On July 3 we left Palmer and headed 45 minutes down the highway to Anchorage for a few days. This was pretty much a stop to see a few sights in the city, restock the pantry and fridge before we go down to the Kenai Peninsula, and pick up my brother at the airport who was coming to spend the next two weeks with us for the prime fishing season. The day after arriving, we went downtown to see the 4th of July parade. It wasn't as long as I thought it would be, but it was quite interesting to see the various groups, especially the different Alaska Native Peoples, that came out to march in the parade.
We also visited the Anchorage Museum at Rasmusen Center one day. It's quite a large museum and we spent just about 3 hours there. It is a large art, history, ethnography, ecology, and science museum dedicated to studying and exploring the land, peoples, art, and history of Alaska.
One floor had climate-controlled display cases of important items related to many of the different Alaskan Native People tribes. It was fascinating.
A piece of art I loved.
We also visited the National Park Service Alaska Regional Headquarters building where they had a movie about Alaska and several nature exhibits.
We have found throughout our summer that all of the national park service visitor centers as well as the US Fish and Wildlife visitor centers have had excellent exhibits, very well done.
A map showing the different national park regions in Alaska. If you click on the picture, it will enlarge so maybe you can see it better. The amount of land set aside for national park preservation is actually astounding. Kudos to the politicians that made it so!
We did a couple short walks in the area as well. One night after dinner we went to Earthquake Park which is right on the shoreline. A long walking/biking trail called the Tony Knowles Trail runs all along the coastline of Anchorage, so we jumped on it here at Earthquake Park. No pictures of this trail, but another one we did is called Potter's Marsh at the south end of town. It's supposed to be great for wildlife viewing, but as per the norm with us, we saw ducks and seagulls. It's very pretty, though, and we enjoyed the views. We even saw the Alaska Railroad go by.
The rest of our time was spent doing those mundane everyday chores such as shopping and laundry before picking up my brother Bill at the airport. After a very long travel day from New York, he was ready for something to eat, which we accomplished at The Moose's Tooth brewery and pizzeria. It was very good, and, according to Wikipedia, is the 3rd highest-rated pizzeria in the United States after Juliana's Pizza in New York City and Pizza Time in St. Augustine, Florida, as of 2015 anyway!
On July 9, we left Anchorage to head down to the Kenai Peninsula with the town of Seward as our first stop, staying for a week. On the agenda for this week is two fishing charters, a wildlife/glacier viewing trip of Kenai Fjords National Park with Major Marine Tours, doing a hike to a walk-to glacier, Exit Glacier, and puttering around the seaside town. This will be the subject of the next entry and will be a bit more picture intensive. Just to forewarn you, though, there will be little to no sun in most of the pictures for the next month....seriously!
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