Anchorage - Wednesday & Thursday

Wednesday, Thursday-July 28, 29.  We took Mazie downtown this morning to the post office to see if their mail had arrived from Sierra Vista yet.  Dave stayed at camp, waiting for their new Verizon phones to arrive from Fedex.  Since they and the Brundiges have Altel phones with Verizon service (now that Verizon owns Altel), they got hit with roaming charges in Alaska and had to call Verizon to get that straightened out.  So Dave and Mazie had Verizon ship them new phones and they thought they might arrive today.  We found the post office, with the help of Lucille, our GPS, and then went back to the Ulu factory for Mazie to shop.  After we got back to camp, Joe and I decided to go for a drive, so our first stop was the Alaska Wild Berry Products factory and store.  Unfortunately, the factory part stopped at 3:00 so we just missed that, but they had a very nice selection of jellies and candies that were made there.  Their claim to fame is the 20 foot chocolate waterfall that greets you as soon as you enter the building.

Man, would I have liked to dive into that!

Most of their chocolates were jelly-filled, so we managed to not spend any money here.  But it was a nice shop.

And, of course, I found my friends again.

I tried out different solutions for my chronic bad-hair-day problem.  I'm thinking the third option might be the best.

Brenda collects nativity scenes, and we found an enchanting one for her here.  It was out of our budget, but I'm sure she can order it.

Brenda, we can all quit looking for rocks for you because we found the perfect set-up for you here.  You just have to come get it.

After all of our messing around trying to find bears, it was bound to happen -- the bear got us.

After this excellent adventure, we drove back toward the airport and circled Lake Hood, the float-plane runway.  We watched them come and go again, it is just very entertaining to watch.  Here's one with the wake from landing.

Then we drove on past the airport and found a little park right at the end of the runway with a great view of the Knik arm of the Cook Inlet.

Joe kept trying to get a picture of a big plane flying just over our heads, but the camera battery was "exhausted" on the UPS plane, and then some little planes took off.  Just as we got in the car and headed out, the big, old Fedex plane took off, so he didn't get that picture either.

We stopped at the next little park where there was a very nice view of downtown Anchorage in sight.  Another plane took off so he did get a photo of that one, but we were no longer directly under the end of the runway so it was not as close-up.

Just a little further was Earthquake Park, which commemorates the 1964 earthquake.  We did not take the trail though.

Just after we got back to camp, we heard on the news that a C-17 plane had just crashed here at Elmendorf Air Force Base, practicing for this weekend's air show.  Sadly, all 4 on board perished.  That put a damper on this whole area, and we don't know yet if the air show is going to go on as planned.

Thursday morning, Dave and Mazie said they had been visited by a bear last night.  Arg'ent had woke them up barking during the night, and this morning they found all kind of bear prints on the back of their pick-up.  They had a canteloupe ripening inside the truck, and I guess the bear thought it smelled good.  It didn't manage to break in, but it certainly left a lot of mud on the window.

Here's our campsite here, very woodsy.  If it would just quit raining!

The return spring for the hydraulic leveler on our RV broke this morning when Joe drove it down to dump the tanks, since we don't have sewer hook-up at our campsite, so we went back to the RV parts store.  Unfortunately, they didn't have it and could not find one anywhere in town, so Joe will have to McGyver something for it.  Then we went to the Alaska Zoo, a much smaller zoo than the one in Phoenix, but it has cold-weather animals instead of our desert ones.  We took a few pictures.

A wolverine.

A bactrian camel, we've probably never seen one of these 2-humped camels before.

Yaks

Two Amur tigers

Black bears

And finally, a grizzley.

They had several other animals, as well as eagles, swans, hawks and a sandhill crane. They had two polie bears, but they were sleeping, and they were too far away for a picture to really do them justice.   Joe named them Arg'ent, since he tells Mazie that all her dog does is sleep. 

Back at camp, Mazie fed us vegetable soup, a wonderful, hearty meal for another cool, cloudy day.  As we sat there after we ate, I spotted the Brundiges' RV driving through the campground!  Yes, they were back from their travels on the Kenai Peninsula and ready to join the group again.  They were very lucky, the camper parked right beside Dave pulled out just as they pulled into the overflow camp lot, so Mazie went over and got them and we got them settled in right next door to the Johnsons!  The Brundiges arrived with colds, so Joe vetoed the card playing tonight, unless Collins promised not to breathe in our camper.  I don't think Joe will let Marilyn breathe here, either.