Valdez Wrap up

Clearly, Pat has been working very hard out there in Valdez!  Hey, aren't you supposed to be tied off somewhere: you are over 4" above the ground!

The weather was really great almost my entire trip.  It did rain a bit, but not bad and even then, it was not torrential.  One day, however, the wind picked up and tried (in vain) to remove our tarps.  I battled it for a while, then just loosened it all up and went into town!  I had laundry to do!

Dinner time was a nice relaxing time for Pat - or I tried to make it so.  I liked having it all ready to go when he got "home" but occasionally, the steak had to cook a bit longer!  This was a typical scene at dinner, with everything out.  The cooler is on the bench on the other side of the table and the kitchen box on the end.  Every bit of this had to be packed away overnight in the relative safety of the car (disregard all the stories of black bears getting into cars - apparently the bears here haven't figured that out yet!).

Whew!  Camp cooking is rough!  We just have to make do.  It's a tough life.  I could keep going, but it's making me hungry again!

It wasn't a rare thing to see a black bear on my driving about.  This fella wasn't too quick to exit the road.

Too quickly, it was time for me to come home.  I was fascinated by the ferry and thought it was kinda cool to drive onto a boat.  By the way, the Chenega is a really nice ferry and I'd highly recommend it!  It's the fast boat and well worth taking if you plan on visiting Valdez, which I also recommend!

The scenery was amazing!  We did see some porpoise and Orca's (killer whale's) but I wasn't able to get close photo's.  Little black dots just don't do them justice!  I did get a few shots of these icebergs!  Yes, icebergs!  I thought that was a bit strange, but there was a big patch of them.  And no, Celine Dion was not playing in the background!

After less than 3 hours, we arrived in Whittier.  I'm not impressed by Whittier.  Anyway, I was off and driving off the ferry in no time...

...only to drive back into a hole in the ground.  The Whittier tunnel is 12 miles of tunnel through a mountain.  It is a one-way lane that is also shared by the railroad.

Did I mention I'm claustrophobic?  Oh, and it didn't help that I had a monster truck about 6" from my tail on most of the drive.  He clearly didn't realize that I was not the leader of this train of cars and if I had gone faster, I would have severely broken the 2-second rule for the car in front of me.  Safety is an attitude, right Pat!