Valdez, AK Last Day

Saturday, August 5, 2017

Another beautiful day. We are so glad we decided to stay 2 extra days so we could enjoy the beauty here.

This morning, this is what we saw in our back yard. The tide is out, but look at the size of that barge.

If you didn't read the previous post, this is Gold Rush Days weekend here in Valdez. We are headed to an all you can eat  breakfast consisting of regular and or blueberry pancakes, egg casserole, bacon, sausage. We got our fill and headed out for a drive to unexplored (by us) areas.

The glacier on this mountain has a vertically straight wall of ice I was curious about. Below I zoomed in on that wall. Interesting!

We had driven by a sign for Robe Lake several times so decided to go see it. This piece of equipment was sitting in the lake?????

We learned, from locals sitting on the shore, this is used to mow the grass out of the lake. Ever heard of mowing a lake? Apparently the grass reduces places for the fish and fishing is major here in Alaska.

Next we drove to a spot where we were told the bears sometimes fish for dinner. We didn't see any bears but we did see this eagle looking for dinner.

 As you can see, he is right among the gulls. We can see fish jumping around him, but he does nothing.

Finally he flies off without any fish.

Just a short distance down the road, in a shallow pond, we see a group of trumpeter swans. Some were splashing and pruning themselves. Others were just floating around.

 The next 3 pictures show this one swan about to show off.

Pretty cool looking.

As I mentioned earlier, this weekend is Gold Rush Days in Valdez. This is a group of the Can-Can girls and the sheriff. They came through the RV park and posed for pictures.

There was an open-air market in town also. I walked through the market and found several of the locals like to dress for the period of gold rush days. I got a few of them to let me take their picture.

Everyone was having a great time. It was fun to wander through.

 It is almost 10:30pm and sunset.  We are actually having a few hours of dark night now.

The moon is almost full and coming up over the mountains. What a beautiful way to end a lovely day!