18 Anchorage & Seward
After Denali and Talkeetna, we moved on to Anchorage, where we stayed on the front lawn of our very good friends Jack and Rita Stout. Anchorage is a pretty, relatively modern city, a fun place to be.
This is the first school house in Anchorage, built in 1915.
Anchorage has a great museum of natural history. Of special note is the exhibit on Native culture.
The clothing items are of special beauty.
No city can be visited without a trip to the zoo. There are lots of animals but the following were of special importance to us.
This is about as close as we want to be to a brown bear (also known as a grizzly).
This is Maggie the elephant. She has a real sad story. With the long and cold winters, she is having serious health problems including skin disorders. There is a major move afoot to send her to a zoo in the Lower 48 where the weather will be more acceptable.
This is a wolf. They walk them daily, on leashes.
A place everyone must visit in Anchorage is The Ulu Factory. They make and sell these things at this location. An ulu is a strange shaped knife used by the Natives for just about any type of cutting. We of course had to buy one but have not yet tried it out.
After this, our first of two visits to Anchorage, we headed South along Turnagin Bay (named by Capt Cook because of turns they had to make in navigating these waters) to Seward. The drive was spectacular.
This is a bald eagle, on the beach of an inlet fishing for salmon. In the northern part of the state we saw golden eagles, in the south, the fish eating bald eagle.
Before we visited Denali, we had visited the Usabelli Coal Mine. From that mine, coal destined for export is moved by train to Seward for loading on ships. This is the loading point.
From Seward we took a sealife and glacier tour.
A humpback whale blowing.
Whale between us and the shore. Very close to that shore.
A glacier along the way. Note the seam down the middle. This is where two flows merged, each pushing its moraine in front of it.
Stellar Sea Lions.
Holgate Glacier
Rock formation along the shore.
Alaska Sealife Center.
Puffins
The Iditarod is an annual dogsled race from Anchorage to Nome. It commemorates a mad dash which was made from the port at Seward to Nome delivering diptheria serum. This marker is at the location where this serum delivery started.
Harry went for a boat ride to catch some fish. Saw this killer whale (orca).
Actually caught some fish. First picture is the catch for the boat, second is his. Got the limit of 2 halibut and one ling cod.
Leaving Seward to drove up to and saw Exit Glacier.
That does it for this part of our trip. Next installment will cover the West side of the Kenai Penninsula and our return to Anchorage. Hope you enjoyed this.
