A Day in Anchorage

July 18, 2012  Anchorage

It was another beautiful sunshiny day here in Alaska!  The temperature soared to 72 degrees!  It was a perfect day for sightseeing.  First, however, we had breakfast on base at the Wilderness Inn.  It was a great buffet and cost us $2.50 each!  Then, when we stopped for gas on base, some guys were advertising that they would fix chipped windshields in 10 mins. and the insurance would pay for it.  Sure enough, they fixed several rock cracks in the Jeep windshield!   Awesome!

Fixing the windshield

We started our visit to Anchorage at the quaint log cabin that is the Visitor's Center downtown.  After some shopping and an ice cream stop, we settled in at Petratrovich Park for the noon concert by a local jazz/bluegrass group called the Asteroids.  Anchorage was honoring  her sister city of Darwin, Australia, so the Mayor of Anchorage was on hand to  welcome the Lord Mayor of Darwin. Following the  speeches by the mayors, the Asteroids gave a very good concert.

Anchorage Visitor's Center

Flowers in the park

The Mayor of Anchorage

The Lord Mayor of Darwin Australia

The Asteroids

 We visited the Ulu Factory next and learned a lot about these unique native knives.  We hiked along Ship Creek looking for salmon, but did not see any.

The Ulu Factory

Learning about Ulus

Looking for salmon

Back at the RV we decided to take Corky for a swim.  This combined Army and Air Force Base is enormous, and there are many lakes within the facility.   We went to Otter Lake, and Corky had a ball there.  It is a beautiful lake with cabins, paddle boats, a boat ramp, and picnic areas.   There were a number of ducks swimming around, but they were not very interested in Corky and she wasn't very interested in them.

Happy Corky

Corky and ducks ignoring each other

We decided to go back to the Wilderness Inn for dinner, and had a wonderful meal for $4.66 each.  We love this place!

After dinner we drove around some of the wilderness areas of the base.  At Six Mile Creek we were disappointed that

This one is too big!

we still did not see any salmon, but we did see a pair of loons and a beaver dam and some beautiful scenery.   I confess that I waded into the water to collect a rock for my rock garden.

A great rock!

This one is just right!

Six Mile Lake

 At about 10:15, when I was just starting to write this blog, a black bear walked by right in front of our RV! Steve was watching TV and saw it out the front window.   We both grabbed our cameras, but the bear disappeared into the woods across the road before we could photograph it.   Dang.