We pulled into Valdez, AK, on the last day of the first half of 2012. Sadly, the weather was not so good then, and was not predicted to get much better for a while. The mountains rise sharply up out of the water all around the Port of Valdez, but they are difficult to see with the clouds hanging so low over them. We were going to make the best of it though and settled in for 5 nights, staying just through the 4th of July. However, we found out later that the pink salmon were due to start running up the inlet to the hatchery on the other side of the bay. Currently, the hatchery is using local fisherman to do “cost recovery” fishing, and are monitoring the fish being caught coming into the bay. Once they have caught enough to recover their cost of running the hatchery, they will open the bay up to commercial fishing.
Our first night in, we got tips on things to see and do around the area. At 6:00 PM the sports fisher boats usually come in with their catches and bring them up to the cleaning stations on the dock. We went down there and the very first boat we saw come in had a lot of big Halibuts and Rockfish. At least four of the biggest were over 100 pounds each. We watched them cut four big filets off each of them and put them into coolers. They also would cut the cheeks off the halibuts. Ellyn said she had seen halibut cheeks on the menus for inflated prices. They must be a delicacy.
The second full day in Valdez, we took a day-long wildlife and glacier cruise. The cruise left from the docks within walking distance of our RV park at 10:00 AM. We immediately got a close up look at a sea otter “raft” right in the harbor as soon as we got outside the sea wall. From there we went out of the harbor and stopped for a while to watch a fishing vessel. It was doing purse-seine fishing for salmon for the hatchery as I described before. We sailed into the inlet leading to the Columbia Glacier, but were unable to get very close because of many ice flows coming off of the glacier. Next we 
cruised past Glacier Island and they served us a nice lunch. After viewing sea lions and our first view of a whale tail, we reached the Meares Glacier. This one we were able to get a lot closer to. We saw some minor calving, but nothing spectacular. Soon we moved off and back into the main part of Prince William Sound. We did see some more sea lions and a group of three whales, which gave us more opportunities to see the tails (something on Ellyn’s bucket list), and even a few puffins. The cruise returned to port about 8:00 PM.
We have been waiting patiently for the salmon run, which we have been told can be quite something to see at the hatchery. We have gone there several times and, have seen a few salmon in the ladder at the hatchery, but nothing too spectacular yet. The activity around the hatchery by bears and eagles is supposed to be something to see. In order to increase our chances, we decided to stay on for four more days. On July 4th, the commercial fishing was opened up, although not in the port area. They are still doing some cost recovery fishing and will be reassessing things by the weekend. We are hoping to be able to see some fishing up close before we leave.
The July 4th weekend is jam-packed with events here in Valdez, mostly for kids and families, but also for the tourists. On the 4th, they had a small parade a few blocks from our RV park (almost everything that happens here is close to where we are parked) and, although it was drab and rainy, a surprisingly large number of people showed up for it. Even Valdez’s favorite mascot, Uncle Salmon, showed up for the parade, being stalked all the way by a brown bear. There were food and craft vendors and we watched the parade and walked around a little before making our way back to the RVs. In the evening, there was a free BBQ at the city pier, which we were happy to take in.
We were noticing that there are no movie theaters here, which it seems would be a problem when trying to fight cabin fever here in the depths of the winter. But then we saw a poster in one of the stores indicating they would be showing MIB 3 in the Civic Center, a large building on a hill overlooking, of course, our RV Park. So on Thursday, we walked up there and saw the movie, in digital 3D. Not too bad for this little town. Of course, not many tourists would be doing this, as they would probably only be in town for a couple of days, whereas we are still holding on for some better weather and the salmon run.
Now when the salmon do begin running in large numbers, this will bring the eagles and bears to the streams to feed. At the hatchery, there are signs telling you to beware of bears, because they will come right into the hatchery and try to get salmon out of the ladder. On our first visit to the hatchery, we saw lots of eagles, bald and golden, hanging out on the edges of the water, but no salmon, and no bears. We have discovered that the best times for viewing the eagles so far is as the tide is going out. As the rocks are uncovered on the shore, fish will get stranded and the eagles will have easy pickings.
On Friday we finally got rewarded for our patients when the salmon showed up in large quantities (to us) at the hatchery. Although they had not yet opened up the gates at the top of the ladder, the ladder was jam-packed with salmon trying to get through. The eagles, seals, sea gulls, and sea lions were feasting on the fish they could get ahold of. Although the weather continued to be cloudy and rainy, we were able to get some good pictures of the eagles feeding, fighting, and flying over the sound. Still no bears yet but maybe tomorrow after they get the word from the eagles.
Friday also marked the first sunshine and blue skies we have seen since arriving here. They were brief and you had to look quickly, but they were there. Geoff was up early with Jordy and was able to capture some of it with the camera before it disappeared again. The rest of our stay in Valdez will be covered in our next blog entry. Hopefully it will be filled with better weather, fishing reports, and some good wildlife sightings.
