City of Valdez, June 25-29

We stayed four nights in Valdez, going to church at the LDS Branch there. We stayed in a gravel, no services, inexpensive, RV park right on the water near the Terminus of the Alaska Pipeline. We could look across the sound to the city of Valdez. It was very restful there.

This view of the Terminus was from our campground. You can barely see the tops of the many storage tanks.

This sign warns that entry to the terminus is private. The Alaska Pipeline is the most expensive private undertaking ever done! At it's height it employed 30,000 workers. We knew a fella from Charlotte who went here to work on the pipeline. Note that the tide is out.

This is a fishing boat leaving the Valdez harbor. Some of these boats are featured on "The Most Deadly Catch" TV program.

These are two glaciers in the backdrop of the City of Valdez.

Here is another glacier as seen from the Sound.

This Eagle was sitting right near the harbor entrance.

This was a morning view from the front of our coach in our campsite on the Prince William Sound, with the mountains above Valdez. Do you see why I considered it peaceful?

This is a view to the north of the Chugah Mountain Range, from our Valdez campground.

Here we are parked on our campsite right beside the Sound. This is called "dry camping" since we had no water, electricity at our site. When we got ready to leave Valdez, we had to drive into town to "dump" our grey and black water and replace our fresh water.

On our drive back to town, we passed this Solomon Gulch, a small canyon-like creek.

This is a photo at the museum showing "old Valdez", which was badly damaged in the 1964 earthquake of 9.2 on the Richter Scale. As a result, they moved the town about five miles away to a more stable area. There is very little evidence that the old town ever exsisted as they moved 52 buildings to the new town and burned the rest.

This is a photo of the"new Valdez" in it's new location. Note how close the mountains are!

In the Valdez museum, there was this beautifully restored 1907 steam fire engine. It had all this beautiful gold trim on it.

This is an old horse drawn fire engine in the same museum. People stood on each side to pump the water, using those long poles, shown near the top. They even had a Jeep fire engine there! It looked like a regular Jeep in the front but was red and had a different back end.

For all you fishermen out there, here is a trophy of the very rare fur fish caught locally! (How gullible are you?)

Here is an old natives scoop net, used for fishing, along with fish wheels. We don't have a picture of a fish wheel here.

This is a native chief from the Copper River Valley who led the miners to the copper.

This photo is of the switchback of the original trail for miners over the mountains from Valdez. This was called the American trail to the gold mines. Originally the locals made the miners cross over a steep trail which included going over a trecherous glacier.

A real "break-through" came when the Army made a road over the Thompson Summit, which avoided the steep, treacherous trail over the glacier.

Jim is here in the museum at the huge bar recovered from the original Valdez saloon. It's now in the Valdez museum.

In the local grocery store, a Safeway Store, Jim noticed this sign about encouraging people to buy locally grown vegetables grown in Alaska's Mat-Su valley.

This is a shot of the Valdez Harbor. It is right downtown. This shows the Chugah Mountain Range in the background.

I was lucky enough to catch this Eagle in flight near the harbor. He had been sitting on top of a utility pole. Check out that wing span of six or more feet!

. This is one last view, actually a copy of their commercial photo, of the LuLu Belle Yacht, in the ice at the Columbian Glacier. The Captain, Fred, built it in the 1970's and has been doing tours during the summers 7 days a week ever since. In Winter, he and his wife take it to Seattle where they do local cruises.