And on to Valdez from McCarthy

 After leaving McCarthy (61 more miles back out on a road that hadn't improved any), we drove to Valdez on what is supposed to be one of the most scenic routes in Alaska. We weren't crazy about the camping right in Valdez, but we spent a couple of nights along a road right on the water with seals and sea lions and otters visible right from our camping spot. Brian fished for pink salmon because everyone was and even rode back into town to get a heavier fishing pole than what we had come with (He caught two and could have caught more - they were jumping onto everyone's hooks.) Mostly Alaskans don't keep pink salmon, believing them inferior, but we were told that these are good smoked, so that is what we're going to try with them. He mostly thought they were fun to catch. 

There was a fish hatchery just a short walk from where we camped, so the salmon were coming back, and the sea lions were having a ball scooping them up. 

Also from where we were, opposite side of the road, we saw a mother bear and two cubs walking along just up from the road and clearly visible. The next thing we knew, we found a baby bear, a third cub, over on our side, seemingly stuck up in a small tree he or she had climbed. After about a half hour and a call to 911 for bear cub rescue, the cub got herself down and ran off in search of her mother. The cub was crying just like a small child, and it was hard to listen to . . . and to wonder if the mother was going to come back and tear into whomever was in the way - like us! 

And, of course, there had to be a hike, and it was a short one but with a couple of very steep sections up to a dam with a lake - and a sign down where we were camping to evacuate in. minutes if there was an earthquake in case the dam broke - I think the estimate was that you had 5 minutes! Fortunately, no such problem while we were there! 

Valdez is a beautiful village in Prince William Sound and an important commercial fishing port and shipping terminal. They had catastrophic damage in the 1964 Good Friday earthquake in Alaska necessitating moving the town and are famous for being near the again catastrophic Exxon Valdez oil spill. There is a lot of history in the town; Valdez was the nearest ice-free port for the Trans-Alaska pipeline carrying oil from the oil fields in Prudhoe Bay. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Valdez,_Alaska

Kira found a way to get comfortable during the trip! There is another whole story as we started back and camped for the night at the Blueberry Hill campground. We met Alys Culhane, a writer who was bicycling 800 miles to update an article that she'd written years before. Alys is nearly our age, very impressive, and she also had a flat and no tube for her bicycle. So we headed back into town with her in our RV, had a socially distant lunch together, and decided to take the ferry back to Whittier the next day with her instead of driving the 400 miles back to Anchorage. Whittier is just a little over an hour drive to Anchorage after the stunningly beautiful 4-5 hour ferry trip. And Alys and her husband Pete have become good friends!