July 29th - August 1st

Sorry I haven't had any posting for a while but we were without internet for 2 nights as we stayed "on the road", at least on the side of the road, and then when we arrived in Valdez I had a terrible head cold.  It came up the night before in about an hour.  We were sitting beside the fire enjoying cocktails (lemonade only)   when I started to get stuffed up.  Within the hour I was in bed all stuffed up and just waiting for the chariot   to carry me home!  I slept for a long time and woke up feeling much better and each day is better as you can see from this update.

On Thursday we stopped for lunch and our big slide went out and in just like it should.  When we stopped for the evening, the slide would not budge.  The motor wouldn't even growl at us.  I checked the electrical and could not find anything wrong so we hand-cranked it out and back in the next morning.  I guess the motor needs to be replaced when we get home.  In the meantime I went to a machine shop and had a "tool" made so we can use the drill to move it in and out.

On Friday when we arrived in Valdez we couldn't even hand-crank the slide out and we had a grey water pipe that was leaking.  Apparently on one the frost heaves, we bounced too much and one of the bolts that turns the slide support had sheared off while another bolt had punctured the PVC pipe.  Well WD & BA to the rescue!  WD repaired the slide attachment while BA filled the hole in the pipe with an under-water putty... we'll see if they both work.

As we drive around, I am always amazed at how low the clouds are here.  Many times we are less than 2000' and are driving into clouds.  This seems to be everywhere in AK. 

Another common site is the bullet holes in the road signs.  Once we leave a city it seems as if all the road signs have bullet holes   in them... quite artistic.

As I said the other day in my Tally Book, we can't seem to get away from chickens.  Today we drove through Chickaloon.  There were a couple of buildings of which 1 was for sale.  You could own almost the entire town with this "business opportunity”.

What a great opportunity -Honest!

Saturday we went for a drive to Dayville Rd, which leads to the Valdez Oil Terminal or the end of the pipeline.  This is a very secure area as the first of several guardhouses is about a mile from the actual storage & office area.  On the way we stopped to watch a bear eat salmon.  This was interesting as he caught one salmon, took it back in the bushes where he ate it.  Next he went back into the creek where there were a number of dead fish.  He checked (smelled) each one and then moved on.  The next thing he did was catch a live salmon, take it on shore where he milked the roe... milked may be a little to refined as he really just stepped on the fish and out came the roe but he was good at it.  Once he had eaten all the roe, he let the fish flop back into the water as he went in search of another one.  It wasn't long before he left the area to go eat berries along the edge of the road... I think there may have been too many people around.

We also saw a lot of salmon staging at the mouth of a river.  For some reason, the river was blocked by a net so only an occasional salmon got through.  We are not sure why this was done but I am sure it has something to do with the hatchery beside the river mouth. 

Tomorrow (Sunday) we are going on a cruise into the ice fields with Capt Fred but who knows if this is the captain's real name.  So far we've had RV service from Dan's RV Service whose name was Bob and I've gone on a charter with Bob's Trophy Charter which was owned by Dave.  So stay tuned.

 
Did you know? You will be hard pressed to find kids who have never flown.  In 1996, one of every 58 Alaskans was a registered pilot.  The state has about six times as many pilots and 14 times as many aircraft per capita as the rest of the States.

Pictures can be seen at On the Way To Valdez

Take care and keep the loops open.