Sue & Paul's Alaska Travel Adventure
Day 4, More bird watching in Cordova (5/17)
The day started late, and we finally had a good night’s sleep with the help of a quilt over the window.  There’s 17.5 hours of daylight here.  We visited the Cordova History Museum. They have lots of railroad and local history. They had a kayak of the animal skin variety. Very cool little place. 
Then we drove down Power Creek Road, which was a nice drive along Lake Eyak   About half the lake was still frozen.  We saw a bald eagle attempt to make a lunch out of a young seagull.  It seemed like a lot of work for a single meal, and the gull got away with the help of its parents.  There were also many ducks and geese on this lake.  We enjoyed trying to identify the ducks using our Peterson's Western field guide and spotted Barrow's Golden Eye, common and red-breasted mergansers, scaups, wigeons, and mallards.  The female ducks dress in camouflage, while the males are decorated to extremes with high visibility white patterns, teal highlights or luminescent feathers. 
 In the evening we had excellent local Copper River red salmon.  The town was having their annual ‘Pioneers’ fish dinner and our hosts said everyone was welcome. We had a down-home dinner for $10 each with large portions of grilled salmon, fresh caught.  The Pioneers Hall was an old wooden structure with 2 long tables where everyone sat together.  The old B&W photos on the wall were of settlers gathered around the same tables.  There was a reporter-photographer from Tacoma WA, doing a story on the Copper River salmon.  The salmon have been fished out in WA but are doing well in Cordova.  We’ve heard from others that Cordova has done a good job managing their fish. 

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