Valdez Museums & More

We noticed our next door neighbour in the Bear Paw RV Park in Valdez has two small freezers in his fifth wheel trailer. Fran got talking to him and it turns out they come all the way here every summer from Candle Lake, Saskatchewan, to fish and take home LOTS of frozen fish. They go fishing almost every day!

Later in the morning we went browsing in the Prospector Outfitter store. It has a massive amount of merchandise in it. Everything and anything the kayaker, hiker, biker, hunter, fisher, (you get the picture) would want. Good quality stuff, too, but I really don’t need $100 rubber boots, or a $45 shirt that repels mosquitoes.

After lunch we toured Valdez’s two museums. Outside the main one they have a scraper pig in a cut-out pipe. The pig is used to clean waxy deposits out of the Trans-Alaska pipeline.

They have some neat old fire engines on display in the museum. This one is from 1907:

This one is even older. It was built in 1886. The town of Valdez purchased it second-hand in 1902:

The Hinchbrook Lighthouse lens is a thing of beauty. It is made of brass and 68 glass prisms. In its day, the light showed the entrance to Prince William Sound and could be seen for 22 miles.

Valdez is well-known as the marine terminal of the Trans-Alaska pipeline. Oil that arrives here is either loaded directly on a tanker or stored temporarily in one of 14 tanks. The construction of the pipeline was a huge boost to the local economy and the first barrel of oil to arrive is displayed in the museum:

Of course, there was also a large exhibit and film regarding the Exxon Valdez oil spill of 1989. The impact on sealife and the people of this area was enormous and is still being felt today.

Before we went into the “Story of Old Valdez” museum we took a spin by the ferry terminal. As luck would have it, a catamaran ferry was just arriving. It had just come from Whittier.

The “Story of Old Valdez” museum had an excellent film with first-person accounts of the day of the earthquake and tidal wave in 1964. 33 Valdez residents perished instantly that day and the damage to the town was so significant that it was moved four miles away, to the current location. The museum shows pictures of the ‘good old days’ before the earthquake and the devastation after the event.

We went to the Fu Kung Chinese restaurant for supper. I had a very good shrimp Pad Thai and Fran had a plate of chinese food. The servings were huge and we both enjoyed our meals.

Tomorrow we’re going on a glacier and wildlife cruise. We went to their office this morning to confirm things – I’m pretty sure the large boat on the right is the one we’ll be going on: