Day 11: August 31, 2000
Park Highway to Anchorage

Mt. McKinley at 7am

Walendo woke at around 7am to check out the sunrise and he said McKinley was all lit up. He took a bunch of pictures from the ledge upstairs. He said it was the same view in the poster. He dragged me up for a bit to take some shots and then we went back to bed. At around 8am or so I woke up and it was still lit up. While I was bringing things to the car to pack up, I looked at the children's books written by Jean Richardson, the owner and the daughter of Mary (who founded the place). Jean was there and she told me that the book I was reading about children from different places was about real kids she'd taught when she was a teacher. Even the pictures were of those real kids. I asked if she'd sign the book and she said she'd be happy to. I realized I didn't have my money, so I came back with another load of stuff. Walendo & I decided to get it for Chet & Kris' kids (they'd just had another baby just before we left), but I couldn't remember the new kid's name, so I had to get check with him again. Luckily, he remembered it was Alex, and she autographed it for us. As we were heading out, I asked her if there were some trails around here so we could go for an hour or so walk. She said that some trails were closed because of "high bear danger," but pointed to others, saying that we should be very careful since there are still a lot of bears around those too. We politely looked at the map after that, since I knew full well that there was no way Walendo would go on a hike with "high bear danger." Sigh.

Mt. McKinley at 8am

Instead of the hike, we just headed south on the Park Highway towards Anchorage. You could see Mt. McKinley for quite some time in the rear window of the car. The road was nice, but nothing special, so we just drove straight in to Anchorage, listening to Harry Potter. Shortly after we'd gotten into the city, we noticed an Office Depot, so we stopped so we could pick up packing tape for the box we'd picked up for all extra stuff we'd bought along the way. Walendo also bought some labels so he could label each rock with the location where we'd gotten it (for the travel fountain). Even though it was still early, we decided to take a shot at checking in to the hotel so we wouldn't have all our stuff with us in the city, and indeed they had a room ready for us. We were staying at the Rodeway again, and this time the room was nicer than the last one we'd been in. It was also bigger, which was good since we had to do a bunch of rearranging to get everything to fit in our bags when we packed up.

Once settled, we drove back to the heart of the city (probably only a mile or so away) and first went to the Alaska Experience, a 180-degree theater with scenes of Alaska. Turned out we had a half-hour to go, so I had time to go back and get my regular glasses, which I'd left in the car, and get a hot chocolate. Meanwhile, the lobby of the place was a gift shop, so Walendo browsed around looking for gifts for his Irish nephews & nieces for Christmas. For the last couple of years, he's bought their gifts while on trips, which makes it easier. At 1pm we went in to see the movie, which was about 40 minutes long. I thought it was okay, not great. They had a lot of scenes flying over glaciers or mountains, which were nice, but by this time we'd seen a lot of that kind of scenery, even if not from those angles. Also, the audio commentary was pretty contentless, so you didn't learn much. ("The vast spaces of Alaska sit, undisturbed by humans, enduring the harsh forces of nature... blah blah blah.") I did learn that there is 34,000 miles of coastline in Alaska, more than the rest of the US combined. And I think they said there were 1800 islands.

After the film, we decided to wander around the downtown and see what was there. We first stopped in a fine art store that had some nice paintings and a bunch of soapstone carvings. We've seen them elsewhere and they're very nice. There's a lot of carvings of bears, walruses, otters, and whales. There was one reddish stone carving of a bear on its two hind feet looking up, which Walendo says is the pose it uses when it wants someone to throw it a frisbee. I thought it would be amusing to get it, but they were expensive ($200-$500ish) so we didn't. Shortly after that we found the heart of the downtown where there were a gazillioin gift shops selling Alaska tshirts, fleece, and lots of trinkets. Most of them had sales, and there's no sales tax, so it was tempting to stock up. We wandered through a few of them and bought a few gifts and I got a tshirt for me. I wanted to call Ann to find out if her kids would like this stuff but I didn't have her number with me. I figured I'd call the next morning to find out, since we could always come back. A lot of the stores had the same sort of stuff (often several are owned by the same company), but there were a few higher-scale shops with real art work or just nicer stuff. At one point, we split up when Walendo had to go to the bathroom, so he went into the mall while I wandered through some shops with native art made of ivory. They were nice, but nothing really struck me. Eventually, Walendo got gift-shopped out so we stopped at a cafe for some hot chocolate, and then we went back to the hotel at around 5pm.

Walendo had arranged to have dinner with his high school friend Andy and his wife Holly, and they were going to pick us up at the hotel, since they weren't sure when they'd be ready. So we hung out at the hotel and read, and I started on the process of packing up all our stuff for the airplane. When I opened up my suitcase, I saw the Sting CD "Brand New Day" sitting on top! Walendo had bought it for me when he went into the mall to go to the bathroom and saw it at a music store. It was very nice of him and I was very happy that he'd thought to do that. Even more impressive was that he'd managed to hide it and not say anything until I found it, something he usually doesn't have the patience for. I'd even started to open the suitcase once earlier and stopped, but he didn't say anything. What a sweetie. Anyway, I filled the bigger box with stuff we'd bought, and it seemed like we'd be okay, even with the jackets that had to be packed in the suitcase.

