Florida to Alaska Trip: Monday July 4, 2011

We spent Sunday night at Neal Carlson’s place; Jonie and Neal are in charge of the community 4^th of July parade in Glennallen. Neal invited Stanley to ride with him in the trooper car in the parade, the rest of us were observers by the side of the road. The Glennallen community consists of about 3800 residence and many of them show up for the parade. About forty floats were included in the parade and the Lion Club provided lunch at the park after the parade. After lunch we bid Stanley’s relatives good-bye and headed out for Valdez. The drive along the Richardson Highway heading to Valdez is very scenic, words or even pictures simply cannot explain the scenic beauty. One highlight of the day was our walk out to and on Worthington Glacier. Stanley was able to ride his motorized wheelchair to the board walk observation deck, Marie, Mary Jane, and I went out onto the glacier. Mary Jane and I decided we were going to higher up on the glacier so Marie walked back to where Stanley was waiting and Mary Jane and I continued hiking up the mountain of rocks beside the glacier trying to get to what appeared to be a flat enough surfaces to walk out on. We finally had to hike back down because it wasn’t safe for us inexperienced climbers to be climbing around on rocks on top of ice. We were also aware that if we started across the glacier and accidently fell or got injured we were too far from home to deal with such a matter.

We arrived in Valdez about 8:15 in the evening got a campsite at Eagles Nest Campground. After we were led to our campsite by the campground guide I ask him if he could tell us of a location of where we might see bears fishing. He told us to go out of town about six miles and turn down the road toward the fish hatchery, drive to the end of the road and back and we would have a good chance of seeing bears. Sure enough we actually watched two bears, one young one and another more mature bear. Both were in the water and seemed to be fishing but the mature bear was the one that we watched get his supper; he grabbed a fresh salmon fish and ate it as we cheered and watched. That was enough excitement for today so we went back to the R.V. and prepared and posted this blog.