Anchorage Without The Running [Vacation?]

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.