Days 1-2, May 30-31, 2014-North to Alaska
Alaska will be the 50th state we’ve visited, so after this trip we will have seen them all.
Our plane on Friday night from Tampa to Minneapolis left on time at 6:20PM, arriving about 8:40 but the final leg was delayed about an hour making us arrive in Anchorage about 1:35AM on Saturday. Alaska has its own time zone, which is four hours behind Florida so we gained four hours. Thankfully there was a shuttle at the airport waiting for us and the hotel was close by. There was a woman on the shuttle whose grandmother lives in Homosassa, the same town we’re in. It’s a small world. Seeing that we weren’t supposed to check in until 3:00 that afternoon it made us early. They let us check in early and we immediately went to sleep for about three hours.
Breakfast was in the hotel lobby and as soon as we were done the power went off. There has been lots of rain and wind and it seems a tree fell down and a few blocks of the city were without power for most of the morning and early afternoon. Because we weren’t supposed to come in until tonight, nothing was planned for us today so it’s an easy day for us. By looking at the itinerary the travel agent scheduled for us we’ll be busy the rest of the trip. The hotel isn’t far from the city so we strolled into town, looking at the sights, lots of souvenir stores, where we bought hats because it was so cold, rainy and wet. There are also restaurants, a visitor’s center, Oomingmak Musk Ox store, where women knitted musk ox fur into scarves, hats, etc. that were very soft and very expensive and the Fifth Avenue Mall, which resembled every mall I’ve ever been in. Anchorage is the largest city in Alaska with almost 299,000 people, 40% of the total population of 710,000. The power was restored about noon and we heard about a good restaurant, Glacial Brewhouse, but it hadn’t opened yet because of the power failure so we waited about a half hour while they got ready to open. It was worth the wait, the salmon and halibut were great, as was the beer. I got a flight and they were all good, especially the raspberry wheat ale. As we were waiting a man came in wearing a Sasquatch costume. I assume it was a man although when I approached him and said I always knew there were real sasquatches he didn’t disagree with me, he just hugged me, let me take his picture and kept on going.
We walked back to the hotel through a small residential area and the lilacs were all out and smelled great. I picked a few to put in our room. Lots of cherry blossoms blooming too. We rested a bit, got ready to go on our train trip to Seward early tomorrow. Had to pack an overnight bag, we’ll be back at this hotel in a couple of days. On the plane one of the locals told me about a place called the City Diner and we took a cab there for dinner. It was OK, not great, they’re big on comfort food. We are starting to realize how much we rely on having cars. We can walk to certain places here but anywhere over a mile and we have to take a cab, which we’re not used to doing. Still cold rainy and wet, it’s about 52 but the wind makes it feel colder. Got a cab back and crashed about 8PM.