Day 12 & 13 Anchorge

Mosquito Zapper

 We began our last day at the lodge by taking in a presentation on the Good Friday Earthquake. It sounds kinda boring but it was really interesting. it happened in 1964 and it was 9.2. That's the most powerful earthquake in North American history and 2nd in the whole world. It was a pretty amazing presentation actually. After the presentation we decided to head out and take a walk around the place again.

The Alaskan fireweed was well over our heads

We headed here for all our meals...yummy

 While we were walking we came across this cairn or rock piles. They were delicately balanced and alot of fun. Not sure who did it..Alaskan pixies I guess.

 The trail was rough going sometimes. I am guessing the rain would wash it all out here and there. No wonder I kept tripping!

 All along the trails there were edible berries. We found wild raspberries and choke cherries and stuff. These were called watermelon berries and they did taste like watermelon a bit. I especially loved the blueberries along the trails!

 This was posted at the front desk everyday and we thought it was fun to record the sunset times we experienced. It was like we had 3 hours of twilight or more every night. It never got dark enough to see the stars at night either. There was also a sign on the front desk that I didn't take a picture of that I should have. If you wanted a call from the front desk telling you when the mountain was visible they would call you. Luckily we didn't need that one!

This was our weather that last day at the lodge. Hard to believe it is July...just perfect!

 So at about 2pm or bus left for Anchorage. That day we noticed the mountain was getting harder and harder to see without clouds in the way.

 By the time we left it was completely gone! We know we were extremely lucky to see it for days and days like we did.

 On the trip down to Anchorage we made an ice cream stop and this little "store" was there too. It looked like a garage sale gone bad. When we got to Anchorage we checked into the Captain Cook Hotel downtown and it was really nice. We walked and walked all over downtown looking for the perfect place to have our last meal in Alaska.  After about an hour of looking around we settled on the Snow Goose. It was pretty good for our last dinner in Alaska. We were pretty sad about that. We headed back and got ready to fly out the next morning early.

It was interesting. As we were headed to our shuttle to the airport in the morning we again saw the couple from Arkansas that we met on our very first day on the ship having lunch before we even set sail. We would run into them occasionally throughout the whole vacation. Sometimes we just saw the same people every where? Probably the most entertaining thing that happened to us on the way home was our layover in Seattle. For some reason we got our times mixed up and both Mendis & I thought we had one hour less than we really had to catch our next plane. We of course had to change terminals and everything so we ran the whole way and skipped the good places to eat all for nothing. What a bummer. That was nothing compared to the bummer when we hit Las Vegas though...heat even at 7pm. Oh well it had to happen. We were gone long enough that it was actually good to be home but we would all drop everything and go back in a heartbeat. In fact we plan on it sometime!! (wish it was soon)