Here are a few of the interesting things we saw in and around Valdez today.
1. “Celebrities” from the Discovery Channel show Deadliest Catch. (We are HUGE fans). F/V Cornelia Marie and F/V Kodiak come here during the summer season to tender for the other fishing boats that are seine netting in the Prince William Sound. They offload the fish from the net boat and bring it to the processor in town, which allows the boats with the nets to stay out and continue to fish.
2. Oil, Black Gold, Texas Tea Across the Bay of Valdez, we could finally see where the Trans-Alaska pipeline ends. The crude oil can be pumped directly into a waiting oil tanker or it can be stored in one of the round reservoir tanks onshore. Considering that the pipeline terminates in their backyard, you’d think the good people of Valdez would save beaucoup bucks at the pump. They do not. (Diesel was a whopping $4.45 in town). That’s because there’s no commercial refinery up here, so all the crude is shipped down to refineries in Washington state, then the gas and diesel is shipped back here for commercial sale.
3. Run, Rabbit, Run Over the four days we have been in town, we have noticed a ton of rabbits running around loose. They looked pretty healthy and more like someone’s pets than wild rabbits – all different colors, including a few albinos. They weren’t very timid, and would let you walk right up to them. We finally asked someone and they said that some lady’s pet rabbits got loose a few years ago and over the years the local rabbit population has just exploded.
4. Fishwives The small boat harbor today was a zoo, thanks to the Valdez Women’s Silver Salmon Derby. Nearly every woman in town was out in the sound today, fishing – hoping to catch “the big one” that would win the grand prize (I think it was $1000 or something like that). For a thousand bucks I’d could maybe be tempted to go fishing, but we did something even better today (but I’ll save that for the next post).
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