Day 7 - Sep 6, 2000 Last updated: 9/6/00 8:45pm AKDT
Today began with laundry. We didn’t want to end up carrying around 8 suitcases, so we packed light and found hotels with washing machines. It didn’t take more than an hour and a half. The free breakfast was, well free. Eggs, bacon, sausage, hash browns, toast, nothing special.
Took the shuttle bus to the airport to pick up our rental car. You’ll remember from previous episodes that we traveled by train to Anchorage. The train depot is nowhere near the airport where the rental cars are. Our shuttle bus driver is stationed at the Air Force base in town. He builds and repairs computers. He isn’t in to hunting and fishing so he got a job as a shuttle bus driver to fill his free time and make a little extra cash.
Here’s downtown Anchorage from the rail depot last night.
After picking up the rental car, we drove to the Alaska Native Heritage Center. There were some craft making demonstrations, people telling histories of their individual native group, and artifacts. There were 5 different groups of Alaskan Natives, Athabascan, Yup’ik & Cup’ik, Aleut & Aluthq, Inupiaq, and Eyak, Tlingit, Haida & Tsimshian. Here is a reproduction of a house from the south east region of Alaska (Eyak, Tlingit, Haida & Tsimshian people). It was pretty incredible. Very roomy considering the era these were used. That big pole in the front of the building on the left has a hole in it which is the door. The building on the right is the garage.
After a quick lunch at KFC, it was up to Thunderbird Falls, which is about 20-25 miles northeast of Anchorage. The hike was listed as an easy hike (which it was). The hike was 2 miles round trip. Here is a view of the Thunderbird Falls from a viewing platform at the end of the trail.
There were a couple of steep hills to climb if you chose to go down to the bottom of the falls (which we did). Here’s the view from the bottom. This is as close as they allow you to go.
The weather was nice today, low to mid 50s with a brief shower in the early afternoon.
Here’s a picture for all you people who have mini-dishes. I thought you might appreciate the look angle up here. They have to point their satellite dishes down to see the equator.
Dinner was at the Moose’s Tooth. It’s a brew pub with exotic pizza. Not being drinkers, we had the home brewed root beer, which was good. As for the pizza, I thought about having the halibut, kung pao chicken, or gyros pizza – I’m pretty opened minded about food in my old age – but something inside says “it ain’t pizza without pepperoni”. So we went with “normal” stuff on our pizza. Not a bad pizza for outside Chicago, I would recommend it. The place was packed. This is one of those places that you need to get to early if you don’t want to wait for a table. They don’t take reservations.
Tomorrow it’s out of the Ramada and off to a boat tour of Prince William Sound and on to Seward. We actually didn’t have the boat tour planned for tomorrow, but before we left for Alaska, we received a letter telling us that the original day had been canceled. So we shuffled a couple things around and now we’re going tomorrow.
Hopefully, I won’t have the same problems in Seward that I had back in Denali. If you don’t here from us for a couple of days, it’ll mean more Internet problems.