ALASKA!
Here we are. I've gotten a job with Premier Alaska Tours for the summer and I'll be doing coach tours (off the cruise ships) from Seward up to Fairbanks. Jamie is here during his April vacation and we'll have a week hanging out with our friend Jams until he leaves.
I'm trying to review each day and write it down. I'm hoping it will help me solidify information for my tours as well as help me get a running list of "things here that I have done" to talk to my tour guests.
This isn't really edited as I need to move on to memorizing things about the various cities but this is what happened yesterday if you want a snippet! I'll be *fingers crossed* doing this every day for a bit to help me focus my studying. We'll see how it all works out!
This morning we went to Glen Alps Overlook in the Chugach State Park. After checking out the parking via a webcam (not kidding), we headed out. We drove past the hilltop ski public area to get here. We started with a trip to the bathroom (thank god) and then walked out to the overlook were we got a spectacular across the Cook Inlet. We could see both the Turnigan arm and the Knit Arm from there. We could look across the bay 110 miles and see MT Redoubt 10,197 (Iliama 10,000ft and Spur are the two other volcanoes we could see). All three of those are at Lake Clare national park.
After admiring the view, we went to hike the Powerline Trail. Literally a powerline walkway. While out there we saw tons of people walking their dogs, a cross country skiier, two fat tire bikers, and also some hikers who had surprisingly hiked UP the mountain to then ski down it.
Afterward we cruised to downtown Anchorage to go and visit the Holy Family Church. The co cathedral of Anchorage (with the Our lady of Guadeloupe) but we couldn’t get in. The outside was a bit lackluster. I was hoping for a big old exciting church but it was simple construction. Built in the 1940s in the Art Deco style this became the seat of the archdiocese in 1966 and was upgraded to Cathedral. As we were unable to get in, I can’t tell you anything about the inside and as I’m disinterested in going to Mass today...it’ll probably be awhile. We killed some time by going over to the Cook Hotel. There were SO MANY eateries in the Cook Hotel but before that we stopped into the little gift shop inside and talked to Barbara. She’s moving to Reno for her retirement as her husband has died but she’s worried about finances. She decided that she would have to pay a lot of money to fix up an old place so she might as well but a new place and get everything she wants. She also told us that Anchorage is expecting an influx of 15,000 Chinese tourists this year AND that they are getting more cruise ships than this year than years past. The shop was adorable. Lots of lovely little trinkets including Mammoth ivory, soapstone carvings and miniature totems. It was a delight. Aside from this store there was a great photo gallery, a chocolate shop, a figurine/sculpture shop, another trinket shop and, like I said, SO MANY EATERIES. At least 4 on the bottom floor and there’s another on the 20th.
After we left the Cook Hotel we stopped at Fred Myers (other grocery stores? - Carrs, Walmart, Costco, Three Bears) for shrimp, Romaine lettuce, and beer (in the same building but another store). We were looking for Singha beer as we were going to a Thai dinner for the Thai New Year but they didn’t have it. When I asked the guy he said that he didn’t think there was anywhere in Anchorage that had it. Lots of local craft brews though. We bought a local beer that had been named after some friends of Jeremy’s and then went off to our dinner with a few ice friends.
Kristin and John hosted dinner (Antarctica peeps) made lap moo, pad thai, tom yum soup, egg rolls, mango sticky rice, coconut custard and had lots of beer. It was all together too much food. We met two other ice people that we hadn’t know, and then another one that we had worked with, Dugan, arrived and we had a nice little reunion! Dugan is here working as a surveyor. He told me lots of fun little things about his hometown, Homer AK.
For example:
Jewel comes from there and her family stars in a reality TV show called : Alaska, The Last Frontier (but she’s not in it).
The Time Bandits, a boat from the deadliest catch is from Homer AK.
Homer boasts that it’s “at the end of the world” because it’s at the end of the highway that leads out to the over the Kenai Penninsula.
It’s also the “Halibut capital of the world”.
Thus ends Day One In Alaksa.
View from our friend Jeremy's porch:
Our friend Jeremy!
View of Anchorage from Glen Alps
Powerline Trail (note the powerlines)
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