More Alaskan Pictures - Valdez

Hi All!

I haven't shown you the rest of my Alaska pictures so - here are some more. This time, let's look at Valdez!

Even though the day was pretty grey, the colorful bench, banner, and flowers welcomed the ship to Valdez.

Like most of the Alaskan ports we stopped in - there were beautiful mountains as a backdrop to the city. As you can tell, the clouds were hovering around and, in fact, Hubby and I got rained on a bit while walking around town.

The last time we were in Valdez, we took a tour so we didn't get to see this guy. Isn't he impressive? While we were there, I took a picture of another couple in front of the statue and three Magpies (birds) landed on his head. Unfortunately, they left before I could catch them with my camera.

Here is the story of the statue. I have never heard of Peter Toth or his mission to create "Whispering Giants." Have you? It would be neat to see other statues/carvings he has done. Maybe I will have to look him up on the Internet!

One of the shops in town, The Glass Mermaid, called my name. Hubby and I went in and it just so happened that it was the first day that the store was open! The woman on the right is the proprietor and the woman on the left just brought her flowers. They were both kind enough to pose with T.O.D.D. However, I unfortunately forget the names of these wonderful women. If you ever get up to Valdez, check out the store. It is also a working studio as well. A very interesting place and such beautiful glass work!

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That is the end of my Valdez pictures but, I want to tell you about the Magpie Bakery. I stopped at this little bakery to get a snack (a wonderful strawberry cupcake with butter cream frosting!) and found that this bakery is so much more. They apparently serve breakfast and lunch here and everything smelled so darn good!

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Okay - another Alaskan memory! It was such fun traveling up in Alaska. So relaxing and COOL! As I sit in the Texan summer heat I remember Alaska fondly. *sigh*

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Trisha

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Voice Update: My voice is doing fairly well. Working and talking on the phone has really been rough on it. Luckily, it is only four days a week and there is also plenty of time when I don't have to talk! Another plus is that I work for speech therapists so - throat massages when I need them. I have been taking my "thumper" to work and taking a couple breaks during the day to massage. Yesterday I got a massage from H - one of the speech therapists. It was nice. Different than Susan but nice. Very relaxing at the end of the day!