04.24.06
Posted at 7:22 pm by Susan
Day one: Arrive in Anchorage, go directly to hotel and go to bed, do not pass go and do not collect $200.
Day two-seven: There’s got to be something to do in Anchorage, right?
Day eight: Send neighbor money to ship cats, birds, and all belongings to Anchorage rather than catch the red-eye out.
Check our flight itinerary page for flight numbers and a link to a nifty flight tracker, where you can get live flight information (such as location and altitude) so you can know where we are better than we do.
If our plane goes down, the neighbor across the street has our house key 
.
06.16.06
Posted at 7:57 pm by Susan
Remember, if you’re trying to follow our trip day to day, Anchorage is four hours behind Eastern time so it may be quite late in your day by the time we update the site for the night.
06.22.06
Posted at 8:19 pm by Susan
We’re beginning to pack and prepare the house, the cat/bird sitter has been briefed, and in far less than 24 hours we will be on our way.
The good news is that other weather resources don’t put as gloomy of a spin on the Anchorage 10 day forecast as weather.com does.
The better news is we don’t have to go back to work for 12 days. If you’re thinking about trying us on Jay’s blackberry, think again… it’s already OFF. See ya, suckas!
Next time you hear from us we’ll be 4000 miles away. (yaaaaayyyyy, it’s finally here)… K bye…
06.24.06
Posted at 3:06 am by Susan
We’re finally here, and without too much incident, settled into our room and ready to get this vacation rolling! Seeing as it’s past 3am back home, I’m completely whipped so I won’t post a whole lot tonight. However, two things of note: The view for the last two hours on the plane of the frosted peaks of the North Canadian Rockies rising from the clouds below is worth the trip. Okay, we can go home now . Secondly, as we left the airport at 10pm (Anchorage time of course, from now on my references will be in that time zone, four hours behind Eastern) I had my sunglasses on. The sun is just beginning to set now (I did mention it’s just past 11pm, right?)… and here’s the view from our hotel window (unfortunately they didn’t put us on the side of the hotel with the view of the mountians in the distance)…
Now, my body is saying it’s after 3am… but my mind thinks it’s just after 9 and just doesn’t want to go to bed!
Posted at 5:44 pm by Susan
Although it was still light out at about midnight local time, I finally managed to fall asleep last night. We both awoke early, and by shortly after 8am we were already out the door. We thought the perfect beginning to my introduction to Alaska would be to tour all things Anchorage. We drove around all over town today visiting some of Jay’s old haunts, driving by his high school and houses where he once lived along with various scenic parks, mixing some very brief shopping in before we decided to have lunch at another of Jay’s old hang outs, the Arctic Roadrunner (a small hamburger joint that began in the 60’s out of an old travel trailer). Shortly after we returned to the hotel room, seeing as we had already been out driving for 5 hours we figured we’d have a lazy afternoon and evening to recouperate from yesterday’s travel before grabbing some dinner and planning what we might do tomorrow.
We were stuck in this horrendous traffic for miles.
A silly sign at Earthquake park, taken just before a small army of ravenous mosquitos chased us out (and followed us into the car).
See the photos page for the pic of the day. Anyway, basically in my first timer’s point of view, Anchorage is very much an Anytown, USA, only set against a far more beautiful backdrop. The weather was mostly overcast today, with crisp air that could make your nose cold but wasn’t quite enough to make you shiver… a very welcomed opportunity to cool our blood that has been boiling from the weather back home. The only thing that keeps me from saying I never want to leave is the fact that winter is an entirely different story, as is evidenced by the fact that our rental car has a plug sticking out the grill that goes to an engine block heater. Not something you see a lot in Florida.
06.25.06
Posted at 9:47 pm by Susan
The novelty of the ”sun never sets” thing has officially worn off. Seriously last night I was really dying for it to get dark but I had to go to bed before I ever saw it happen. Ever seen the movie “Insomnia”? I might just go crazy before we get home. Nah, I’ll live.
