Westward to Alaska

I am a bit delayed in posting the pictures from my Alaska trip. I picked it up last week. We flew out on Memorial Day. The flight was full with the usual cruise ship crowd. And of course we sold out of food before we were even half way thru the cabin, but once we landed in beautiful Anchorage, it did not matter.

The high temperature while I was there was 65 degrees. A nice change from the oppressive heat of home. I hung out on the layover with Susan, one of my co-workers. We started at 7am on Tuesday (mind you ANC is three hours behind home so it isn't THAT early) and went to this place called the White Spot for breakfast. It was very local (but I will say the name sounds kind of racist) but the food was great. I had HUGE pancakes and some reindeer sausage.

We then headed down to Pete's to rent our bikes. He takes care of all the flight crews. We ran into Bonnie, another co-worker, when we got there.

Susan and I decided to do the Tony Knowles Coastal Trail (http://www.trailsofanchorage.com/kincaid_park.htm). It is about 8 miles one way, so the round trip is 16 miles. It hugs the coast out past the airport, then goes up a rather steep mountain. We ended up walking our bikes up the mountain, but riding down was fun. We saw a mother moose and her babies, but we were mindful to keep our distance. At one point you are at the end of the runway and it looks like the planes are going to land right on top of you.

We detoured on the way back to the Sugaya Asian Grocery Store. We had lunch there and got some snacks for the red-eye home. We also ran into Bonnie again. Susan and I were exhausted....

We got back to the hotel around 3pm. I was tired and my nads were sore from the bike ride and I just wanted to sleep for a few hours, but the hotel is getting renovations so the constant jack hammering made it hard to sleep. I think they stopped around 5pm so I might have got an hours worth of sleep.

The flight home had about 40 open seats in the back which was nice. We had the last row to ourselves. There was this one gentleman we had to cut off because he was being rather liberal with the "toddies".