Eventually, Andy and Holly showed up at the room. Right away, they both seemed very nice and down to earth, so it was very comfortable to meet them. We asked them to pick the restaurant since it was their town, so they chose someplace downtown. We got into Andy's big van and headed down, but it turned out there were no parking spots to be had, surprisingly enough. They revised the plan and we wound up at a place called Snow City, which I thought was perfect. The food was good, but it wasn't overly expensive. When we first walked in, the maitre d' was especially friendly to us and we chatted with him for a bit after he seated us. The dinner was fun. Andy and Walendo did a little bit of "remember that time when?" from their childhood, which was fun to hear. I had heard some of the stories but not all. I think Andy even reminded Walendo of some stuff he had forgotten. Most of the time, though, we found out what their life was like and they asked about our trip and such. Andy is a civil engineer working in some sort of semi-military position that gives him full military benefits but he isn't really in the military so he doesn't have the drawbacks, so that sounded nice (on our dime, of course, but that's another issue). He goes into remote towns around the state and designs and sometimes builds sewage or water systems. It sounded like he really enjoyed what he did. Holly is a physical therapist and she's been working with post-operative patients in a hospital. She said she liked her job, but she mostly saw it as a way to make money so she could do the things she enjoyed, especially travel. She used to work as a cook for firefighters, so she'd go out to fire locations through the summer and work straight through and then she'd get months off on the off season, which she'd use to travel. She said she loved that, and now she has a hard time getting used to working through the year. They'd been married about 4 years and they'd just bought a house about 6 months ago and were remodelling it. Holly and I split off a few times into one-on-one conversations so I got a better feeling for her. It seemed like we had the travel bug in common. She'd gone to lots of foreign places and just made her way, which sounded great.

After I felt like I'd been eating forever I still hadn't gotten through half of my meal, so when the check came, I asked if either of them would like to take the rest home, since we couldn't take it to the hotel. Andy said he would, which impressed me. Most people would consider it improper or something. Andy & Holly ended up paying for us, which was very nice, but we promised to treat them when they come down to San Francisco. They're planning to be here in early November, so it'll be nice to see them and take them out. After we'd left the restaurant, we realized we'd forgotten the leftovers so Andy and I started back in, just as the maitre'd was coming out after us. It wasn't that he had our leftovers, it was just that he was hurt we hadn't said goodbye. It was a little odd, though I didn't mind. In any case, we got the leftovers and left. Andy asked if we'd want to walk along the coast trail a bit, so we did. There's a paved path that goes along the water to the south and west of the city, and apparently it goes for miles down the coat. We walked about a half mile or so, with Andy and Walendo talking up ahead while Holly and I talked. We stopped once to see lots of ducks in the water, and commented on how they were dabblers, as opposed to divers, which I'd learned about in the Pratt Museum in Homer. (Dabblers just dunk their heads in to get food whereas divers dive all the way under and swim below. Dabblers feet are further forward on their body, which is one way to tell them apart.) Holly told me about some of her trips, and recommended Turkey to me (yet another person who has) since it has mountains and coastline and is very pretty, she said. She said she'd mostly travelled outside the US on the theory that it'll be easier to travel the US when she's older. Interesting point. She said she was a little worried about all the remodelling work since it might keep them from travelling, but I told her we were able to do stuff up at Ormsby without it getting in the way. Eventually, we turned around and walked back, this time the four of us talking.

They dropped us back at our hotel, and they'd offered to have us come by to see their house tomorrow evening before our flight (which leaves at 1am, ugh). So they came up to the room to draw us a map on how to get there -- and to the Cold Stone ice cream place that I'd heard about. I'd never tried it, and since we'd learned the Anchorage store was their best selling location, I thought I'd contribute. They also suggested we drive up to Flattop Mountain to get a view of Anchorage, so they showed us how to get there too. After that they left, shaking hands and hugging, and we agreed we'd see them the next day. It was around 9 or so (Andy had to get up early to go fishing the next day) and we hadn't had dessert, so we decided to go out. I called Cold Stone but they were closed, so we just wandered downtown. Most places were closed, but we saw one cafe open that turned out to be a karaoke bar with a restaurant attached. I got some ice cream and Walendo had pie, while we listened to the singing in the other room. They sounded better than your average person, so we were curious. We both wandered over to check it out, and when I was there, the bartender urged me to come in and join them. It sounded like there were people who came a lot, obviously people who could sing. After we'd finished, we went back to the hotel where we read for a while before going to sleep.

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