Today we journeyed to Portage Glacier, about 40 miles out of town. Honestly, during the drive I could barely stand to look at all that ugly scenery along the way:
I had serious trouble deciding if I wanted to keep my eye out for whales, watch the mountainside for sheep, or just enjoy the view in the not-so-distant distance. By the time we got to the glacier, the temperature had dropped by 10 degrees and it had started misting. But it didn’t matter, because although they wouldn’t exactly sink the Titanic, I did get to see my very first ice bergs.
On the way back, we stopped by the Alyeska Resort and pondered going on the tram (a ski-lift type tram taking you up to a high-priced restaurant on top of a mountain). I’m still not sure whether or not Jay really wanted to go, but I decided to pass… I’m perfectly certain I would’ve had a really hard time enjoying it given my intense fear of heights. We also stopped by Potter Marsh to walk the boardwalk and take photos of the ducks, salmon, and general beauty that occupy that area. On our way back, we managed to see two eagles, some grazing wild sheep, and I caught a brief glimpse of a moose butt as he grazed on the side of another mountain. Yes, I have officially seen my first ever real live moose ass.
Sheep way up on the side of a mountain.
(Several more photos for the day on the pics page)
Basically the trip felt like watching a scenic movie on HDTV, only on huge, 360′ scale… nearly surreal. Everywhere you looked was a perfect, picturesque scene right out of National Geographic.
When we got back into town, we went to the very cool Dimond Mall, where there is a bowling alley and an indoor ice skating rink right in the center of the mall (completely separate of course, that would be more than a little odd but fun to watch). We decided to end the day by taking in a movie, which was “Click” with Adam Sandler. It looked like it was going to be “cute”… but I, at least, ended up with tears streaming down my face. Nonetheless, a good movie.
A very, very nice day in Alaska, for sure.
06.26.06
Posted at 6:30 pm by Susan
The power went out at our hotel last night so we just went to bed early. We read in the paper this morning that it was an unknown problem that affected most of Southcentral Alaska. Something for the scrapbook I suppose.
Today started out rainy and chilly, so we postponed our trip to the AK zoo until tomorrow when the weather is supposed to be much nicer. Instead of sitting in our room sulking, though, we went driving around on some back roads in God’s country looking for moose. Saw some nice houses and a rather promising pile of poo on the road, but no moose.
Once we finally gave in and gave up, we went to the Sourdough Mining Co. for lunch at the behest of Rachael Ray and her Anchorage episode of Tasty Travels. I had some really tasty Alaska crab-cakes, and Jay had some Alaskan halibut. Now, anything that even remotely tastes like a fish stick is bound to make me hurl immediately, but his halibut (to my great surprise) didn’t even come close. Really tender with a nice light flavor. Good call, Rach! Across the street is an associated candy store with a huge chocolate “waterfall” that they tout as the largest of it’s kind in the world. It was large, I’ll give it that. Unfortunately they prohibit swimming or diving in the pool of chocolate. Everyone there was really friendly, including the candy makers behind the kitchen window who stopped to wave when they saw us watching. Before we leave town we’re also going to try to fit in Gwennie’s, another of Rachael’s recommendations.
Unfortunately that means there are no pics for today except in the unlikely case that we decide to go out again (it’s still overcast with showers forecasted), but tomorrow there should be a plethora to make up for it. I just realized that tomorrow is the half-way point in our trip, which is a little depressing, but we’ll find lots more to show you before we leave. In the meantime, I’ll just post the below pics illustrating Jay’s post-lunch activities, and our hotel “efficiency suite” which we have already given that “lived in” look.
06.27.06
Posted at 8:45 pm by Susan
We rolled out a little late this morning, but that was okay considering we still got a couple of events squeezed in. We started by having lunch at this pizza parlor with the view of the mountains in the distance through the dining room windows. It wasn’t too crowded (albeit crowded enough) for a workday lunch hour, which was nice. The food was pretty good, it tasted just like Pizza Hut. Wait a minute, it was Pizza Hut.
