June 13, 2018

Getting Acquainted

We’ve settled in to our first few days in Anchorage and first impressions are out of the way.  Today has been set aside for exploring our immediate surroundings in and around downtown.

Our hotel breakfast is as expected.  One chafing dish with the premade cheese omelets, sausages and a potato onion mixture.  There is also a robotic pancake maker that creates a little flat thing that looks and has the texture of a white lily pad. When we think machines are going to take over the world this one ensures the future of human involvement.  Oh well, it’s all about butter and syrup.

There is a huge difference between Anchorage in June and Anchorage in January.  We haven’t been here in January, but downtown today is packed.  The tour groups and countless others like us have been unleashed on the city so the sidewalks, parks and t-shirt shops are brimming with families and oldsters.  Actually, they would be t-shirt shops in the south but here they are more appropriately sweatshirt shops.  It is going to be mid-sixties with blue skies today and everyone is taking advantage.

Our itinerary involves walking from one end of 4^th street to the other.  4th street serves as the retail active main street of downtown with tons of shops and sausage vendors on every corner.  After browsing a couple of tourist traps (which we kind of like) we head for the Federal Building which houses the National Park Service information center.  Being a federal facility, we go through the heavy-duty scans which leads to a short conversation between John and an officer discussing new knees.  The center is well done with all sorts of stuffed critters, topographical displays and a series of movies and talks by park rangers.  The U.S. government claimed 150 million acres of state land to be set aside for parks and preserves in the late 70’s which did not sit well with the locals at the time.  Apparently, all is forgiven now with tourism booming and dollars rolling in.

We continue our stroll down to Ship Creek which is the only place in the country with an active salmon fishing river right in the middle of a large urban area.  There are several people wading or fishing from shore.  The river is down because it is low tide right now and we later learn that the best fishing is at high tide making it an easier trip for the fish upstream.  Nobody catches anything while we watch.  There has been a lot of talk on the news about the salmon population being down.  Kings are catch and release only until mid-July and the copper river sockeyes are being limited.  Fish prices will be going up

Fishing on Ship Creek

We move back to the streets and find a sausage stand that we picked out earlier.  We both have a hot reindeer sausage sandwich with a habanero sauce and John adds jalapenos.  There will be a price to pay for that.  We had reindeer sausages in Helsinki, but these are better.  John thinks there is a red glow from his sausage and concludes that it has been made from reindeer nose.

We do some more wandering about exploring a couple different streets and Mary returns to an earlier shop for a new sweatshirt.  The tourist info center has a stack of postcards and will stamp and mail them for you at no charge. We discover the Ulu knife that is manufactured locally.  It looks like a pastry knife with a curved blade and has its roots in native fish and critter processing. We saw the factory down by the creek and every store is selling them.

Time for a mid-afternoon beer. We go to the 49^th State Brewing Company which has a large rooftop deck.  There is a 20-minute wait for a seat up there.  It is 2:30 on a Wednesday afternoon and the place is packed. Good grief. We move a couple blocks to Glacier Brewing (where we will have dinner tonight) and get the last two seats at the bar. Well, it’s nice to see folks making some bucks while the going is good. Repeat from yesterday.  A little laydown for more catch up to the time change and a couple glasses of wine at the hotel reception. 

4th Street Anchorage

Glacier Brewing has come highly recommended (Thanks Marc) with a much higher food concentration than most brew pubs.  We have a 7:15 reservation and there is a line out the door with people waiting for tables. We have been accused of using this space as a food blog, not much about travel. Well, here we go again. We are seated at 7:13 and we both have a classic martini and our server stuffs a couple olives with bleu cheese—they arrive at 7:25 when we place our order.  Mary has a smoked salmon spread with crostini and a cup of local seafood chowder; John has an Alderwood flame grilled halibut with a pinot demi, grilled asparagus and garlic mashed.  They arrive at 7:40 and both are unbelievably good.  Check please!  Great food, great server and we are out the door at 8:05.  Yes, sometimes it is nice to linger over a great meal and we could have had coffee and dessert, but to see a packed house like this figure out how to keep the process moving is a real nod to their professionalism.  And they have others waiting for our table.  That will help pay their staff in January.

Back to bed slightly later tonight. We’ll be on Alaska time when we are heading home.

Observation:  At least a hundred people standing outside the Captain Cook Hotel across the street waiting for buses with a couple hundred pieces of luggage lined up on the sidewalk.  Ouch!