Anchorage - Sunday through Tuesday

Sunday-Tuesday, July 25-27.  We are hanging out in Anchorage this week, taking care of some maintenance and waiting for the air show on Saturday.  It rained pretty much all day Sunday and Monday, but Tuesday we finally had some sunshine.  We are all so tired of the rain.  The locals say this has been the wettest summer they have ever seen.  We found an Applebee's for lunch (Sunday), then stocked up on groceries.  Then I spent the rest of the rainy afternoon catching up on laundry - not my favorite past-time.

Monday, Dave took Mazie to a clinic to see about her cough that just won't go away.  Since she had pneumonia shortly before we left on this trip, they thought they should make sure she wasn't having a recurrence.  The doctor said she has asthma, and gave her a couple of inhalers, so we hope she is on the mend.  She, Joe and I have all had coughs that just hang on forever.  Mazie thinks it's allergies, and she is probably right.

While they were off to the doctor, Joe and I explored Anchorage.  First, we went downtown to the Alaska Mint, where they make medallions, jewelry, ornaments -- no money.  We were there at lunch time so they weren't running the presses but we walked around their gift store.  They had a lot of beautiful things.  We walked around downtown in the rain a little bit, had lunch, and then got back in the car.  We stopped at an RV supply store on our way downtown to get a light bulb for the bedroom, and decided we needed to come back again tomorrow for other parts we needed to replace (bringing the old parts with us).  The fan in the bathroom needs the screen replaced, and we really can't hardly do without THAT FAN.

Tuesday, we went back to the RV supply store and got our new fan screen, then headed back downtown to the ULU factory, where they make the Ulu knives that are so popular here.  The knives have a matching bowl that is made from Alaska birch and American walnut, and we watched them sanding some of those.  The knife fits into the bowl exactly and the bottom of the bowl is a cutting board.

We left there and drove out to the harbor, which was very difficult to find.  Anchorage does not have a small boat harbor, it is not a fishing town, and you cannot get to where the cruise ships come in, but we did find the small boat ramp.

And the harbor.  It was at low tide, so there was a lot of mud around.
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This picture is of downtown from the harbor.  We didn't get any pictures yesterday when we were walking downtown (left the camera in the car).

From there, we drove out to the Alaska Aviation Heritage Museum, which is right across from the Anchorage International Airport.  This was pretty interesting, because Alaska has quite a history in aviation since there are so many areas you can only reach by air.  There were a lot of WWII planes in the museum.

This museum is right on the bank of Lake Hood, where float planes land and take off all day long.  Some of the local flight services use this lake as their landing strip, and we watched them for a little while.

The planes come in here to dock, just like a boat.  In fact, most of the small planes were anchored to the dock, although a couple just beached them.

We found a Golden Corral for lunch and then headed back to the base.  We took a self-guided tour of both Elmendorf and the Richardson Army Base, which is connected.  I thought of my nephew, John Coulter, who will be leaving for the air force soon.  Maybe he will be stationed up here at some point, although I'm sure Stacy would think that is way toooo far away.  It's a nice base, and we found a building with WiFi that we can use, so we may go there to post this instead of McDonald's.

Finally, we got back to the RV and visited with Dave and Mazie for a while.  They had been off buying two new tires for the Dodge, since he had that flat a few weeks ago.  We saw his new tires, but he already got them muddy!