After lunch we took off to the Alaska Zoo; a small zoo primarily comprised of animals native to Alaska with a few exotics thrown in. There we met a silly porcupine who insisted he was innocent and attempted an escape, a snooty alpaca who would not be touched, and a polar bear playing fetch the ball/hide the ball/fetch the ball with himself, among many others. Ever the animal lovers, all it takes is a few hours at a place like this to a) make us miss our kits really badly and b) put a smile on our faces for the rest of the day.
As we left the zoo, we drove up to the lookout point on the side of Flat Top Mountain, taking several photos of downtown Anchorage from a very different vantage point. Along the way, we found a very swanky three story home for sale on the side of the mountain which we fully plan to buy as soon as soon as Mika and Holly’s three-movie deal with Disney goes through.
And this concludes another very nice day in Anchorage.
(all photos for today placed on the photos page)
06.28.06
Posted at 9:57 pm by Susan
Our day again started late, with us tripping out the door around 11 to go shopping downtown. I intended to get our souvenir shopping out of the way, but after a few shops and a rather strange tex-mex lunch prepared by an Asian family at the mall, we were both irritated enough to cut the trip short. We then drove to the very small town of Palmer, about 40 miles out of town. More fantastic scenery awaited us there, part of which we found down a frightening narrow road with a deep ditch on one side and an unprotected drop off down the side of a mountain on the other. On the way back, we stopped at the Musk Ox Farm to browse the gift shop, but skipped the tour as we had already seen our share of musk ox for this trip at the zoo.
Between taking photos of the terrain around us, I was keeping a close eye on the forestry for Bullwinkle. Again, another pile of poo, but no moose. I am quickly losing faith in Moose, and I am beginning to believe those that claim they have seen Moose do so only in an effort to bring meaning to their own lives. Moose very well may be the figment of the imagination of the local tourism industry, or of the local government as a means of controlling traffic patterns. Despite the numerous warning signs of Moose all over town, I am beginning to believe that the moose I spotted grazing on the side of the mountain the other day is really only one of two, and has been contracted by the government to make random appearances in town in an effort to keep the public on alert while his brother is paid to sit in the zoo to perpetuate the myth.
Mooses? We don’t see no stinking mooses.
It reached a scalding 72′ here today, and we found ourselves complaining about it being “hot”. Can you say “not looking forward to going home”?
06.29.06
Posted at 8:09 pm by Susan
I cannot believe our last full day in Alaska is almost over. It nearly seems that we just arrived two days ago. We’ll be departing late tomorrow evening, but we’ll be checking out of our hotel in the morning so you won’t hear from us again until we’re already back at home. I’m really not looking forward to flying all night.
Today we began to gear down to wrap this one up. We started with breakfast at the 2nd of Rachael Ray’s recommendations, Gwennie’s. The food was well above par for a place typically known for breakfast (visions of Waffle House come to mind), and there was enough of it to keep you full all day. Mind you, you pay for those huge portions; I’ve never seen breakfast for two ring up to $30 (incl. tip).
After breakfast, we made a 2nd attempt at shopping for souvenirs downtown. This time went much smoother, especially once we found a store where we spent over an hour picking out small momentos. After that, we stopped by Cold Stone for some yummy ice cream. Basically we just enjoyed a lazy day in our last full day of cool weather, dreading going home but at the same time wanting to get there and give our kits a big hug.
Since we didn’t do any sight seeing today we don’t have any photos, however there were these people making a ruckus outside our hotel last night:
They checked in a couple of days ago with another couple and a whole gaggle of children. I guess I should’ve realized from the duck on the side of the building that this was a water fowl friendly establishment. Jay said they told him they decided to come out and shoot some hoops while their kids were busy in the indoor pool.
« Previous entries ·
