Julie was keeping the journal day-to-day, so it's told from her perspective. Pictures from this part of the trip can be found in the gallery.
We found out last night that there is no public transportation into the park, and the hotel shuttle runs once per hour into the park and only once for the train station. So, we took it easy that morning, had breakfast at the Black Bear Coffee House (good although the portions were on the small side), then went for a walk to the Tanana River. Ken and I hadn't finished packing, so we walked back to the room and finished. We left the room at 11am, then waited 20 minutes for the bus to the train station. We checked in with a man named Aronovici, also Romanian. He pointed out the similarity, and we were all surprised to see a familiar last name! We walked around the visitor center while waiting for train.
The train almost hit a moose before arriving at Denali Station. After that, we got on the train about 12:40pm. Overall the train was uneventful. We were fortunate to see Denali again not far into the ride. Ken & I both took naps for a while. We saw several people from yesterday's tour, and Mark & Marilyn chatted with them. We saw several nesting trumpeter swans. We sat down to play cards, and eventually got a late-afternoon lunch served at our table. Lunch was disappointing. The portions were small, and they ran out of chips, so Ken only got a burger with no bun.
Part-way to Anchorage, Ken got an email from Ryan at Target confirming a phone conversation with Brandon for 6:00am on Wednesday, June 21. He spent some time during the afternoon writing emails to friends, following up on the conversations he had started yesterday while on the bus trip in Denali. A lot of his day was spent thinking about the Target offer in way way or another.
Our cabbie in Anchorage was scary — reminding us of the crazy cabbie from Istanbul who went really fast and almost ran over some pedestrians. At least it only cost $8. After dropping everything at the Oscar Gill House, we walked to dinner. The first place we stopped at had a 30 minute wait (at 9pm!), and then we found Orso, an Italian restaurant in the same building. The food was quite good, and Ken & I both had king salmon that was excellent, cooked medium rare with this delicious salty crust on top — much better than a similar meal Ken and Mark had at the Salmon Bake back in Denali. Mark ordered crab corn dogs as an appetizer that were also good.
When we were paying, our server asked whether we were in town for the run. Huh? It turned out that the Mayor's Midnight Sun Marathon was was being run on Saturday, and finished up right across from our B&B. Taking that into account, we decided to make a reservation at the first restaurant that had been full (Glacier Brewhouse), so we'd have somewhere to eat on Friday night.
On the way back, we walked past several planets on the Anchorage Light Speed Planet Walk, which is a scale model of the solar system, where a leisurely walking pace mimics the speed of light. There's a big yellow ball set into a city square for the sun, and street- or trail-side markers for each of the planets. After visiting the first few planets, we continued down to the Cook Inlet and onto the Coastal Trail before wandering back through a neighborhood to the hotel. We got to see the sun approach the sunset over the water, and admired the beautiful big flowers. We were all tired & ready for bed.
First thing after we got up, I called Enterprise Car Rental to see if we could get the rental car a little earlier and drop a little later. We had breakfast at 8am, then got picked up and went to the Enterprise downtown location. We got a Nissan Murano. They told me on the phone that they could get us back to the airport, but "forgot" to tell us that we would have to take a cab. When I asked, the manager agreed to reimburse the cab fare. The car was plenty big, which was good.
We spent the morning at the Anchorage Museum. The museum was quite good, although some parts were loud and distracting due to the large number of multimedia displays. This bugged Ken. They had an excellent Alaska Native collection. Highlights included photos & stories from people today, and traditional artifacts such as parkas, baskets, and body armor. They also had a section on the intersection between Alaska and Russia. I was fascinated by a movie about people who lived in the cold — one guy only wore shorts (no shoes) no matter the temperature outside. Another man would meditate outside in 0 degree F weather. They also mentioned Yakutsk, Russia as the coldest city on earth — -40 degrees F is the average high in January. Wow. It's in Siberia in the Russian Far East. We were also fascinated by the interactive science section (intended for kids). They had a spinning disk on which you could place various balls and disks to see what would happen, and we also spent a quite a while watching and playing with the Rube Goldberg machine.
