Month: June 2024

It’s gonna be a long long day. We’ve learned some things about long travel. Some do’s and don’ts if you will.

* Get travel pants and shirts. Both roll quite nicely and are so light weight. They don’t take up too much space in your suitcase and have more pockets w zippers than jeans. You need zipper pockets to secure paperwork, keys, phones and stuff to your person, especially when going thru security lines and where lines move quickly.

* Mark your suitcase with an identifier or get suitcases that stand out from a sea of gray and black suitcases. We watched our one suitcase go past us three times before we identified a small tape mark on top. I think I will have to spray paint a dot or decal image for next time.

* Ladies, don’t bring a big purse. It’ll weigh you down and with the other luggage it can get lost easily. If you can, wear a cross body purse so it’s always there. I shorten the strap so I can get it almost under my arm pit.

* If you can, limit the amount of clothes. If you can wear your pants, socks more than once and recycle your shirts for at least two days of use, do it.

* Put important documents in the same place everywhere you go. The shuffle of bags and things happens so frequently that without a consistent place on yourself it can get easily lost.

* Read reviews of hotels. 4 star here may not be 4 star there.

* Bring your patience. Especially where there are tourists. Wait staff is overwhelmed and understaffed. We spent a good amount of time waiting in what would result in less tips elsewhere. At the airport, two servers for two separate businesses. And one was training the other. A hot dog place and Cinnabon with only two people working. They are totally frazzled!

* Just because they are advertising doesn’t mean they’re good, or efficient, or fully staffed. We had to ask for a refund here cause I never received my second slice of my lunch deal. And it took forever for them to figure out how to refund it back to card.

* Wear comfortable shoes that support your ankles. I’m getting a new pair when I get home. Ankle soreness is the result when you don’t. And my heel is bruised.

* Take lots of pics. Especially if the trip is long. You won’t remember the details and pics will help remind you of what you did when.

* If you have pics taken on board ship that can be downloaded, do that before disembarking because they may only be available from the ship’s WiFi.

Travel. It’ll open your mind. dmc

Pins on a map, in no particular order: https://maps.app.goo.gl/P3b59CciUuVKmJgo6

Gotta say I’ve seen a lot of young people here taking jobs in hospitality and tourism.

There are jobs here for you if you’d like to explore Alaska in your free time.

Opportunities to study abroad and earn some good money exist. We heard several times about young people who came here for better wages than at home.

They’re working hard in tourism serving people like us while we travel. We appreciate that.

There seem to be staffing shortages at the same time. We’ve been the invisible table at restaurants, been ignored after ordering and waiting for the rest of our order, been refunded for food we never received, and sat in the ZONE between being finished with our meal and waiting for the check to arrive.

That tells me that if you decide to come and work here you will WORK. You may be put in situations where you don’t know or have’t been trained. The businesses need you and don’t have time to train. Seems like Alaska hasn’t quite caught up again to post Covid slumps.

Tomorrow we fly home. What a trips it’s been. dmc

We are now in our final hotel after our trolly tour. Btw, I’ve gained a lot of respect for trolly tour guides, and tour guides in general. They store an enormous amount of information and history on the area, in their brain and Miss Donna not only has roots here through her native husband, but seeks out learning more and more to satisfy the endless amount of questions people ask. Hooked to a headset mic, she dropped us off, emptied her trolly and filled it up again with 30 more people then started her story all over again, and again, and again. So pleasant and so friendly. You can tell she loves what she does.

The Don, this is The Don a trolly which was built in Maine. She went there to pick it up and drove it all the way back to Alaska.

While going through Indianapolis she actually drove this trolly on the Indianapolis speedway with two police men in the seats. Can you picture that? A city trolly bus banking the turns on the speedway? Too funny.

The Iditarod race went through here in Anchorage. Balto is credited with bringing the serum that saved Nome, AK but one of the real hero dogs in an important mission of mercy was Togo. Togo and his musher tag teamed through blizzard conditions and ice breaks nearly loosing all. Togo instinctually knew what to do. It is said this musher, Leonhard Seppala – Born in Norway in 1877 could sleep for three hours increments and Togo knew the way and led his team safely to their destination. Here’s to Togo, Balto and all the people who gave so much to save the children and people of Nome, AK.

According to our tour guide Donna, this is an area where a whole neighborhood slid right into the water.

Earth scientists now recognize that the 1964 Great Alaska Earthquake resulted from plate convergence: where the Pacific Plate is being overridden by the North American Plate, it descends, or subducts, into the Earth’s mantle along the Aleutian Trench. Unlike the San Andres fault where the plates rub each other. The wavy nature of the place we were standing basically turned the dirt in to liquid quicksand.

Dan and I are between the two plates here. Donna took pics of all of the riders doing this. I must say, I was a bit uneasy standing there. I have my hood on because Alaska’s state bird is mosquitoes. Donna actually sprayed the air with OFF before we got off the bus. Didn’t help.

Perfect crunch on the bread loaded with crab meat. It was amazing. dmc

I love foxes, and therefore had to have this t-shirt. But a fox carrying a sneaker? Not as random of a graphic as you think. In the summer of 2018, articles of clothing like boots, towels, gloves, sneakers, left out overnight started disappearing completely or showing up at the other end of town.

The mystery was solved when some hikers noticed random articles of clothing around a fox den in the hills.

Love dem tricksie foxes. 😆

Keeping things light today, with a two hour trolley tour around the Anchorage area.

Blessed once again with a retired teacher as our tour guide and driver, Donna has at least 17 years (that we can figure) of experience educating visitors about Anchorage. She’s a storehouse of the region’s history and a great storyteller.

We’re at Captain James Cook Monument. In 1778, this chapter of the great explorer’s adventures had he and his crew looking for the Northwest Passage between the Pacific and Atlantic oceans. They didn’t find it, but the 180 mile long Cook Inlet now bears his name.

At 5:36pm on Good Friday, March 27th 1964, an earthquake hit Anchorage. Estimated at magnitude 9.2 when it let go, about 600 miles of the underlying fault released 500 years of stored energy. It was the second most powerful quake since modern seismology was developed.

As the nearly 5 minutes of ground/shock waves hammered the region, large areas of land “liquified”, literally sinking whole neighborhoods. We’re standing in one such area in this pic, now about 20 feet below street level. Prior to the quake, there was a large field of grain at the head of the Knik Arm. After, the entire area had liquified and sank, no longer usable farmland.

Paraphrasing Buzz Lightyear: Planes! Planes everywhere! General aviation is big here. We’re at Lake Spenard, adjacent to the international airport. Venturing a guess, I’d estimate several hundred small planes are parked here, on land and in boat plane slips.

Moosance! In winter, the moose diet leans towards willow trees. They’ll eat the bark from large willows, but devour small trees like this all the way to a stump, wherever they can be found. Like in the city. So, the city builds these cages to discourage grazing there.

Moose are part of life throughout Alaska. In the early 2000’s, a moose named Bruce frequented resident’s yards in the winter months looking for crab apples, and occasionally left with souvenirs like kid’s swings and Christmas lights tangled in his antlers.

The thing about the crab apples was that by then they had become fermented. So, yeah, like moose aren’t unpredictable enough when they’re sober. Residents even had a website where they tracked this tipsy moose in real time, to predict where he’d show up next. By then, Bruce had a well-earned nickname: Buzzwinkle.