July 18: I think I finally rejoined the world of the living! I felt much better, and that’s an especially good thing because today we traveled to Valdez, a journey of 280+ miles. The weather was still nice, so it was a very scenic drive—lots of mountains, glaciers (or remnants thereof), snowmelt streams down mountainsides, usually involving some lovely waterfalls visible somewhere along the way. Indeed, a gorgeous day for a drive and we took advantage of it! While at one stop, a young man stepped up and volunteered to take photos of us, and we took him up on the offer. He is from Ukraine and has been in Alaska 5 years. He was accompanied by his wife and 5 teenage girls, some of whom we presumed were his and some, friends or cousins. The girls had a grand time scampering over the boulders that formed the banks of the waterfall behind us. This is one of the times you see age creeping up on you. The girls were having no trouble negotiating the rugged territory whereas I had my hands full trying NOT to execute a header into the stream! 🙂
When we arrived in Valdez, our coaches were all situated in our respective places in the RV park. Later, we had a pizza dinner and ice cream for dessert—a nice end to a long day of driving!
July 19: Today’s featured activity was touring the local museum(s). It/they are housed in two buildings, but are overseen by the same curator. I’m not a huge fan of museums, but these were really very interesting. On display in the two buildings were a lot of artifacts as well as information about Valdez’s history, in particular the devastating earthquake of 1964. The entire town site dropped 9 feet and the wharf disappeared during said quake, so a couple of years later, those who remained decided to relocate the town to a more stable setting, where it is now. Some salvageable buildings were moved from the old site to the new, and a lot, of course, were just rebuilt in the new location. After the moving was complete, any remaining buildings were burned to prevent anyone from trying to inhabit a seriously compromised structure.
In between touring the two museum sites, Dave and I had lunch (we still gasp at $14.50 for a hamburger and fries!) at a local burger shack. After seeing the second part of the museum, including its 30-minute movie which was very informative, we spent the rest of the rainy, dreary day in the coach, doing laundry, catching up on blogging, reading, napping, and otherwise having a lazy afternoon and evening.
July 20: Our typical Sunday morning breakfast, drivers’ meeting and worship service was rained out, because we had no sheltered facility in which to meet and there was a steady rain falling. In general, it was a quiet day.
July 21: Today was somewhat brighter, and we enjoyed a cruise of Prince William Sound, including a close pass near the foot of Meares glacier, where it drop ice into the sea.  Near the glacier we saw lots of otters and harbor seals. Then, as we made our way back around the point, in addition to more harbor seals we saw sea lions sunning on the rocks jutting out of the water as well as a number of sea birds of different kinds on the rocks, a few eagles flying in and above the trees on the nearby shore, and a whale or two surfacing and breaching in the bay. It was an impressive display of sea life in the wild that provided lots of “Kodak moments.” While we were on this tour, Beighley remained in the coach and a young man (12 or 13 years old) we had hired walked her a couple of times. He came recommended by the campground host and his dad is the local vet, so we figured he probably knew his way around house pets. When we got back to the coach, Beighley seemed quite content, although happy to see us as always.
