June 11 - to Anchorage

What a beautiful morning.  It was 66° when we drove into town. It was close to check out time at the RV park, but there was no place to park our mh.  We were going to go into one of the museums, but they aren't exactly RV parking friendly there.  They don't even allow RV's in the pay parking.  So we skipped it.  We headed out of town with the plan to stop at the viewpoint one more time.  Eureka. There she is!

Denali

 We weren't on the main road very long when we came up to a very long construction area.  We were not stopped long the first time, but had a couple of other delays as we made our way through the maze.

This was a fairly long delay, with traffic stopped in both directions.

 We had a good vantage point and I was looking at a piece of equipment, trying to figure out what it did.  The operator had like a little patio up 7 ladder steps high.  Looked like he was eating his lunch.  Then he pointed to the other side of the road.  The wait just got more interesting.

 It was so neat to see this moose.  More entertaining than the construction.

 When we got to Willow, we saw a new type moose. 

No price on this guy, but one in the store was marked $4500.  A bit out of my priice range.

 Our next stop was Wasilla, AK.  All kinds of interesting vehicles and things.  The home built plane below took 1700 hours over 9 months to build.  It was the smallest aircraft ever to fly from Alaska to the lower 48.

 I thought this bathtub was interesting.  Doesn't look like a fun way to bathe to me.  I enjoyed the boat models below after reading they were done by a stroke victim as a way to regain dexterity in his hands.

 We didn't see any signs on how to get to Sarah Palin's house while we were there.  We did see the Police Department building.  I thought the patch design on the entrance looked nice.

 We got settled in Anchorage.  Camden called and gave us some suggested places to visit.  We can't get the motorcycle off without moving the mh, but we decided to just leave it be unless we need it.  David took the bicycle out to find a flat tire.  Guess the off road we did in Talkeetna left some thorns in it.  It was nice he didn't have to fix it on the road.   He wanted to rotate the tires, so he was able to do that too.

 Since it was close to 9pm, I thought we were going for a short little bike ride into town tonight.  The bike trails were a bit of a maze, but he worked his way around.

There weren't very many maps on the route, but he made use of what was there.

Island out in the lake.  Lots of birds.

Mew gulls.

 He did find downtown.  This was at the train station.

 They are having a salmon fishing derby downtown.  There were several fishermen down river from this bridge

This overlook gave a panorama view of Anchorage.

 We had some trouble finding Earthquake park and once we did, the mosquitoes were feasting on us.  Neither of us remembered to spray on the insect repellant today.  It was so bad, I just took pictures of the signs so I could read them later.

 

Earthquake  Park

Taken from Earthquake Park, Anchorage, AK at 11:30 pm

Rather than ride through town again, my guide decided to take the coastal bike path.  Camden sent us a notice that tomorrow, the path would be shut down for construction.  Much of the ride was a path between forested land.  Due to the curves and inclines, you couldn't see very far ahead.  I thought it was a bit spooky in the dim light, especially when David told me we were going through the same area where a woman got thrashed by a moose within the last few days.  She had inadvertently come upon the moose and got between the cow moose and her calves.  There was one rider that passed us at Earthquake Park.  We caught up with him when we were both taking pictures of the sunset.  We followed him for miles and I was glad for the company.  So glad, it was worth the extra effort to stay within sight of him until we were out of the woods.  If we had a problem and I described our location as "in Anchorage", I don't think it would help the EMS folks find us.

Downtown Anchorage with the tall buildings in the distance.

We were out by the airport when he stopped to check his map.  It was about 12:22 am when I took the airplane hanger and the picture of David below.

It was 83° when we parked the mh about 5:30 pm.  A bit cooler when we left, but we both wore short sleeved shirts and shorts.  The temperature was 53° on one of the business signs about a mile away.  It was cool if we didn't stay moving, but at least the mosquitoes were not still bothering us.  Our short little ride turned out to be 37.6 miles.