June 24, 2012

6/22/12 VALDEZ, AK


A 9 hours cruise to Columbia glacier and Mears glacier $155 per person.
Today turned out gorgeous, a nice 70 degrees or so.  We went on some short hikes but you really don’t need to go anywhere to see beautiful scenery or waterfalls here.  You can be anywhere in Valdez and see picture post card views in any direction.  It doesn’t seem real.  Looks like a painting.  A chain of snow covered mountains all around and many glaciers.  We love to sit outside on the back side of our RV overlooking the harbor in the evening and watched the boats come in.  After dinner we walk around the harbor and see what the fishermen’s daily catch is.  Unfortunately we got off without our camera tonight and missed some great photo opportunities.  Someone caught a huge 100 pound halibut.  They hung it up and it was as big as the man that caught it.  Incredible!  The other great thing we missed; there is a large fish cleaning station where several men were cleaning fish, discarding the guts and carcasses on a ramp that angled down to the water.  Every once in a while they spray water on the ramp to flush all this stuff down.  When there are fish remains on the ramp a lot of sea birds fly down and have themselves a real good feast.  This particular night a large eagle came down to feast!!!!   It was an amazing sight, we couldn’t believe our eyes.  Just 12 feet from us this eagle came down right on top of a fish carcass, standing on it with his big claws and pecked at it for a long time.  By the way, when he arrived all the other sea birds moved out of his way!!  Quickly!!  At one point someone threw a large fish carcass on the ramp and scared the eagle off.   In a few minutes he returned to finish his meal then flew away again.  We were just sick we could not take a picture!!!!  We’ll most likely never be this close to an Eagle in the wild again. 

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