Around Anchorage

On Thursday we decided to stick around Anchorage and take advantage of the beautiful weather that everyone seemed to agree was highly unusual this time of year.  We also wanted to see the bore tide and check out one of the museums in town before heading north.  We first headed to the Anchorage Museum at Rasmuson Center, located in downtown Anchorage.  The museum is dedicated to everything Alaska, including its history, culture, people, industries, and nature.  Overall it was a well put together museum with interesting exhibits. 

Painting made of fish skins

Museum from the outside

After spending a few hours at the museum we headed to the Ulu factory.  When we visited Alaska 12 years ago we remembered that Ulu knives were a big souvenir item.  Ulu knives are traditionally all purpose knives used by Eskimo women.  We liked them because the commercial versions come with a cutting board with a bowl carved into it that is usually the same size as the knife, making the knife and bowl/cutting board perfect together.  The factory wasn’t much more than a couple of rooms where it seemed the making of these knives a manually intensive job.  There were only a few people making the knives.  The factory doubled as a store where you could buy the knives and other Alaska related souvenirs.

After leaving the factory/store, we headed to a local food truck gathering.  The Anchorage food truck scene pretty much matches the city:  small.  We didn’t expect too many trucks so we were not disappointed.  The food however was pretty good and not as overpriced as you often find at food trucks in bigger cities.  We enjoyed eating our lunch in the beautiful weather before exploring the city a little more. 

Grilled cheese from Boomba Grilled Cheese

Works fries from Boomba's

Smoked salmon cake slider

Bamboo BLT

We had some time to kill before heading back down the Seward highway to see the bore tide, which wasn’t scheduled until 4:30 that afternoon.  Again because of the beautiful weather we decided to take a drive around the airport and along the water’s edge where we were sure we would have some nice views on the amazingly clear day.  Just like 12 years ago, along the perimeter of the airport, we again saw a moose.  We would have missed this one had it not been for a couple of cars parked along the side of the road.  The moose was off in the bushes eating plants and leaves.  He was probably no more than 30 feet off the side of the road and only another 30 feet from a popular bike path that runs along the water.  The people on the bike path either didn’t see him, which was certainly possible because he was in the woods, or they are just so used to seeing moose in the city that they didn’t even care.  But for us it was a neat experience, seeing a moose inside of the city limits.  We drove to the end of the road, turned around and started heading back.  The road took us directly under the flight path of jets taking off from the airport, which was pretty cool. 

Before heading back down the Seward Highway to see the bore tide we made one last stop: at the supposed world’s largest chocolate fountain.  We heard about this place because of geocaching so we decided to check it out.  Inside of the Alaska Wild Berry Park, which is really nothing more than a souvenir shop, is a large chocolate fountain, they say it is the world’s largest.  We haven’t seen enough chocolate fountains to know if it is the largest or not, but it was pretty big.  We spent some time looking through the stuff they had for sale, we bought some chocolate covered berries before moving on.

Although we had driven down the Seward Highway only the day before, today the weather was perfect and the views were amazing!  We did not drive all the way down to Whittier; we only went as far as an observation point that promised a good view of the bore tide.  A bore tide is when the leading edge of an incoming tide travels up a river or narrow bay forming a wave.  So instead of the high tide gradually coming in, the start of the high tide comes in via a large wave, really quickly.  We’ve seen a bore tide before, one before here in Alaska and once in the Bay of Fundy in Canada.  While our viewpoint was probably a good quarter mile away, the wave was still pretty impressive.  We estimated it was a couple of feet high and in the distance we even saw people surfing on the wave!  After seeing the tide roll in we slowly started our journey back to Anchorage, enjoying the clear day and the amazing views the whole way. 

We got back to our hotel probably a little after 6 and enjoyed the beautiful view from our room.  There was a nice little pond in back of the hotel with amazing views of the mountains behind the hotel.  The previous day we could not see the mountains because of the cloud cover but with Thursday’s clear weather, the views were absolutely amazing.

View from our hotel room