Scenic Drive Out of Valdez

We wake up to beautiful blue skies! I make some coffee and head outside to enjoy the great scenery here in Valdez. No church service on TV, so I spend some time talking with God while I'm enjoying His beautiful scenery.

The tide is extremely low this morning and the water is far from the trailer, with millions of little black mussels on the shore. I see a few others walk out over the mussels, so I decide to do the same -- very different walking across tiny mussels and seaweed. After breakfast Joe and Jere decide to also walk out to the water.

This has been an interesting stop. Before this I always associated Valdez with the Alaskan Pipeline and the oil spill, but after this visit I now associate Valdez with fishing. It seems like there are fisherman everywhere in Valdez: in boats, on the shore, on the pier. Nothing wrong with that, but not what I expected. However, I did feel guilty when someone would ask me how many fish I caught, and I'd have to admit that I wasn't a fisherman: They would look at me with the expression " Why not?" :-)

Anyway, after taking our time getting ready and packing up, we leave Valdez and start the scenic drive out of town. It was cloudy when we drove this road coming into Valdez, so this is a treat to have blue skies. Our first stop is a few miles outside of Valdez at Horsetail Falls.

Beautiful scenery, but also an interesting "Alaskan Artist" has set up her van and artwork. What is interesting is that she appears to have a hunting knife and a pistol strapped to her belt.

Our next stop is at Thompson Pass.

We make several more stops during the day, including a picnic by the creek, but the mountains are surrounded by clouds in the afternoon, so we don't get the wonderful view of the Wrangell Mountain range that we were hoping for.

We stop at Tok, Alaska by dinnertime.