The City of Flowers - Anchorage

Tommy is on the mend from not feeling well yesterday, not 100%, but his stomach is better. A bit of a late start out this AM but getting into Anchorage at about 1 pm. After we got ourselves set up, we were off to see if anyone was catching fish at Ships Creek. The salmon are starting to come in, but no one is catching today. We popped into the Ulu factory and watched Ulus being made. What the heck is an Ulu you ask? An Ulu was used by Alaskans for skinning and cleaning animals. The handles were made of ivory, antler, or bone and the blade was made of stone, usually slate. Today they are used in the kitchen for slicing and dicing.

Earthquake Park was developed to honor the massive earthquake that devastated Anchorage, and other areas of AK, in 1964. Anchorage has wonderful waking and biking trails and the Tony Knowles Coastal trail led us to Cooks Inlet where we had a wonderful vantage point of the city. The tides here rise and fall as much as 38 feet and the mud flats you see here can be quite dangerous. The glaciers create this silt that looks like mud but is soft and acts like quicksand.

Coming back up the trail our friends saw us coming and hid in the trees to scare us. Whew are they scary! They told us of a bear mauling here recently. You don’t hear of that often. Bears try to avoid us humans.

Anchorage is a small city compared to what we are used to on the East coast, but, it has everything you would want in a city. Tall buildings and lots of shopping. But one thing they have that most cities don’t have is flowers. They really beautify the city. Wherever you can plant, they do with unusual flowers with vibrant colors. Makes you feel good to see all of that color. Going into neighborhoods they have lilac lined streets. They smell so good too. Even the light post are decorated with hanging baskets.

Not only does the city plant flowers but they have their fair share of sculpture and murals as well. Capt Cook is honored here with statues of his ships and scrolls informing us of his 3 voyages here and of the Capt himself. He stands watch over the inlet and what a view he has here at Independence Park.    We were driving to another section of the city, we were stopped at a traffic light. I said to Tommy, I swear that is the comedian Gallagher who was really popular in the 1980’s with is “sledge-O-matic”. I yelled (softly) out the window of the car “Gallagher?”. He turned and smiled. I jumped out of the car and requested a picture after I told him how much we loved him and how much he made us laugh.   He is doing a show here tomorrow night at the Performing Arts Center and that is where Tommy and I caught a movie about the Aurora. One day I would love to come back to Alaska in the winter to see the Northern Lights.