Anchorage

After leaving Denali we wanted to take our time getting down to Anchorage. We had planned on spending some time in the Denali state park and doing some nice hikes that we could take Aiden on. As we got further and further south, air quality kept getting worse from the smoke from the 70+ wildfires Alaska has seen this year. Some of them were still burning strong. That, plus the day use fees of the state parks dissuaded us from doing more than a short stop at the Denali viewpoints (you couldn’t see Denali through the clouds and smoke).

We did stop in the town of Talkeetna. It was a clear tourist trap of a town. It once served as the starting point for Denali climbers. Now everyone who wants to climb Denali still has to come to the ranger station here for an orientation before flying to a ‘base camp’ about 7,000 feet up the mountain.  We ate dinner here, half from a ‘Off the Waffle’ style food truck and half from a pub. We also stopped in a cute little quilt store and had a fun chat with the lady running it. And yes, Kathleen did leave with a scrap bag of fabrics that she really liked.

On our way back out of town, we stopped by Denali Brewing. The lady working at the brewery was really chatty. She showed us some a facebook video of the fires on the peninsula and told us to check 511 before deciding whether or not to go to Homer. She also recommended a place to park our RV for the night. It was clearly a spot known by locals, down a side street and next to a creek. Not something we could have found by ourselves or on Allstays. We took both kids for a decent walk around the woods before calling it a night.

  

In the morning we moved on to Anchorage. Anchorage is the biggest city in Alaska with almost 300,000 people. The architecture in the city is interesting because most of it was leveled in an earthquake in 1964 so almost all of the building have been build since then. 

The most exciting thing about Anchorage was that we got to visit our first friend on our trip. Kathleen's old roommate from Eugene is from Anchorage and has moved back up here. She let us stay in her driveway (free parking!) and use her showers and laundry. When she got some time off work, she drove us all around town, pointing out the “must-do”s, the “unique and quirky”s and the “you have those at home”s. It's much more fun to get to see a city with someone who lives there and knows it well. 

On Saturday, we found the Oregon Alumni Association watch party to watch the Oregon vs Auburn game. It was a very active association with probably a couple dozen of members who really seemed to know each other. It made the meltdown of the team a bit more bearable. There was one really loud and obnoxious Auburn fan at the place who was clearly looking for some sort of reaction from the ducks fans there, taunting and filming his actions on his phone when Auburn went ahead at the end of the game, running through the bar. Guess that’s SEC pride for ya. And it's ok, we know we're a Women's Basketball school anyway. 

 

After the game, we got amazing ice-cream at Wild Scoops to make ourselves feel a little better. They had lots of fun local flavors and a line out the door, so clearly we chose right. They also gave Aiden a small bowl of whipped cream, making it a nice treat for all three of us.

 

On Sunday, we took it pretty slow. We woke up late and slept through our Raptor Center fantasy football league’s draft, leaving us with decent enough auto-picked teams. We got brunch at Uncle Leeroy’s Coffee, who has the Crepe Crew there every Sunday. The Crepe Crew is at a different place every day of the week and has some unique and delicious crepes. We got a new bike off Craigslist, since we really only had one functioning one. In the evening, we decided to go look if we could spot some northern lights. The duck fan we met in Fairbanks, that Kathleen is now facebook friends with, shared some really great posts of the lights up there. We figured if we got out of town a bit, we might be able to see something. While we waited for it to get dark we struggled through a few, zero civilian, games of Codenames Duet. We stepped out of the RV for a while after it got dark and convinced ourselves that we could see a faint green glow to the north. 

On Labor Day, Kathleen’s old roommate drove us around the area a bit. The really nice thing about Anchorage is that there are amazing hikes and views in area the areas just outside city. There are several state parks and national forests. They also have some really nice trails in the city itself. All of them offer nice summer hiking and supposedly lovely cross-country skiing in the winter. 

Overall we spent a nice couple of days in Anchorage before heading south. We'll have to pass back through on the way North because there is only one way in and one way out, so maybe we'll check out a few more of the area hikes. We probably shouldn't check out any more of the great restaurants because have already blown through our restaurant budget...