THE BUGS ARE GONE!

Tuesday, June 02,

Valdez, Alaska... but we could be in Switzerland.

Today was a R & R day... of sorts. We went to the visitors center and then across the street to see a film on the Good Friday Earthquake of 1964. It is so amazing to see what the people of Alaska had to endure that Easter Weekend which was an entirely normal Easter for me. I?m sure that my biggest concern was creating neat Easter Baskets for a couple of small boys. No, that would have been only David that year.

Hardware stores seem to be high on our list of places to visit when we have time. There always seems to be something that they can provide that we need. Today we purchased small buckets with which to wash the Roadtreks which were showing the affects of three and six weeks, respectively, on the road.

Valdez touts a number of local hikes for varying stamina and time constraints. We choose a fairly short loop walk on a park-like peninsula. Our biggest discover was the name of a plant about 2 feet tall with strange looking flowers. It is skunk cabbage. As I mentioned earlier we could just as well have been in Switzerland. We are surrounded by snow covered mountains.

Our short walk on such a beautiful day was a result of our determination to get the bugs off our vehicles. We spent much of the afternoon with our new buckets sponging the bugs off our precious Roadtreks and then polishing them. I used The Solution which is a name familier to all Roadtrekkers...at least those that were at Indio this year. I was very pleased with the results. Now our babies are beautiful again and ready for the ferry ride over to Whittier in the morning.