Valdez by way of Palmer

I have some catch up to do.  I left you in Anchorage and since then we have been to Palmer for a few days and now are in beautiful Valdez.  We got all our errands done, and had a nice unexpected visit with friends, Keith and Jessica.  They are getting ready to head back down to the lower 48 and back to reality for awhile until they can come back to Alaska, hopefully in September.  Keith leaves his plane up here which makes it real nice for them to travel around and see the sights.  A few things caught our eye while we were there.

A kite surfer on Turnagain Arm

One more amazing view

And even the Thunderbirds were in town for a show

We went all of 45 miles up to our next stop in Palmer for a few nights mainly to put us in position to drive over Hatcher Pass.  We remembered it as a beautiful spot when we were here last time.  The campground was pretty nice especially after being packed in like sardines in Anchorage.

Never had next door neighbors either!

I should make mention that it is quite the anomaly that here in the "Last Frontier" with all this open space the campgrounds are pretty poor.  Most are not much more than gravel parking lots that jam in as many people as possible.  Of course real estate is expensive and their season is very short so it is somewhat understandable, but boy, you sure alter your standards up here.

Hatcher Pass is a beautiful ride, we went west to east from Willow to Palmer so as to put the pass towards the end of the ride.

Once you crest the pass at 3886', you start down and enter the Willow Creek drainage area where a lot of mining took place.  The Independence Mine has been made into an historical park.  Robert Lee Hatcher staked the first claim in the area in 1906, and it developed into a very productive mine with 1350 acres, over a dozen miles of tunnels, and 22 families living in the area.  When the US government shut all gold mining down in 1942, it operated another year or so mining scheelite, but finally was forced closed in 1943. The ban was lifted in 1946, but gold mining was tough as the government set the price of gold at $35/oz, and gold could only be sold to the government.  The mine closed in 1951.  It was very interesting walking around the site, in the rain, I might add.

The site of the mine

A mining train

They just left everything when it closed

Some buildings in ruins that haven't been restored

All in all we had a nice day even with the rain.  Then the next morning we drove on to Valdez, 260 miles, a long day.  The roads are such that you can't make any time, not that you want to with all the scenery, they are windy, rough in places, and you have to watch out for the frost heaves, but the views, wow!

Here comes Karen trying to catch up:-)

An example, Mt Sanford, 16,237, looking close enough to touch!

We stopped for lunch along the highway and happened on a native display of an old restored wooden fish wheel.

A bonus at lunch.

The Richardson Highway down to Valdez is just amazing with it's towering snow and ice covered jagged peaks.  You get a glimpse of the pipeline every once in a while, and just before the Thompson Pass, the snowiest place in Alaska, on average gets 551" of snow each year, you pass the Worthington Glacier just before you crest the pass and start the long downhill into Valdez.

The Worthington Glacier

Then on the descent you go by two fantastic waterfalls, the Bridal Veil and the Horsetail falls.

Bridal Veil

Horsetail

Now we are in our campground here with incredible views all around, with 50 amp power, something we haven't had in quite awhile.  We walked into town, went to 2 very interesting museums that dealt with the Gold Rush, the pipeline, the Exxon Valdez spill, and of course the Earthquake of 1964 that destroyed the then town of Valdez, before they moved the entire town to its present location.  Across the harbor from town is the oil terminal at the pipeline's terminus, and a very active salmon stream.

The roiling in the water is caused by the thousands of salmon trying to
get upstream.  The birds are pecking them and eating the ones that have
already spawned and died.  A glimpse of nature at work.  The bears come here often we are
told to dine on fresh fish although we didn't see any when we were here.

These two behemoths were in the parking lot.

And two sentinels watching over the feeding frenzy

A few things and the intrepid fishermen

First the fishing.  When we arrived in Homer the first thing we tried to do was reserve a fishing trip, to say halibut fishing is popular there is an understatement.  There were NO half day trips left, and only one opening for 2 people on a 6-pack, or a boat that only has 6 fishermen.  So we drew straws and Karen won.  So at 0545 on a rainy morning I dropped them off at the dock.  Off they went!

Departing

Goodbye spit

The day did improve.

Halibut are big flat fish that hang out near the bottom, in their case, they fished between 110' and 160' deep.  Makes for a lot of reeling in and out.  The bad thing was it was not a good day for fishing, unfortunately it was almost noon by the time Jan caught her first fish and not much later Karen got hers.  They have changed the regulations on halibut so now each person gets to keep one fish below 29" and one fish above.  Previously you could keep 2 fish of any size, so you kept on fishing until you decided to keep 2 fish.  Doesn't sound like it, but it is a significant change.

Some mean looking halibut hooks

But the sun came out and it became a beautiful day and our fishermen were successful!

The catch

And of course the after shot:-)

Delicious!

Not as good as they hoped, but a good and productive day nonetheless.

