July 19 – Valdez, AK

Today is a planned event with the group to go out on Prince William Sound Boat Tour, which includes lunch, sea life and whale watching, and the Columbia or Mears Glacier. Guess what I did? I stayed at the rig with Winnie. The seas were not projected to be smooth and I found out the hard way that rough seas and I do not mix. I drove Judi to the boat dock and had her let me know when she was back so I could pick her up. I explored a little bit of the water front area, in the rain, but found some cool carvings.

I stopped at the grocery store to pick up a few items we were out. Then I went back to the rig and worked on both laundry and trying to organize some of my pictures, yet I am still way behind on posting.

Since I don’t have many pictures, I steal Judi’s photos and share them with you. By the way, Judi told me it was really good that I did not go on the boat. The seas were so rough that the captain of the boat re-routed the tour to keep them in calmer waters which were still a bit rough.

Judi learned that parts that fall off the glacier are called icebergs, then as they get smaller, they become “berg bits”.

Judi took Dawson on the boat trip too, he used the binoculars, monitored the map, drank some tea and then the unmentionable happened. Someone kidnapped Dawson! Judi is a great detective and she found Dawson hanging out of the kidnappers pocket and received Dawson back without having to pay any ransom.

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Just before bed, Judi and I took a spur of the moment trip to the Solomon Gulch Hatchery. This is where the salmon run and the bears come out at night for a little midnight snack. Generally, this happens just before sunset, when the sun actually sets in Alaska! It was about 10:00 pm, we did find in one of the ponds near waterfalls a momma bear and her two cubs. Momma was hiding in the greenery while her babies were snacking.

We continued down the road and found the hatchery. We did not find any bears at the salmon run, but we found sea lions! I loved watching the sea lions. Silly me, we are looking for bears, I wandered across the bridge to the hatchery and followed the sidewalk to an observation area along the water. I started hearing this snorting sound from the other side of the deck and thought oh crap, bears? All by myself? No bear spray, what will I do? I look more for where the noise is coming from, it was not bears, it was two sea lions in the water! I took a ton of sea lion pictures…

About 11:00 pm, we decided to head back towards the rig. We had not seen an other bears. The mom and two cubs had moved from the waterfall pond over the road to the bay where the tide was out and they were looking for more snacks. We click off a few more photos and finally head home to go to bed. I failed to mention after we got out to the hatchery, we kept finding our friends from our RV caravan.

Judi and I developed a new nickname after this evenings adventure. We are now known as “The Bear Whispers”.

Judi has new tricks, she is learning how to use AI for many things, one of which is to clean up photos to get rid of people or bug splatters from the windshield, and when you have blurry photos to make cool artwork!

Stay tuned for more adventures…