Anchorage, The Largest City in Alaska

Saturday we continued on to Anchorage staying at Golden Nugget Camper Park, a typical large rv park, with views of other motorhomes out your windows. We would have loved to stay at the state campground but as I said we needed water and we thought we would get a tv fix as we hadn't watched any for awhile and cable was advertised. However, it was only for long time residents and you had to pay additional for it. It is ok for our needs anyway.

Anchorage had a population of 290,000, the largest town in Alaska by far and home to half of the people who live in Alaska. It has a great downtown area with beautiful flowers hanging all over.

 

They also have a ton of restaurants. We went to one, Sacks Cafe, an eclectic new American restaurant in the downtown area. Excellent service, excellent food. Joe had Salmon with an asian fusion touch and I had Halibut with pasta, with tomatoes, pistachios, in a lemon sauce. The seafood was so fresh and great tasting.

We went to the Anchorage Museum, which is a world class museum and the largest in the state. It has an extensive art collection and one of the largest collections of Alaska Native Art and artifacts. The Smithsonian Arctic Studies Center on the second of 4 levels has around 600 objects and wonderful exhibits along with videos of Native stories.

Check out the sun glasses below, Not actually glass but they had slits across the center for your eyes but gave protection from the sun before glass came to be.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Monday we actually got some sunshine, hurray. We went down to Point Woronzof, on the Cook Inlet and walked along the beach. It wasn't clear enough to see Denali which you can sometimes see from the Point.

 

 

 

 

 

 

There is lots to do in this town that we only got a taste of. Tuesday was sunny and warm all day but wouldn't you know it, that was the day we had scheduled to take the Jeep in for service. Yikes. It is the 60,000 mile service and they had it all day and so we were stuck in the motorhome all day. Such is life. We are hoping for a few more days of at least partial sun and no rain as we had a few days at Anchorage which we hope to enjoy at our next stop which will be a national forest campground down near Portage Glacier.

 

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Eagle River and a Walk to Thunderbird Falls

We are making our way south in Alaska towards Anchorage. We found another great state park to park for a few days. Eagle River Campground is a Chugach State Park. It is a popular park as it is only 15 miles from Anchorage. The last few campgrounds we have stayed at including this one didn't have water available to fill up the Rv and so we are only staying a few days and then will go to a commercial campground in Anchorage itself that has full hookups. We got a nice spot above the river.

 

 

 

One day we took a nice 2 mile round trip hike to Thunderfalls. The beginning was somewhat steep but the rest was up and down but not as steel and was a good workout as well as a very scenic hike.

 

 

 

 

We then took a drive over to the Eagle River Nature Center. We were going to take another hike but decided not to that day.

 

 

We had more rain though we are hoping for some sunny or at least partly sunny days next week. Saturday we leave for Anchorage.

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A Couple of Stops on the Way to Anchorage

On the 7th, we left the Denali National Park area and went a short drive down to the Denali State Park. In Mike and Terri Church's Alaskan Camping book, which I use along with RV Reviews to pick out spots to stay, they mentioned that Byers Lake, in Denali State Park, was one of their favorite state parks. We agree. It is very wooded and all the sites were very private. Even on Saturday when we arrived and there were more people, it was very quite. By Sunday, when the Alaskan weekenders were gone, we were almost the only ones there. The sun came out for a little while when we got there. I don't always mention the weather but we continue to have mostly cloudy and lots of rain. We do miss our California sunshine sometimes. Of course, rain and cooler weather are the reasons for it being so green and lush and we love that.

They have some nice trails around the lake and we had a nice walk. They had bear warnings but fortunately we didn't run into any. We are hoping to see some bears in Alaska but would rather see them from the safety of our car or on a bus or boat tour not on a trail.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Another lovely campground that we could easily have stayed for a longer period of time.

On Monday, the 9th, we were on the road again for another short drive. The sun was out and was only partly cloudy and so we stopped at the Denali View South which is known to have fantastic views of Denali when it is out. Well, it still had a lot of clouds but we had a pretty good view of the 20,320 foot mountain, which is the highest peak in the northern hemisphere. This is about a hundred miles away from the mountain and so you can image what it looks like from up close.

 

 

Happy with our sighting, we continued on stopping at another lovely state campground, South Rolly Campground in the Nancy Lakes Recreation Area. The sites not occupied on the water were too small for us but we picked a nice spot in the trees with a large opening in front of us and a small view of the water. There are a number of interconnected lakes and great canoe trails. Unfortunately, it rained the few days we were there and we didn't get to try them out.

 

 

 

 

 

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