Safe and Sound

Good morning, my friends. First, I need to express my gratitude to the many of you who wrote to inquire about our safety yesterday. Apparently, there was a big earthquake 50+ miles off the Alaska coastline. We didn't feel the earthquake. After hearing from so many of you, I did a search on Facebook and found multiple warnings about the water receding and other alarming news about an impending tsunami. One post indicated the tsunami warning had been canceled three hours earlier. We never knew a thing until it was all over, which makes you wonder, doesn't it? In any case, we saw nothing, we heard nothing, we knew nothing, and we are completely safe.

It's probably just as well we didn't know about it because we would have been in a heap of trouble. The camper was off the truck because we'd taken the truck in to have the A/C problem diagnosed. We had the Jeep if we'd truly needed to move to higher ground, but we'd have had to leave the camper behind. Sheesh. As I always say, all's well that ends well, and nobody died. We're calling it a good day.

Getting back to our morning activities, we took the truck in early. Along the way, we were again blown away by the beauty of the mountains in Alaska. Just look at those pointy peaks in the image below. Even if you could climb to the top, I doubt there would be any place to stand.

This was the view out my side window.

We decided to take our Lu-Lu Belle captain's advice and drive out to see the Valdez glacier. This is what we saw on the short drive out there. You can just see a little smidge of it to the right of center in the image below.

There's a whole park there for your enjoyment, although the "park" consisted of nothing more than a parking lot.

Certainly we've seen more impressive glaciers. There was a glass-smooth lake.

Also, some ice floes.

We also saw some wildflowers. My phone tells me this is "willowherb."

I was having a hard time finding a way to photograph it without casting a shadow on it.

Back at the RV and waiting for news on our truck, I finished the 8th block for the Raggedy & Friends project.

Sadie helped me spread out the blocks for their group photo.

Here are the eight blocks I have for this project so far:

By then, we had the verdict on our truck. As it turns out, it's a problem that will need to wait until we get home. These folks could have fixed it, but we need to be out of here this morning. We have reservations up the road, and so there's no delaying our departure. We're hoping it won't be too uncomfortable driving through the Yukon and British Columbia as we head for home.

After picking up our truck, I noticed a sign along the roadside directing us to the original location of Valdez. If you've been paying attention, you might remember when I posted this section from our Milepost:

So when we saw the sign, we decided to go take a look. There isn't a lot to see there, but here goes. There were actually two sites. The first was this one:

It was really more about historical Valdez when it was originally settled.

Down the road a little way was this site that was devoted to the period of time following the earthquake.

Here were the two plaques posted there:

There were some pretty flower pots there too.

Okay, so that brings our time in Valdez to an end. Our next stop will be Chitina. Our goal in Chitina will be to visit Wrangell-St. Elias National Park and Preserve. There's a road out to McCarthy and Kennecott Mines National Historic Landmark. We're hoping to travel that road, but we'll have to wait until we can see the conditions. Our Jeep should have no problem with it, but it is a fair distance. No doubt we'll drive at least part way since it will be our only opportunity to visit the national park. We can decide to turn around at some point if the road proves to punishing.

All right. Time to get going. Breakfast is next, and then we'll be on our way.