Disembarkation was simple enough. We loaded onto a bus that took us to downtown Anchorage. Actually that’s not quite true, it did make a stop at the airport where Derek and I disembarked to pick up our rental car or cars. We had two reservations (one per couple), but were able to get a vehicle that he could drive that we believed would hold all of our luggage — it did, though with a suitcase and a daypack between David and me on the back seat. We then returned to the Convention Center where Alison, David, and the majority of the bus passengers waited with luggage. Or rather, waited with the luggage that had their names on it; Derek and I had to retrieve our own bags and show a passport or drivers license showing they were ours.
We couldn’t check into our airbnb until 3 so we did what cachers do….glad you’re presumably sitting down as I reveal that we drove east of downtown Anchorage and found a few caches before grabbing lunch. A couple of errands later it was late enough to drop our bags at the lodging before returning downtown for our event cache. We were surprised at how many people showed up — we expected about 4 other as and ended up with over a dozen, some locals, some from places like Florida, Illinois and Washington.
We had a particular brewpub in mind for dinner but didn’t consider the possibility of a 90-minute wait. After checking on a few other potential locations we ended up at a Japanese restaurant that was acceptable but not much more. Then dessert at Wild Scoops, a local ice cream shop that had a fantastic vegan ice cream sandwich made of delicious chocolate cookies and one of the best vegan chocolate sorbets I’ve ever had. Perhaps my biggest regret is that we didn’t make it back to Wild Scoops for an encore.
We then walked over to see Hamilton. Yes, Broadway in Anchorage. Alas, the theatre was not build for people with legs so three of us were a bit uncomfortable during the first act (and jealous of David’s more average-length legs). Fortunately there were some empty seats near us, including chairs for companions of wheelchair users, so we rearranged ourselves and the second act was ever so much more comfortable. The show was great.
Monday David was under the weather (truths be told he was under the weather a couple of days earlier) so decided to stay home. The weather was typically northwestern, raining on and off, but Derek, Alison and I — are you sitting down? — went exploring and caching. We ended up eating lunch at the aforementioned brew pub where I had a tasty pizza with vegan cheese and pepperoni (yes, it’s a mixed metaphor, it’s also yummy). Then the four of us had a lazy evening with take-out food, streamed an appropriate movie, Mystery, Alaska, and packed.
Anchorage was fun. It reminded me of the saying that Anchorage is a great place to visit, it’s so close to Alaska. There are impressive mountains there, a nice coastline, and other natural beauty…..but it’s nowhere near as stunning as either Southeast Alaska (where we visited on our cruise) or Denali National Park or even the arctic which has its own type of beauty.
Tuesday morning we, you guessed it, geocached. After a quick lunch we returned the rental car and headed to our respective flights. At lunch we had the inspired idea to rent a car to get home as we would be landing just after midnight, far too late to ask a friend for a ride and later than we wanted to take public transportation. Turned out that renting the car was cheaper than Uber or Lyft would have been, though we did need to return to the car on Wednesday.
Aside from David being under the weather at the end of the trip, what a fantastic trip!
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