July 24: In Anchorage
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Today everyone decided to take a five hour cruise around Prince William Sound. Everyone, that is, except Jane and me. We decided that after six days on the ferry, we'd had enough of boating for now. We saw almost no wildlife in our six days at sea while getting rain and fog during our traversal of Prince William Sound. :-(
Instead, we decided to see Anchorage. A few fast facts on Anchorage (you can Google for other info). Anchorage has over 260,000 people. It is the largest city in Alaska and about 42% of the entire population of the state lives here. It lies on the Cook Inlet (see picture about Captain Cook below). The city does not have a lot of high rise buildings due to codes put in place after the devastating (9.2 on Richter scale) earthquake of Good Friday 1964.
It was an absolutely beautiful day with the temperature in the high 60's. We heard that there was an open air market, a combination farmer's market and arts/crafts festival, every Saturday. That was our first stop. As you can see from the pictures, the good weather brought out hordes of people. Add to that the Princess and Holland America cruise passengers and it was crowded indeed. We bought a few things and had halibut quesidillas from one of the vendors.
That cabbage in the picture is actually an early season one. The glacial silt in the soil and the long summer days apparently make Anchorage a champ in the vegetable department. I don't think they were bragging in talking about a 100+ pound cabbage and very large carrots and other veggies.
As you can see in the pictures, the city does a superb job of placing flowers everywhere. The residents also do wonderful gardens as you can see in yesterday's pictures of the B&B. We were also impressed by the amount of retail shopping downtown. There is a large mall anchored by JC Penny and Nordstrom as well as many stores catering to the tourist crowd.
Perhaps because I'm wearing a UT Longhorns hat, we get asked frequently what part of Texas we are from. Seems that a great number of residents here used to live in Texas. One of the folks at the Visitor's Center has a son who is apparently a typical Austin slacker. We told him how nice Anchorage was and he said, "yes, but you ought to be here when it's totally dead in the winter."
In addition to walking most of the downtown area, we took a one hour trolley tour. It got us out of the central business district and to some neighborhoods and places we wouldn't have seen otherwise. The Federal Building hosts exhibits and movies on Alaska and also sponsors daily walking tours. We missed the one this morning but may try and do it tomorrow.
Tonight Jane is taking me out for a belated birthday dinner. We found a nice bistro yesterday but were too late for dinner. It's easy to have time slip away when it gets light by 4:30am and is still light at midnight (we haven't stayed up later than that). They say there is "only" 18 hours of daylight right now, but it seems to only be dark about 3:00am.