The Nino File

We’ve looked at Holly’s excellence in the Mayor’s Marathon and our various activities in Anchorage that weekend, so let’s wrap up the trip with a Sunday excursion down the Seward Highway to see a glacier, some wildlife and general pleasant surroundings, and have a nice meal.

But in reality, our Seward Highway excursion started on Saturday night when Holly rented a car at the last minute (and at exorbitant rates). I wasn’t involved in the process, but that didn’t mean I couldn’t get frustrated when we couldn’t get it to start the first time we tried to use it. It was a terrible, terrible vehicle.

Anyway, on Sunday morning, we had one final meal (and coffee) at Snow City Cafe, before heading south out of Anchorage on the Seward Highway. We weren’t going the whole 127 miles to Seward, just the first 50 to the Portage Glacier. Nevertheless, the scenery is pretty great. The huge Chugach State Park on your left, Cook Inlet/Turnagin Arm on your right with the Kenai Peninsula across the water. It makes for a very pretty drive. Even with the severe cloud cover and rain that graced us.

At one of the early scenic viewing spots, I used the iPhone Photosynth app to take this panoramic photo. It did a pretty good job of stitching the photos together, but you’ll have to click on the photo to expand it to get the best view.

Just a few miles further, we saw a pack/herd/flock/whatever of Dall Sheep chillin’ on the hillside.

Seriously, the views are awesome.

We made it to the Portage Glacier, which is accessible by a 1-hour cruise on Lake Portage. Reportedly, the cloud cover made the glacier bluer than a sunny day.

I must have taken fifty different pictures of that glacier, but none appear to be especially more interesting than any other, so we’ll move on. Of some interest is this other glacier barely visible in the center of the below photo connected to the Portage Glacier about where this photo was taken in the 70s.

At the other end of the lake, icebergs from the glacier collect. Holly was much more interested in the icebergs than the glacier–and only partially because it was 15 degrees colder out by the glacier.

Just a bit away from the glacier is the Alaskan Wildlife Conservation Center where we saw lots of cool wildlife. In order of appearance below: Brown Bears, Wood Bison, Moose, Musk Ox, Black Bear, Elk, and Porcupine.

My favorite animal–fittingly on July 4th!–was the Bald Eagle. Just a cool animal.

On our way back towards Anchorage, Holly had wanted to take the Alyeska Aerial Tram to the top of Mt. Alyeska where you can–on a clear day–take in the panorama. But we wouldn’t have been able to see anything, so we stopped in for lunch at The Bake Shop in Alyeska for excellent sandwiches (and a root beer from Ft. Worth?).

We made one more scenic stop on the return leg–at Bird Creek.

No complaints about the scenery, but we were both exhausted from all our walking, our late nights, the driving–and someone ran a marathon. So we were ready to head home.

We’ve already covered the headlining event from Holly’s and my trip to Anchorage a couple weekends ago. So here’s a quick look at our time in Anchorage itself.

We arrived Thursday night around 8 p.m. (11 p.m. Dallas time). By the time we got to the hotel, checked-in, and were ready for a meal, it was almost 10 p.m. But you could hardly tell by looking outside since it was absolute daylight outside.

We had dinner at Simon & Seafort’s Saloon & Grill, which overlooks the water to the west and north of Anchorage. The sun was still far from setting at 11 p.m.

The food was excellent as was the service. We discovered that our server was a leukemia survivor who has stood at the base of the hill at mile 25 of the marathon for a decade and whom Holly was going to be looking for on Saturday. Holly was happy to have met her.

After that great meal, we walked back to the hotel at midnight. Along the way, we saw many fellows of questionable character, but because it’s broad daylight, you feel safer than you would in a normal city where it’s dark at midnight. It’s odd.

We got a late start to Friday with breakfast at the highly recommended, seriously full Snow City Cafe. Again, the food was great (snow crab cake eggs benedict!) as was the coffee. While waiting for our table, we walked down to the waterfront. Supposedly you can see Mt. McKinley in the distance, but I have no real idea.

There was a park along the waterfront with this baby beluga for kids to climb on. Not really relevant except that I recalled Layla used to sing a “Baby Beluga” song when she was little (see the 3:20 mark here). I don’t really remember it, but maybe it was this Raffi song?

After the great breakfast, we wandered around the compact downtown. A lot of touristy shops that don’t interest me much. But we did find some interesting things. Like totems in front of city hall or the courthouse, some building.

Holly and I were both surprised by the abundance of pretty flowers around.

The reindeer sausage stand in front of the federal courthouse was great.

Glacier Brewhouse came highly recommended, but I didn’t care for any of their five local brews that I sampled.

We had the LLS Team In Training dinner Friday night, which was fine. Amazing to see the 565 T-N-T runners in one room.  And because we are talking about Holly, we had to visit Walmart that evening for some last minute race items she needed.

Saturday was mostly spent running and watching others run. We did spend an hour downtown (getting another Snow City Cafe coffee, etc.) before the LLS T-N-T Victory Dinner.

After dinner, we went down to Ship Creek where Holly understood that the Salmon would be so plentiful that they would be stacked up ten deep in the water. But we saw nothing but clear water.

We spent Sunday out on the Seward Highway, but we were back in Anchorage just before our flight home. We stopped into Humpy’s Alaskan Alehouse, where Man v. Food’s Adam Richman actually conquered the Kodiak Arrest Challenge.

Nothing looked that good on the menu, so I had only another local brew by Midnight Sun, which was better than anything I had a Glacier Brewhouse (Holly disliked the super dive bar atmosphere.)

As the final exclamation point to our trip, Holly failed to get a snowglobe through TSA, which caused much teeth gnashing. But we made it home–at 5:50 a.m. Friday morning–with Holly leaving for a Speed/Gibson Lady and six kid cruise at 8:30 a.m. I went to bed.