Week Fourteen~Alaska Trip July 15-22

                                        Valdez
The trip to Valdez had some awesome views over Thompson Pass, down through Keystone Canyon. The trip back UP tomorrow should be interesting. We will be to the side, going up that three mile hill SLOWLY.
We have been camped out at Allison Point, which is about eight miles from Valdez, road miles. We can see the town right across the bay from here.
               This is from Valdez looking back onto Allison Point.
                       We have seen seals and otters in the water.
This camping area is provided by the town, mostly for fishermen. They are parked all along the road and in this area and only need to climb down over the bank to fish. They must do pretty well or there wouldn’t be so many people here. It has been pretty active here all weekend but it is starting to thin out as this is Sunday morning and a lot of weekend fishermen are heading home.
Valdez is a cute little town, quite clean and not nearly as commercialized as Homer or Seward. There are neat Visitor Centers and museums in town. There are also glaciers that you can hike to if you would like. We also went and found the original site of Valdez. They moved the town (all 52 buildings) in 1967. There was a bad earthquake in 1964 and then discovered that the town was located on the fault line, so they relocated the town four miles to the west.
There are about twenty waterfalls in Keystone Canyon. Some big, some small. This is one that you view driving out of town.
                               Top of waterfall up on the mountain.             Bottom of the same waterfall by the Visitor’s Center.                     Look to the right of the building for the waterfall.
We went out to dinner last evening because I really wanted to have some Alaskan King Crab legs before we left Alaska. They served a pound for $39.95 at the Totem Inn in Valdez. They were quite good. They were not fresh, as they are harvested in the winter. However, my stomach did not care!
Here are some pictures of the local housing. Not much to get excited about, a lot of double wide homes. I cannot imagine that they are warm in the winter, but they must have a way to have it work for them, because there are a lot of them, all over Alaska.
                                       This one is for sale….. 
             This is the second round house that we have seen.
Last, we stopped at the fish hatchery right down the road from us. There are a lot of salmon in the stream and a lot jumping.
Finally, Solomon Gulch, right across the street from the hatchery.
  We headed out on Monday after going intown to the local ATM. We want cash to pay for fuel through Canada, as the credit card charges quite a bit. It was a cool rainy day but the scenery back through Keystone Canyon and Thompson Pass was still something to see. There are many waterfalls all through that stretch of road.

We had a pleasant drive and stopped just beyond Glenellen for lunch. The rest of the ride from on the Tok cutoff was pretty rough. The first 25 miles was construction with a lot of gravel road and then the next 100 miles was lumps and bumps  caused by frost heaves. We made it to Tok by five and settled in. Phil was draining the fresh water tank because we were not happy with the last fill we had put in down in Seward. Our neighbor came knocking to tell us we were leaking water, so we got to chatting and invited them over for a glass of wine. They came to our place and then we went to theirs. They were very pleasant, new to full timing and RVing. They were headed back to the lower 48 on Tuesday.  They were anxious to get through Canada and back to the USA, as we all are.
The next day was COLD, 44 degrees, rainy and windy. We hunkered down in the morning and did not venture outside. Around 2 PM we did go across the road for a late lunch. We went back to Fast Eddie’s and had a great lunch. From there we went to the post office and grocery shopping. Any outside work that Phil had planned to do was put off until the next day, which is forecasted to be a nicer day.  We watched a DVD later in the evening and then climbed into a nice warm bed, thanks to electricity and a mattress heater. We keep getting emails from people saying how hot this summer has been and we have rarely seen temperatures as high as 70. I am afraid we will melt when we get to Wyoming in August!
So, we will be here another night and then head into Canada on Thursday. We will not have phone or internet unless we can pick up some wifi along the way. I will keep the blog up to date but may not be able to post it for a while. I’ll let everyone know when that happens.  I’m off to clean and do some windows….