Alaska Trip - Day 10 (August 25, 2009)

Last Day in Alaska

We woke up relatively early on our last day in Alaska, despite the late night, because we had to get the RV back to the rental place by mid-afternoon.  While everyone had breakfast and got ready, I walked around outside for a short while.  I wanted to have a look around since it was pitch dark when we pulled in the night before.  We were in a nice forested campground seperated from a very wide and shallow river valley - the same river valley we parked beside for dinner the night before. 

Most of the drive today was amazing - by far the most fantastic scenery we've driven through (other than Denali, of course).  Huge mountains, deep valleys, glaciers, rivers, cliffs.  Just about everything you could ask for. 

Eventually we made it to Anchorage, filled up with gas and propane, and high tailed it to the RV place and just barely made it on time.  Fortunately the rental people were a bit busy, so we finished packing up our stuff and caught a ride to the airport.  But, our flight didn't leave until really late - something like 11pm or later.  We were hoping to find a place to store our bags so we could walk around downtown.  Once we did, we got in a cab and had the nice lady drop us off downtown.

Downtown Anchorage is pretty nice.  There are lots of shops for tourists, but they aren't filled with garrish crap made in China.  I had a lot of fun seeing all of the native art and artifacts in the stores, and we spend hours walking around.  We had all heard about a really nice trail that goes from the heart of the city to a nice park miles outside of town.  Obviously we weren't going to walk the whole thing, but we wanted to see part of it and walk along a short segment in otown.  We found it along the edge of the city by the water.  However, this section wasn't particularly nice, so it didn't take us long to abandon it and go back downtown.  There are several hotdog stands on street corners like you'd expect to see in any downtown of a major city.  Except these were way better - they had reindeer and muskox sausages.  I really wanted one, but it was late in the afternoon and I knew we'd be eating dinner soon.

There were lots of these giant characters on the streets

outside of various shops, so we started taking pictures.

Unfortunately we lost Ed on this trip.  He was attacked and carried off by a giant

deranged puffin who mistook him for a sardine.  He'll be missed.

I had to take this picture because I have

this exact same awesome flannel shirt.

These signs are everywhere.  Ed thought they were hilarious.

I had to take a picture of this place.  It was owned and run by an old native guy who was very talkative.  This is one great example of why I'm thankful for my social ineptitude the owner was very nice, but started talking to Ed and Jeanette and would NOT let them leave.  He talked their ears off, endlessly, about nothing in particular at first, but then he found out they were married, so he proceeded to bring them to the back of the store and give them marital advice.  Thank god I'm antisocial!

Anyway, we walked around a long while and eventually found a place for dinner.  Not a bad place, but nothing spectacular from what I remember.  It wasn't long before we had to get back to the airport, and start our long journey back to NY and Philly.

After a long flight, we were back in NYC.  Everything worked out perfectly.  We landed, got our bags, walked outside, and Jeanette's sister was waiting for us in our car (which was VERY nice of her because it saved us from having to drive an hour or more east to their house to pick it up, and then 3&1/2 hours back home) and her mom was waiting in their car.  We said a quick goodbye because the cars couldn't sit there long, and suddenly we were alone and headed in different directions.  That last half hour was a little wierd - after 10 days of nature, clean air, beautiful scenery, and few if any people, and spending all of our time with Ed and Jeanette, suddlenly we were thrust back into a crowded, filthy, hot, and smelly airport, parking lot, and city, and all alone.  I always have a hard time adjusting to "civilization" after wonderful trips like this.  It was a long, quiet drive back to Philly, and early the next morning we were back at work.

It only took 4 months for me to finish writing about this trip - you'd think we'd walked around the world.