A Bear-y Rainy Day in Valdez
Photos - Alaska Trip - Bear-y Rainy Day in Valdez
Hoaky title, I know. Couldn't resist. Today was a quiet day, nothing special planned. We slept in a little, I had time to work on my photos and blogs, we relaxed. It rained quite a lot. In fact, when we think of Valdez we're going to think of wet and cold. Low clouds, swampy land, waterfalls, and rain. But as with the whole trip, rain or shine we have a good time.
After hanging around the B&B for the morning, including meeting another couple, this one from Germany, we went into town. We visited 3 museums. At one I took a photo of a quote from our boat captain yesterday.
That museum had a whole exhibit to do with the oil spill. Rose says that people were all quite upset by it around here, understandably so. She said they were very angry with Exxon.
Our B&B, as I mentioned, is Rose's home. It's got beautiful views, lots of windows.
We walked around the Valdez Memorial Cemetery. I like to walk around and read the gravestones. They're like a story about the people. I like finding family plots and seeing a kind of family history sometimes.
Besides the 3 museums and the cemetery we spent a lot of time watching bears today. There's a fish hatchery in Valdez and several places where the spawning salmon congregate. This attracts hundreds of seagulls and also black bears. It was so fun to see some mama bears and cubs.
One young-looking bear was ambling along the side of the road right before our turn into the B&B.
We took tons of photos. We used a telephoto lens quite a lot, that Bill's camera has. The only problem is that it's long and therefore hard to hold steady. Probably every 3rd or 4th photo is actually useable. We were kicking ourselves on the boat yesterday that we'd forgotten that lens but I'm thinking we might actually be better off for having done so. The ones with the regular lens are clearer and often I can zoom in with the computer and get a decent result. It was especially hard to hold it up at an angle to try to get the eagle.
Tomorrow it's on to Homer. We have a reservation on the ferry at 12:15. I can't believe there are only 3 more days of our trip. In a way it seems like we've been here a good amount of time and crammed so much in, but in another way it seems like not half long enough. I know that when we get home the whole thing will seem like a dream, but I'm counting on this blog to bring it all back for me.