travelogue: anchorage

post-cruise: anchorage, alaska

after hubbard glacier, we cruised along for the rest of that day. and by early the next morning, it was time: the cruise was over. we deboarded from the lovely millennium and sadly waved farewell.

but the good news was, the adventure wasn't over! we still had nearly two full days in anchorage.

you see, my grandfather was stationed in anchorage in 1956. my mom actually lived there for about a year as a infant. of course mom has no memories of that time, but we were all pretty excited to see where they used to live, and explore the town that has changed so much since my grandfather's time there.

the cruise ship had docked in seward, so we boarded a bus as a family and took the scenic drive to anchorage. you could make the trip in two hours if you hurried - but we didn't. we stopped at a little lodge for a delicious snack on the road, and then at a wildlife preserve for injured and sick wild animals.

this is the bear that took the other one bear's hotdog. if you
ask john about it today, he will still say, "be nice, bear!"

after the wildlife preserve, we headed to portage lake so we could see portage glacier. in my grandfather's time, there wasn't a visitor center there, but you could see the glacier from the edge of the lake closest to the road. nowadays, the glacier has receded quite a bit. they've put in a visitor center, and you take a short boat trip out on the lake to get to where the glacier is today. it's not nearly as remarkably huge as hubbard glacier, but you can get closer to it, and it's still pretty amazing to watch it calve into the lake.

john on the little boat - in the crew only area. he's part of the crew!
utterly delighted at something or other - not sure if it's the glacier or the boat!	playing with a glacier piece the captain brought on the boat

after the glacier cruise, we road in a sky tram to the top of mount alyeska. it was kind of a quick trip - we ate lunch at the top and that's a little hectic with a kiddo! - so somehow i have no pictures. my husband might have some somewhere and i'll post them another time if i can - the view was beautiful.

from there it was on to our hotel in anchorage. after family dinner, we all collapsed sleepily for another set of adventures the next day.

our little family decided we needed a very kid-friendly day that would let john have a great time, so we headed to the anchorage market fair. it's sort of a farmer's market type of set up with craft vendors and local artisans. some of it was pretty tourist-trap-y, but a lot of it was quite cool, and they had a nice sidewalk chalk area where john got to "color the ground!"

the blob is john's work - someone else
had already drawn the figure

from there we headed to the anchorage museum, which features an awesome area called the imaginarium. it's basically a couple of rooms filled with science experiments and playthings that let kids run pretty wild (in a good way) and are completely kid friendly. so we could sit at a distance and watch john explore gravity, and watch one of those perpetual motion ball machines, and play with bubbles, and then figure out how to make a plastic ball hover in the air over a jet of air blowing upwards:

i love the hair blowing upward, too

while we were enjoying the imaginarium, a lot of the family rented bikes to drive around anchorage. and this is where you learn the true awesomeness of cousin d and other-one-n. they rented a TANDEM bike:

you can't make this up

and then reconvened at the hotel to smoke their pipes:

this is especially funny when you remember that
they are 18 and 19 years old. not 75.

actually, their bike trip was pretty eventful - it got cut short because the tandem bike fell apart. and the rest of the family had to turn around early because they encountered a mama moose and her baby on the nature trail.

we all met back at the hotel for a last dinner together, and the next day we were off on our planes across the country. the south carolina crew left first - uncle d, aunt m, cousin d, cousin s, other-one-nick on their plane to seattle and then south carolina. then the rest of us, to seattle. from there, grammie and uncle nick and "uncle" l were off to baltimore. gigi and great-grandpa and our family went to houston, then split for ft lauderdale and new orleans respectively.

and it was done. but we will never, EVER, ever forget our amazing alaskan adventure.