As Debbie didn’t sleep too well last night and as we both agreed she needed to rest her leg and let the healing begin in earnest before doing too much walking, she remained at our motor home while I joined the group for a narrated trolley tour of Anchorage
followed by lunch and a visit to the Alaska Museum of History and Art.
I quickly discovered that we were not closer to many cities in Asia and Europe that we were to home in Pennsylvania!
Among the first things you notice (at least this time of year) are the beautiful flowers all over Anchorage.
There are also many murals across the city..
Map of Alaska
Anchorage School Mascot and the
Whaling Wall
The shoreline of Lake Hood, adjacent to Anchorage International Airport, the world’s busiest float lane airport and its shoreline almost completely surrounded with float plane docks.
We also stopped by Earthquake Park, a memorial to the 1994 Good Friday quake which took the lives of 115 people, 106 resulting from the ensuing coastal tsunami.
After lunch, we visited the Alaska Museum of History and Art. It contains literally thousands of artifacts from the native peoples who lived and continue to live in the remote areas of the State. Some of their clothes are spectacular …
and their intricate basket patterns truly amazing.
The collections of historical black-and-white photographs are incredible.
I also toured the Woolly Mammoth and Mastodon exhibit, presently on loan from Chicago’s Field Museum … as I have always been fascinated by paleontology and evolution.
After dinner, I took Debbie on a drive through downtown Anchorage to give her a chance to see some of the sights she missed earlier today.
One other interesting note about Anchorage …notice in the photograph below that there is long green belt in the center of the city. It is a city block wide and originally ran the length of the city to provide a fire break so that if a fire broke out in part of the city, it would not spread city-wide.
It later became a landing strip for small, mostly privately-owned aircraft and today is a park. On June 21st they play a softball tournament beginning at midnight and on December 21st another softball tournament where the players must wear snowshoes and consume an alcoholic beverage every time the reach a different base.