Biking around Valdez

What started out as a rainy day, turned into a perfect, spring day. I should know that by now…we’re in the mountains!  So our plans to ride bikes… happily worked out.  There are lots of paved bike trails in Valdez and the town is small.  Not much traffic or people 

this time of the year. 

The town... pretty much caterers to tourist, so there are plenty of gift shops, a handful of restaurants, and an abundance of things to do and see…tours on boats, planes, and helicopters.  We have done some of those tours in the past so we explored what the town had to offer. We stopped at a few gift shops. I started talking to the woman running the store.  I asked her what she did for clothes shopping in such a small town.  She says she goes to Anchorage…300 miles away!  She said if she buys online, the shipping charges are so much and it takes too long to get it. 

 We biked around the whole town and checked out two of their museums.  They had great artifacts and memorabilia on Valdez and its history.  Two tragic events of Valdez past was the earthquake of 1964 and the Exxon Valdez oil spill in 1989.

The Alaskan pipeline runs from Prudhoe Bay to Valdez.  We have seen the pipe running through some of the rugged mountains to its destination.  From Valdez the oil is put in oil tanker ships 

and sent to market.

There are some beautiful boats in Valdez’s harbor.  Near the launching area were boats in dry dock.  It was nice being on bikes because we could ride around and watch the people working on their boats.  Everyone around the country have expensive hobbies. 

 The Viking Cruise ship came into the Valdez harbor.  The ship looks so majestic tied up to the dock!  The people aboard had the opportunity to get off the ship and tour the town. Then people started getting in my way as I was riding my bike on the sidewalk. J  

We decided to take the bike trial out of town for a short way.  We were able to get a closer view of that waterfall we could see from our motor home.  We even found where the rushing water came down at the base of the mountain.  There were signs... warning of bear because that stream is also a salmon stream.

 

I guess the thought of salmon, made us hungry.  We rode our bikes to a local restaurant.  We had to have some type of fish since it was locally caught.  I had halibut and Bill... shrimp.  Very good!

The owner at the campground has a permit to feed the eagles from May until mid-June, until the salmon start running and they can fend for themselves.  The owner throws herring up in the air and the eagles catch it. We have seen about 10 eagles; but the owner said that he has feed up to 44 of his friends.  

It’s a neat thing to see.

On the road again tomorrow.