We got lunch at the Midnight Sun Cafe near the museum, where they had pretty good salads & sandwiches. We next went to Fish Creek Park, where we hoped to see salmon but instead saw a lot of fishermen. Fish Creek is the original section of Anchorage, and our B&B house was originally located in this neighborhood before it was moved around 20 years ago. We started on the far side of the river, which definitely felt like the "wrong side of the tracks". The near side had a nice bike trail which we would have used if we lived in Anchorage.
Next, we went to the Alaska Native Heritage Center. We wandered around the different Alaska Native villages and spoke with the high-school-age summer interns about their cultures. The highlight was a song and dance performance from a couple regions of Alaska. We also got to witness some of the Alaska native sports, including the "seal hop" where you would try to hop across the floor for as long as you could — like a pushup position.
Afterwards, we went back to the B&B to rest a little before dinner at the Glacier Brewhouse. The food was a good, although they were really busy and service was somewhat slow. We were amazed that they were still actively seating people when we left after 10:00pm.
This morning, the marathon was taking place right outside our hotel, in Delaney Park. It was the starting line for the half marathon and the finishing line for all the races, so it was pretty busy. We had to park on a side street the night before. We later heard that the men's winner saw a black bear, and the women's winner saw a moose while running. Apparently, this is pretty normal for this marathon.
We decided to head out of town and visit Palmer and Wasilla, about 1 hour north of town. (Yes, Sarah Palin's hometown.) The area is the agricultural focus of Alaska, in particular for fresh produce which was otherwise hard to come by. The area was originally settled during the Depression by Minnesota, Wisconsin, and Michigan farmers. We started at the Palmer Museum. My favorite part of the museum was the dresses made from cloth flour sacks, where they were printed with a pattern but the brand-specific info like the weight was in washable ink. They also had a garden next door which featured flowers from the area. I walked around trying to get inspiration for my Minnesota flower garden.
Next, we drove 30 miles to the Independence Mine State Historical Park outside of Palmer. The drive was along the scenic Hatcher Pass Road, and we got to wander around the mine buildings and go inside a few of them. The mine was a reminder of how much we can change the landscape, and how quickly structures can decay when they aren't actively maintained. The mine was most active in the 1930s and early 1940s before being shut down as nonessential during WWII. The mine area later became a small ski resort before being turned into a historical park. Ken was kind enough to fetch the car in the rain as we finished up our tour.
We got lunch at the Vagabond Blues cafe back in Palmer, with sandwiches and soups. Ours were good although Ken's was a bit small (a recurring theme on this trip — "gluten-free" also apparently means "small"). Next, we went to The Musk Ox Farm. It was started in the 1930s as an attempt to domesticate musk ox and provide an income for Alaska Natives. Musk ox were extinguished from Alaska in the mid-1800s (it was really easy to shoot them because their primary defense is to create a defensive circle, horns out). They were reintroduced from Greenland in the 1900s.
Musk ox have a really soft undercoat called qiviut, which is the main product of the farm. Interestingly, the musk ox are not farmed for milk (too little is produced) or meat (although it's allegedly delicious and this seems like a more profitable opportunity). We got to tour the farm with one of their guides, who was enthusiastic and fun to listen to. The musk ox, in particular the babies, were pretty cute. They are held in by fences intended to stop an 800-lb musk ox running headlong into it. They had some 300lb iron balls (oil pipeline "pigs") which they liked to roll around. In the past, some of them figured out how to roll the pigs downhill and into the fences (breaking them) so the farm had to remove the heavier pigs that they used to have.
On the way back to Anchorage, we stopped at the trail to Thunderbird Falls. We went about halfway but turned back before the falls. We then returned to the Anchorage area and took a break before dinner. We went to Simon & Seafort's, a good seafood restaurant with a view of Cook Inlet. We had the salmon bisque, which was excellent. Mark ordered the combo with both Barents Sea Colossal King Crab legs and a crab cake, but they originally brought him the larger crab leg-only meal by accident. So, by the time they brought his missing crab cake, he had a lot of extra crab, which we all enjoyed. I got sea scallops with crab risotto which was also excellent. All of us were stuffed at the end! After dinner, we walked the block to Resolution Park and looked at the Cook Inlet.