Tuesday July 6

Slept late. Rain. Low 50’s

Valdez is a seaside port most famous as the place where the Alaskan Pipeline terminates. Tankers leave the harbor every other day full of oil. The ships don’t go to ports in North America. It all goes to the Far East. Crazy right? The irony is that there is enough oil stored in Valdez to power everything in America for eight hours…that’s every car, home, everything….for eight hours. Yet Valdez, (and Alaska), have the highest gas prices in America.

Blogged my brains out at a harbor side eatery with a very good order of tater tots. I would have been pleased if Uruguay had beaten Holland just because of the annoying Dutch people watching the game.

Studied the different wildlife and glacier cruises and decided on one that appeared more down home and family operated. The boat was called the LuLu Belle. Leaves the dock at 1pm tomorrow.

Heard there were a couple of free flicks about the Alaskan pipeline and the great Alaskan earthquake at this place down the street. What I was envisioning, and what that experience was actually like were to very different things. The “theater” turned out to be a row of folding chairs in front of a 19 inch TV set and VCR. The whole shooting match was set up in the middle of a second hand clothing store called Sugar and Spice. Next to the TV were all these mysterious boxes covered with white sheets and a sign that read, “Don’t mess with these boxes. They are for Michael’s dialysis treatments, Thanks, Ann (Michaels Mom)” The flicks were from the 60’s…..black and white. Even scarier, it was the LuLu Belle lady that told me that they were great….hope the boat doesn’t sink tomorrow.

Headed back to Allison Point to catch some pink salmon. This grizzly bear and three cubs were roaming all over the place chowing down on the salmon. The crowds of people were funny, getting displaced from one area, running over to another, snapping photos like crazy. People were in a frenzy to get the perfect photo. Every one knows that there no more intense tourist then the Asians. They will literally box you out to and take your spot if they can’t get the best pic possible. One guy even rested his camera on my shoulder and snapped away.

At one point I had 15 bald eagles in my view. Click to enlarge the one photo above and count the amount of wildlife in it. You’ve got to look hard to see the eagle. Thing is, I took that photo not thinking that there was so much in it. I was pretty surprised to see it on the computer later.

Caught a bunch with the help of local legend Praviit, aka “Bobby”, seen in photo above. The guy kept a running commentary of everything going on for like 4 hours. He told me to put fish oil on my fly, and even gave me some in a Visene bottle. He said he was a member of the King Cobras from Thailand back during the Viet Nam war. He was a great fisherman and showed me all his photos, which he kept in a photo album in his trunk. We fished ‘til around 1am when a van full of these Ukrainian’s showed up, broke every rule in the book and cleaned house.