Valdez, Alaska, Some More

Saturday and Sunday in Valdez, our last two days, turned out to be pretty busy for us. Saturday was Pink Salmon Festival Day in Valdez. They had an all day series of events going on at the Civic Center. The weather was not great, although it was not an entire wash out. They had several different things going on for the kids. I think it is hard to keep kids occupied during the summer here. They had fish throwing games and fish carrying games, and fish printing (putting paint on a fish and then putting paper over it to transfer the colors). They had a cook off event that we went up to check out and got some samples after the judging was done. Then we went inside the Civic Center to check out the auto show. Ken made a joke about seeing “all 3 cars” and then when we got inside, that is exactly what we saw. The person watching over them said the other eleven cars did not show because of the rain.

Then they had a free dinner featuring pink salmon. This is the third free meal we have gotten in Alaska, the second in Valdez. Apparently these things are sponsored y the city due to the large amount of money that comes into the city from the pipeline. After the dinner, they had free entertainment. A comedian who did a lot of physical humor, geared towards the kids in the audience put on his show in the Civic Center Theater.

After all the free entertainment, we headed back to the hatchery, hoping for some bear viewing. However, no such luck. We hung around for about an hour but there was nothing going on. So we headed back to the RVs for the night.

On Sunday, the commercial fishing was opened up in the Port of Valdez. Also, the sun came out for the second time since we got here more than a week ago. Most of the fishing was going on near the hatchery, so we headed over there yet again. This time, rather than photographing eagles or bears fishing, we were going to watch the professionals. The fishing they do here is called “purse seine” fishing, where they put down a net that is pulled around in a circle, and then is closed at the bottom before it is pulled in. Our goal was to be able to see fish in the net as it is pulled onto the fishing boat. It seemed most of the time, the boat would swing around so the net was on the far side just when they were about to pull it up. We did get some good pictures though, and it was well worth the time we spent watching. It was a great finish to our week plus in Valdez, Alaska.