Week of August 13th-19th

.......I want to start our blog off this week by saying we lost a member of our (Powell) family this week..  that rocked our world....My (2nd) cousin's wife, Cathy did not survive a boating accident  Monday,in Prince William Sound here in Alaska... when their 32 ft boat with their entire family on board hit a rock and sank.  Scott was able to rescue his 3 children, he was not able to locate Cathy, other boaters in the area and then the Coast Guard helped, they did find her and did CPR right away, but they were unable to save her.  Scott and Cathy and their children are residents of Anchorage.  We will be heading to Anchorage for her 'Celebration of Life' on Tuesday.  Such devastating news.. She was a remarkable mother to her 3 children, and she will be greatly missed by all who ever knew her.....


 Wow, this week went by so fast....

     The fishing situation has NOT changed......We haven't caught a Silver Salmon YET!  We did see a person cleaning one, so we know there a some silvers coming in, but very few.  I know the fishermen are here, more arrive everyday, the campground had a lot more campers than usual, but they were thinking they are going to catch Silvers.   NOPE...Still too early.  So the campers/fishermen have left (well some have)..we don't blame them, its been rainy most of the week, no salmon... Those Salmon just aren't following their instructions...they must have lapse of memory as to 'when' it is that they should be here.!!  We do think once we catch one, we'll catch several...we just have to be patient. Someone told us that the silvers are 22 miles out.... haha...we'll see.
    We went to the Valdez Museum on one of those rainy days this week... and spent a lot of time there looking at the pictures, reading stories and looking at artifacts and videos, of the 1964 Earthquake, the building of the Alyeska Oil Pipeline, and the story of the Exxon Valdez.  This town has a lot of history. We are working on a blog that we'll send out before we leave there (hopefully) with a ton of information and pictures about the history of Valdez.

................. taken inside the Valdez Museum, which we enjoyed a lot.



(Gene's photo looks more realistic than Mine(or maybe not)...  Mine was NOT taken in the museum...



 a little restaurant we had lunch in one day, 'The Fat Mermaid' (where my photo was taken above).... but it sure wasn't little, it had a big room off to the side that had a wall of neatly stacked firewood for the wood burning stove that sat in the corner. 

And this is the mural painted on the walls in the womens restroom inside the restaurant. 

These are 'Trumpeter Swans'...there were only 3 of them, but we watched them for quite a while because the pink salmon were swimming around them, the swans would nip at them, but we don't think they 'eat' salmon, but the salmon were certainly bugging them.

Gene and I walked the trail that parallels the highway in our campground... a couple of times this past week, must have been the only 2 days it didn't rain...heres a few photos...

ferns

paved walking/biking trail

 

This is the campground we are staying................................................................................................                          

......................the view as you turn from the Richardson Highway into our campground...you can see the truck and trailer just beyond the 'bath house'. (There are camp sites between our site and the bathhouse, you just can't tell by this photo...but so far no one has been assigned to them yet...thank goodness...I guess when they fill up, they'll put campers there as well. 

Beautiful view of Robe Lake just a very short drive from our campground

We've seen some fantastic sunsets..  (On Dry Days ..that is)...here's an example of one..this was taken around 10:30 at night.  The days are certainly getting shorter...there are only about 15 hrs of daylight now.  No more 'midnight' sun now that we're into August.

ONE more item to Add..... This afternoon (Sunday) we went across to Allison Point to see if anyone was catching fish, even tho it was still raining....  Gene decided to fish...I sat in the truck doing a 'Sudoku'...after about 15-20 minutes he was giving up, when a red pickup truck pulled up and the man and his wife started talking to Gene about how the fishing was...they talked quite awhile, then the man heard the doors lock on his truck, and he said...'we're locked out of the truck'.... he hadn't taken his keys out of the ignition and their 'DOG' locked their doors!!!  So funny... (I thought)  The lady thought she had an extra key in the tool box in the back of the truck, but she crawled all over and couldn't find them...  so Gene offered to take them to their camping trailer to get the extra key they keep in the trailer....The man didn't want to go and leave his dog alone in the locked truck.... haha, so we took the wife, we left him with our umbrella..it was pouring.... to their campground and to their trailer.  She got the key, we drove her back, they wanted to pay us, we refused of course, they said we'll give you some salmon then, since you haven't caught any yet..  (They've been here in Alaska since June, the salmon they have is what they caught on the Kenai River, during the Red Salmon run...)  We refused...Well about an hour or so after we got back to the trailer, and dried out...  They drove to our campground and brought us a bag of frozen salmon.  So Now we have some Salmon!!!  AND...they were from NEBRASKA!  Very nice couple, they've been coming to Alaska for 7 years in a row!

                    Until Next Week...................See ya!