Anchorage

Leaving Talkeetna we headed on down to Anchorage, the largest city in Alaska. We plan to do some day trips from there to see some local sights. Found a campsite at the Fort Richardson Army Base, HQ for US Army Alaska. We dry camped without services for the first four days and the last night, 7/27, after dumping and replenishing water moved to a back location with water and electric. Needed the electric as our batteries were down a bit and we had not been running the generator much.

First thing we did of course was to visit the base Commissary and PX. It is located on the Elmendorf Air Force Base that is adjacent to Fort Richardson and is a brand new mall complex with very nice stores. Not your old standard commissary either. This one offers fresh sandwiches and lots of other services like a good quality grocery store. Then off to see the city and perhaps finally see a moose. Anchorage has over 1,000 moose that live within the city limits!!! We did finally see a couple of moose that evening.

We first stopped at a large open-air market that offered just about anything you could imagine in native Alaska and Alaska tourist related items. It is a regular weekend event during the summer months. The to the visitors center, a short walk away. Flowers, flowers, flowers, beautiful flowers everywhere around the visitors center and hanging in very large baskets from street lights all over the main downtown area. This 20 plus hours of sunlight sure agrees with plants! This city is only about 300,000 people and has not real tall buildings due to earthquakes but the streets are wide and other than the usual one-way streets that are confusing to newcomers is easy to get around in.

Walked to the Parks building and watched three free movies on Alaska. One was on Alaska at War and the attacks and Japanese occupation of two of the islands during WWII. Quite interesting even if the narration has been slanted to be politically correct and at times seemed to make the US out as the bad guy in the usual liberal bull type of presentation. Another was on the northern lights and the third was on the Grizzly Bears fishing for salmon and the experience of watching them. This was particularly interesting and we had had a neighbor back at Denali campsite that had just done the same thing after having had their names drawn in a lottery to be able to fly in and camp there.

Next day, Tuesday, we took in a movie on the Alaskan Experience and visited the Ulu Factory. A ulu is an Alaskan native tool used for scraping hides originally and ever since the ice ages but now used for a kitchen tool. Pat has one now and will be sure to tell others about it when we get back to Fleetwood. (Whenever that is?)

We drove one night to watch the Boar Tide come into the inlet and spent a long time in the wind on a small rock pile waiting and watching for it. It was a small tide and not much to see this time. Sometimes they can be very noisy and quite impressive we are told.

We also too a day trip to the Alyeska Ski resort and took the tram to the top of the mountain where we had some fantastic views.