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.

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.
.

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!

Girdwood

Saturday, July 24.  We split off from the Brundiges again and headed back toward Anchorage.  They are heading toward Soldotna and the Kenai Peninsula.  We wanted to spend a little time around Girdwood, so we found a campground there and set up camp, in the rain again.  We had a nice view of the mountains here, and the snow came all the way down to our level.  This campground did not have sewer or water at the sites.  They had a "honey wagon" and they came by and dumped us after we got set up.  Then we stopped by the water tank and filled up with water before we left.

We drove up to the Alyeska Highway to a candle shop I had wanted to visit on our other two trips to Alaska but had never gotten to.  They specialize in candles shaped like Alaska wildlife.  It was a nice shop, pretty small, but they had some nice candles.  Then we drove up to Hotel Alyeska, a beautiful ski resort.

Our next stop was the Alaska Wildlife Conservation Center, self-proclaimed as Alaska's most popular visitor attraction.  Since it was raining (again and still), we didn't spend as much time here as I would have liked.  It's a drive-through 200 acre park and we got to see caribou, wood bison, musk ox, moose, bears, deer, an eagle and a great horned owl.  So here they are for you to see.
Caribou

This center, in cooperation with the Alaska Dept. of Fish and Game, is working towards restoring wood bison to the Alaskan wilderness.  There were several of these huge beasts.

A large elk population including several young ones.

Some musk ox, but it was hard to get a photo of them moving.  They seem to like to lay around a lot.

A grizzly bear was eating an elk leg (Joe says), right by the fence.  There were two other grizzlies in this pen, but they were farther away.

A black-tailed deer.

And, of course, the awesome moose.

In two cages outside the gift shop were an eagle and a great horned owl.

Then we drove back to the RV and hunkered down for the evening since it continued to rain.  We were right off the Cook Inlet in a valley between mountains, and the wind just hammered us all night long with 50 mph gusts.

Sunday morning, Joe had to wear his chicken suit to get us road-ready again.

We headed to Anchorage to Elmendorf Air Force base.  We got in at the campground there and are planning to stay here for a week.  There is an air show scheduled for next weekend and we want to attend that, plus we have a whole Anchorage to-do list so we should find plenty to do here.

Hope - Day 2

Friday, July 23.  We convened in the Brundiges' coach first thing this morning and decided to spend another day in Hope. I told Collins his fans wanted an action shot of him, so here he is at his favorite pasttime - eating.

Marilyn is participating in the conversation too, and you can see that Joe and Collins are happy to be together again.

Joe was lurking outside their coach, waiting for Marilyn to come out so he could jump out and scare her.

But when he jumped up, he lost his footing and almost landed down the embankment on his face.  You can see his foot at the edge of this picture.  It just didn't work out according to his plan.

 So we went for a drive first, back to the area we drove through yesterday so Collins could see the beautiful views.  We checked out one bridge for fish, and I went down to see if there was any gold panning spots there (I was also looking for fish).

But Mazie spotted something shiny in the parking lot, so we picked up some gold pebbles.  Who knows, maybe we found someone's poke as he was leaving with his riches.

 So we went on down the road and stopped at the bridge where we gold-panned yesterday, I picked out a new spot that looked a little more sandy, so out came the shovel, bucket and gold pans, we booted up and hit the creek.  With the same result as yesterday.  (Mazie had Joe sneak one of the gold pebbles from the parking lot into my pan, but I caught him so I didn't fall for her little trick.)

 So we gave up on that excellent adventure (we did not have a permit for today anyway) and went back to camp for a quick lunch and then off to fishing for salmon.  Collins left before we did and he was already fishing by the time we got our licenses bought and found a parking spot.  He did not catch any salmon today, but he was taking any that other people did not want.

 Marilyn was thrilled with this news, to say the least.  (Remember, we have limited freezer capacity in our small refrigerators).  Anyway, Joe, Mazie and I joined the fishing crowd.  Mazie had one on with her very first cast, but she was not able to land it.  She ended up catching 2, and missed 3 I think.  I never got a picture of her though.  Joe caught 3, so Paul, here's the picture of the fish on the end of Joe's line.

 Joe's last one was his biggest, and it got him all muddy when it splashed in the mud flats as he was trying to pick it up to release it.

My fishing success seems to have deserted me.  After having gotten seasick on the halibut trip, I thought I was really due, but I never landed any either.  I missed 3, plus a dead carcass floated by from the cleaning station upstream and got snagged on my line, and I could not even land that one!  A sad day for me.