whittier and saw different glaciers and we rode the ferry from Whittier to Valdez which went by a different route.