Up early for this early start...Jerry walked dogs and came back and said there was a moose that walked across the road about 3 campsites down from us. I walked over to laundry to look for lost sock and saw the moose lying down in the trees between campsites. Went back and got Barb and we took car to go take pix while guys drove over to gas station on base. Turns out it was a mama and baby and when we got over there, she was up and grazing along with baby. We pulled up and stopped and took lots of pictures. It was really interesting. At one point baby wanted some of mama's milk and I couldn't believe how hard he had to pull on mama to get milk! They were between campers and at one point it looked like she was looking into the camper's rear view mirror! After our pix we met the guys at the gas station. STILL no Bullwinkle or Yogi! We want to see a big bull moose and a grizzly (we are not particular about sex of bear as none of us want to get that close!)
We are facing a 300 mile drive today as we head to Valdez. The drive itself was really pretty. We drove by the Matanuska Glacier which Jerry, his brother Jim and I had walked on when we were here back in 91. Boy has it changed! It has really retreated a lot! Our drive took us along a lot of open land through the town of Glenallen. We were seeing these very high snow covered peaks in the distance and they turned out to be the peaks in the Wrangell-St. Elias National Park. We stopped at the park headquarters to get pictures of those mountains and a stamp for our NP passports. There is not much access to this park and it is very rough. We wanted to go to Kennecott in the park, but it was about a 4 1/2 hour drive over very rough roads just to get there and then we had to come back - so we said no to that!
The really pretty part of the drive was down Hwy. 4 to Valdez. We stopped at Copper Cente which is a historical village to scope out RV parks for the return. Jerry and I would love to do some fishing, but it seems that fishing here is not what we pictured. There are very very complicated rules about fishing...only between mile x and mile y on such and such river between such and such dates, etc.....really hard to figure out. We kind of got the picture about where these places to fish are b/c that is where all the fishermen are lined up elbow to elbow tryhing to snag salmon. Salmon do not eat when they are returning to spawn - b/c Alaska says you have to fish with some type of lure or bait, they put colored yarn on hooks and kind of drag them through the water hoping to snag a salmon. This area was the first white settlement in this part of Alaska. It is located on the Klutina River which is supposed to be excellent fishing. Still undecided about trying to fish here.
We saw gorgeous waterfalls, streams and lakes as well as the Worthington Glacier which we will try to walk up to on our return trip as there is a trail up there. We crossed the mountains at Thompson Pass, not particularly high (2,678 ft), but very beautiful. Still lots of snow in mountains. Frank and Barb had gone on into Valdez and checked in...we had reservations for 2 nites here at Eagle Rest RV Park. We arrived about 3:30 and got hooked up. The campground was having a fish fry for all the RV'ers - compliments of the campground. Everyone was supposed to bring something to share and they cooked blackened salmon. It was a good time and our first experience with something like this. We were most impressed with this campground...everyone is very very friendly and they seem to be really well organized (which is not really the case at most of the campgrounds we have chosen). This is a BIG RV park!!! I think they have over 400 spaces so that was a lot of fish and it was all you could eat.
We booked another glacier cruise for tomorrow- going to Columbia and Meares Glaciers. It is a 9 1/2 hour cruise so we made arrangements for a dog sitter to come and walk the dogs at least once while we were gone. After dinner, back to RV and I worked on blog while Jerry went for a walk about town. I had trouble loading pictures so I guess I should have gone for a walk with Jerry...oh well....that is why I am a bit behind on the picture bit.
Off to bed as cruise picks us up here at RV park at 9 a.m. More tomorrow....Linda
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment