June 19, 2024

I woke up many times during the night. I could see the light coming in between the curtains. Tammy set her alarm for 7:00 and got up and showered. I prepared to shower next. Tammy said the water pressure wasn’t great, but it was fine. However, shortly after I got in the shower, I suddenly had no water. Tammy went down to ask Sondra. Thankfully I hadn’t gotten my hair wet yet. Sondra came and checked it and said she didn’t know what was going on. She said the downstairs water was fine. She said to wait a minute and then try again. It came back on and I quickly showered. There were two times the water cut out and I had to wait for it to come back. I definitely did not get all the shampoo out of my hair! We finished getting ready and went down for breakfast around 9. The breakfast was amazing! Sondra is trained as a professional chef and there was so much delicious food! My problem was that I couldn’t eat it all. She had fresh sourdough bread on the table with homemade jams and a delicious fruit salad with mango, two colors of grapes, apple slices, orange slices, blueberries, raspberries, and pears. Sondra took our drink orders. Tammy and I both had the caramel sea salt lattes, which were huge and delicious. We were eating at the same time as a mother-daughter pair who were also educators. It was fun to talk while we ate. Sondra was cooking in the kitchen right behind us and joined the conversation. She prepared our hot food, which was also amazing. Tammy had a breakfast burrito and I had the Denali Mountain Sampler (scrambled eggs with veggies and two pieces of fancy French toast).

After chatting longer and eating more fruit, we went back upstairs to get ready. We took some of the free snacks and water bottles for later. We discovered a treasure trove of toiletries under the sink. Sondra had thought of everything… contact solution, floss, sunscreen, mouthwash, etc.). We checked it and called an Uber. We took a photo with Sondra while we were waiting.

The Uber took us to the Westmark Hotel where we were staying that night. It was too early to check in, but when we called they said they would hold our luggage. We got it tagged and headed out. They said they would deliver it to our room at the check-in time. We looked up the Anchorage Museum and tried to decide if we wanted to do that or a trolley tour. We ended up choosing the trolley tour and bought tickets for the 1:30 tour. We walked around and saw signs for the Aurora show. We followed the signs to the right door and found out more details. We decided not to do the aurora show and just looked at the free gallery of aurora photographs. Next we decided to go walk on the Coastal Trail. We didn’t have a ton of time, but we got to see the mud flats and a train went by. Tammy and I were taking photos/videos when the train’s horn blew and we both jumped. 

We saw a homeless camp. There is a problem with homelessness in Anchorage. We saw lots of homeless people in parks and walking around.

We headed to find a bathroom before the trolley tour. We went in the convention center and ate a snack and used the bathroom. 

The trolley tour was really fun! Our tour guide was Ace and he did a great job making it enjoyable and educational. We learned about the history of Anchorage and the importance of the Alaska Railroad that is turning 100 this year. Without the railroad, there wasn’t a way to send coal out of Anchorage because the tides fluctuate so much that they couldn’t get ships in and out safely. We saw where the men lived in tents “Tent City” while they were building the railroad. We saw an actual engine that was used to push moose off the train tracks so the main train wouldn’t hit the moose and derail the train. The red part in front is the moose pusher. 

We saw a mama moose with her calf inside the moose sanctuary. They have one way gates where the moose can enter and not leave. Moose are a problem in Anchorage because they can jump 12 feet into people’s yards and eat trees and plants. They are also dangerous. 

We saw Earthquake Park where you could see where the edge of the tectonic plate is because during the Good Friday earthquake on March 27, 1964 the ground dropped 30-40 feet. Ace got off the trolley and went down the trail to show us how far the ground drops. 

There are still houses buried in the ground. Ace said you used to be able to see the chimneys, but the ground has shifted and you can’t see them now. Apparently the ground is made of blue clay and with the friction that was generated in the earthquake, the blue clay liquified and that’s what caused the ground to sink rapidly. There were only nine deaths from the 9.2 earthquake, but there were more deaths in other places from the tsunami that followed. Ace told us that 4th Ave. (a main street in Anchorage) split in half during the earthquake. Another trolley driver was in a dentist’s office on the second floor of a building on 4th Ave. when the earthquake struck and he and the dentist fell to the first floor but managed to escape unharmed.

We went to the small engine air field that has 1,200 small engine planes. It is the busiest small engine air field in the world! Alaska has the highest concentration of pilots in the world, too. One out of every 70  Alaskans is a licensed pilot and many people fly planes without a license. 

We saw seaplanes on floats and planes with fat semi-deflated “tundra tires.” Lots of the aircraft are very old. We saw some parks around the lakes where the seaplanes were docked. We saw one coming in for landing, but we couldn’t see it when it actually landed. We did get to see a small plane cross the road and head to the runway and take off. 

Ace stopped several extra times by the side of the road for us to see things like the moose and the airplane taking off. We really enjoyed the tour! He brought us back to 4th Ave. where we started. We went into the federal building to use the bathroom. We saw a brochure about Nancy Lake!

By this time, Tammy’s friend, Abby, was there to meet us. Abby lives in Austin and goes to Tammy’s church, but she is from Anchorage and is up here visiting her family. She offered to take us to the Alaska Wildlife Conservation Center. It was about an hour away and we drove along the shore with a beautiful view of the mountains most of the drive. I kept taking pictures out the window because each view seemed prettier than the last. The road was nice and well-maintained. It was one lane going each direction most of the time with a few places where there was a passing lane. We had to stop and wait at a couple of construction sites. 

When we got to the conservation center, we paid at the gate and then parked. It was super windy. I put on my sunglasses just to protect my eyes from the dust. We walked around and saw all kinds of native animals. We saw musk oxen including one with a baby, female moose including one who was in the water, foxes, a lynx, wolves, coyotes, porcupines, bison, a black bear, a brown bear who was right up by the front of his enclosure, a bald eagle, caribou, and other kinds of deer. It was amazing! 

We drove back to Anchorage and we stopped and Abby helped us order pizza at Bear Tooth pizza, which is an Alaskan pizza place named after a mountain. There is also Moose’s Tooth which is also run by the same people and named after a mountain. We stopped and picked up our pizza. Abby dropped us off at our hotel.

We checked in and got our keys. We found out that we had to put our suitcases out in the hall the next morning by 6am! The bus would leave at 9am. Our luggage was in our room already. The toilet wasn’t working so we called the front desk. We ate our pizza in our room and then went back to the Polar Bear Outlet to shop for an Alaska shirt. We bought a few things including water and went back to our hotel.

I showered so that I could wash the shampoo out of my hair and we got ready for the next day. I posted my blog from the day before and we went to bed around 11.