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  • Day 33

    Alaska Day 33 Paxson to Valdez

    August 8, 2019 in the United States ⋅ ⛅ 72 °F

    Cool night but sunshine this AM. Made hot breakfast this AM before leaving. With no hook ups, easy to leave. Destination today is Valdez about 150 miles. Lots of campgrounds there, we called in the AM and got our first choice. An early stop at Wrangell-St Elias National Park, the largest park in the National Park system. Who knew? The Park is 13.2 million acres, (250 square miles) more than twice the size of Denali and 6 times the size of Yellowstone! There are 2 mountain ranges within the park - Wrangell and St. Elias. We spent an hour or so at the visitor center looking at exhibits, watching a movie on the park, and walking to a great viewpoint for the mountains. The 3 easiest to see are 12, 14, 16,000+ft. There are 5 mountains in this park over 16,000 ft! The drive south from there had even more spectacular scenery than before, giant snow-capped mountains with green foothills, and rushing rivers nears the road at all times. Amazing countryside!
    Down the road another 50 miles, stopped for a one way construction project, the little flagger gal told us we had a flat tire. 🤬👎🥵. Same one as before and this time no one found the hub caps so it is gone. As luck would have it the construction crew here had a fellow that had a tre "fixer"!!! Lucky us. Hopefully this will hold to Valdez. 🙏
    I have to say that the drive from Glen Allen to Valdez was one of the most incredible scenic drives I have ever made. Every direction you look there was a wonderful vista. Mountains with glaciers, forested foothills, green tundra above the treeline, glacial rivers and, new to the mix, waterfalls. So breathtakingly beautiful.
    Our tire fix made it to Valdez so a late 🍔 lunch and off to a tire repair place for a more permanent solution. Quickly done and back to our RV park. Good location rght by the harbor but one of the ones I do not like so much with one RV right next to another. 👎
    Our RV park is in a good location, right next to the very busy fishing harbor. When I checked us in the gal had said that if we go over to the harbor about 5:30P the fishing boats start to come in. So we walked there around 6 and had a great hour or so watching the commercial boats binging in their catch for the day. Fascinating to watch them maneuver these 100 pound fish, cut them up and package everything right at the numerous fish stations on and near the docks. A row of restaurants and shops nearby so we stopped for a beer and then discovered there was a geocache nearby so went to look for that. Found it with significant help from a local sitting at a nearby table. Clearly he had seen others struggling with this before. Back to RV for some wine and communications catch up time. Late lunch so just picked at some leftover soup for dinner.
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