Turned out Karen had a bit of a leak on her motorhome as well during our previous deluge, so Jan and I took a few minutes to go up and reseal her shower skylight.  Karen wanted to do it herself, but kneeling on the roof to take care of it is beyond her new knees at this time.  Meanwhile I had discovered a developing problem with our tow bar.  As we hookup and unhook the truck the tow bar used to have enough resistance to kind of stand up on it's own, for example, when I hooked one side onto the truck the other arm would normally stay fairly aligned with the other tab, but lately it has been drooping.  When we arrived in Homer I took a close look and found out the two bushings appeared to be wearing abnormally, and had created a bit of "slop" in the assembly.  I called the tow bar manufacturer to get a professional opinion, and they confirmed that all was not right, and I should probably have it fixed before towing again.  Oh man.  Now if you remember when we got our new truck, we participated in Blue Ox's fit program where they used our truck to fabricate a baseplate, installed it and the wiring, and gave us a NEW tow bar all for free!  And where is that NEW tow bar?  It's in our storage unit in Florida, that's where.  I asked Blue Ox, could they repair our bar?  They said sure but the turnaround would be 2-3 weeks!  That sure won't work.  So to their credit, a fantastic company, they suggested if I would pay the shipping, they would send us a brand new tow bar and then I could send our NEW one back to them when we get to Florida in December, and that's what we did.  It was here in Anchorage waiting for us when we arrived late yesterday.  So we are good to go again.  We will, when we get back to the states, send our damaged bar back to Blue Ox for warranty repair, so when all is done we will still have two like new tow bars, one more than you really need?

So now we are back in Anchorage just for the day to go to Costco, grocery shopping, lunch eating, and of course, wine buying:-)

We like Homer!

We've been having a good time here in Homer.  Scenery and weather have been awesome, lots to do, people in the campground are very friendly, and it just feels good here.  As we travel about, some places feel welcoming and comfortable and some not so much, hard to quantify, but believe me it's very real.   

We wanted to get out walking and heard about a bakery that had high reviews and really good sticky buns.  Now it's not like we have sticky buns very often, once a year or so maybe, but it sounded appealing.  So Jan and I at 0700 walked 3/4 mile down to the Two Sisters Bakery to get some coffee and the famous sticky buns.  Looking through the display they looked good, gooey and fresh, so we grabbed two and some coffee and went down to a picnic table that sits on the edge of a slough, and........not so good.  Unfortunately pretty dry and overdone, just like the majority of the sticky buns you get:-(  Oh well, in another year or so we'll try again.  The good side was the view and the company were great!

Breakfast

We walked the beach back and Jan was able to get another few shots of eagles.  Probably getting tired of these by now, they're like pigeons up here:-)

Soaring through the campground

Ready to launch

Regal

We met our campground neighbors who gave us some fresh salmon they had caught earlier in the day, so we had a delicious dinner.

Yup, that's the color of fresh wild salmon!

We went down to the spit to wander around and have lunch.  Now the Homer Spit is quite something.  It is a piece of land that juts out into the water 4.5 miles, and is covered with shops, restaurants, businesses, campgrounds, harbors, etc.  So to say it a busy place in the summer is an understatement.  It's fun to poke around the shops and look at all the boats.  We had an amazing lunch at the Little Mermaid.  Excellent chowder, rice bowls, rockfish sandwiches, and a delicious and unusual cole slaw!  After lunch as we were walking around they were just hanging up a catch from one of the boats.

Fresh caught halibut

Now you may notice these fish are not so big, turns out they have changed the fishing regulations to limit the catches.  It used to be you could catch and keep 2 halibut of any size, therefore as you caught a fish you had to decide to keep it or not, so once you had kept 2 fish you were done for the day.  So obviously you kept trying for a bigger fish, now you may keep 1 fish of any size, but the other has to be below 29" long.  Keep in mind halibut have been caught over 400 pounds!

We took a ride out the East End Road and could not believe the amount of development since we were here 9 years ago.  There are hundreds of homes dotting the hillside overlooking the Cook Inlet, and it is out that road where the Kilchers live.  I don't know how many of you have seen the TV show,  "Alaska, The Last Frontier", but it is about a family that came over to Alaska from Switzerland and was granted 160 acres of land to homestead on.  The family is now in their 4th generation and still homestead on the property which has grown to 600 acres.  We enjoy the show, and although they never say too much about their surroundings, they give the impression of being in the middle of nowhere and surrounded by nothing, turns out their place is actually only 8 miles out of Homer in the midst of all that development I'm talking about.  We were curious to see their place, but found out it is very secluded and is hidden from view, and although they accept visitors, we weren't compelled to do so, but this is what we finally found.

These are a couple views from the highlands up East End Road.

Head of the bay

We booked a trip by boat across the bay to Halibut Cove, a small community partly on an island to have lunch and walk around.  We went over on this small, very well cared for boat, the Danny J.  The trip took about an hour and went around a tiny, rocky island, Gull Island that is a rookery in the summer.  The island looks dappled in color from afar, but as you get closer you realize that there are thousands of bird nesting there, in fact our captain told us over 17,000 birds!

A puffin on the way

Gull Island

Start to pick out individual birds

See the babies?

A sea otter swimming by

Buzzing around the corner

The trip over was nice but when we pulled into the harbor, we were blown away by how picturesque Halibut Cove really is!  It is a tiny community, 150 people live there in the summer and that goes down to 10-20 in the winter.  It is mostly harbor and docks with wooden walkways here and there.  It is also the site of a gourmet restaurant, The Saltry, perched at the top of the dock.

Salmon fishermen outside the harbor

The small lighthouse marking the harbor entrance
You can even rent it by the night!

Little cabins

Big time real estate

The Saltry

Another view

We had a delicious lunch on a beautiful day surrounded by incredible scenery, it was about perfect!

Gourmet fare

Happy campers

We had a leisurely lunch then walked around.  There are several art galleries there, but we pressed by as time was growing short and went to a knoll over the harbor for the views.  It was like a post card or maybe the Sound of Music.

Post card, right?

Awesome!

Another shot of the lighthouse

All in all a wonderful day.  So we've been busy, we'll probably do some chores today, while tomorrow Jan and Karen head out on their fishing expedition.