Never a Wrong Turn (Ever): Anchorage 6/21

Driving to Anchorage

Change in roads!

When we arrived in Anchorage, it was sunny and the air so crisp and clean that it was hard to believe that we were in a city. But the roads convinced us. Six lanes of traffic can be pretty convincing. Anchorage has approximately 250,000 people residents, 1000 moose, 250 black bears and 60 brown bears according to The Milepost.(It doesn’t offer any statistics on the number of missing children every year.) We did see a moose and two calves alongside a road while driving around Anchorage. We traveled along the Chugach Mountains as we drove into Anchorage, and they are visible from just about everywhere. We were told that Mr. McKinley is visible from Anchorage, but when we looked in the direction of the mountain, all we saw were clouds. The temperature rose to 65 degrees or so and the residents dressed and acted like it was 90 degrees out. We saw shorts, sandals and a woman told us how sorry she was for our dog because he is black (I don’t think he was uncomfortable at all). We explored the city some and then rented a carpet cleaner and thoroughly cleaned the motor home. Then we enjoyed a restful dinner at a restaurant celebrating the solstice in Alaska, thanks to a gift certificate from the Parkers and “camped” for the night in a Fred Meyer parking lot. It was a long night even if it was light. We heard souped up cars with big pipes, boom boxes, big trucks and crazy people all night long. Where did these items come from? We sure didn’t see them on the road on the way up! The local population didn’t seem to need sleep and decided that we didn’t either.

The next day I talked with one young man who is attending college in Anchorage and is originally from Boston. I asked him how he liked the city. “City?” he said. “This isn’t a city. Here you have only two sky scrapers. Back home there are tons and tons to choose from.” He went on to tell me that he couldn’t wait to return home after he graduated because Anchorage was just too small. When I asked about the winters, he seemed to have barely noticed that any winters had happened.

We are used to Seattle traffic where drivers are very courteous and pause to let you change lanes or directions. Not so in Anchorage. Everyone drives as fast as they can, and everyone looks out for himself/herself only. Driving a motor home in this traffic was a challenge to say the least. No one is impressed by tourists! We saw several people toss garbage out their car windows in this beautiful location. I wanted to shake them and tell them that their mothers were very mad at them!

We particularly enjoyed a walk in Earthquake Park. It is situated on land that prior to the 1964 9.2 magnitude earthquake used to have houses on a bluff overlooking Cook Inlet. During the earthquake the bluff crumbled and hundreds of houses went with it. The information plaques described the earthquake and resulting tidal waves and destruction. I was old enough at the time to remember that it happened, but I did not remember that it was so destructive. I had noticed that there seemed to be very little development close to the water, and I guess that there are practical reasons for that.

We had originally planned on staying for a few days longer in Anchorage and then I would fly home to help my daughter and family while she has surgery and Mike would hang out near Anchorage with the dog. We even thought about selling the motor home and then returning home to buy a fifth wheel so that we could park it and use the truck to explore. We listed it on Craig’s list and showed it to a few people; however, no one (in that long two day period) was willing to buy it. And, we were rediscovering quickly that we are not city people! Two sky scrapers are two too many! We were both antsy and tired and decided with at least ten minutes deliberation (we have made quite a few decisions that way) to head for Calgary where I will fly home, and Mike will continue on to a friend’s home in Kalispell, MT. He has good connections with a RV dealer and will help us decide what we want to do and negotiate a good deal if we decide to change living quarters. We got little past Palmer, Alaska and found a place to pull over and spend the night quietly!

We were beside some mountains that had a beautiful rusty rose color running through them and where we were had explanatory boards stating that this color was caused by volcanic action cooking limestone and creating gypsum and that the gypsum was stained the red color by iron oxide which had washed through it for a couple of million years. It also explained that sheep often like to lick the red areas to get calcium and magnesium. I looked all over the mountains and didn’t see any sheep licking anything.