Alaska and the Yukon
with Archers Holiday, May 2016
Day 2: Anchorage, Alaska
Well, I woke up around 4am so spent maybe an hour catching up on Twitter and Facebook before going back to sleep. At about 7am I woke up properly and set to calling United about their "online" claim form, which we couldn't find because there isn't one! The lady said I must return to the Airport and file a claim. Lovely, I said, except for having no transport to the airport and a bus tour to catch taking me out of town. Relenting, she opened a case and gave us a file number - we now had fourteen days to return to the airport to report the problem with Dave's bag. I tweeted United as their customer service online is usually good, but first they referred me to their policy and a document about their liability. Eventually, they understood my issue was more about the attitude of the staff member lying to us about the claim rather than the bag.
Instead of our planned 9am start it was gone 10am before we set out on our exploration of Anchorage. Our first stop was at the Anchorage Fifth Avenue Mall and a visit to the Post Office as I'd brought some stuff over from the UK to send to my American pals. That was pretty painless.
In the Mall we found the Alaska Wild Berry Store and I spoke to a guy there that confirmed it was a locally owned business that tried, as far as possible, to stock Alaskan, or at least American-made products, in preference to the usual tat from China (though they did have some of that too.) They had a good collection of their own chocolates as well as jams, sweets, keyrings, coasters and a lot more. I studied their stock with a view to returning on our last day if we needed anything else. It seemed like a great store.
Our next stop was at Anchorage Museum. We arrived at about 11.20am and had just missed the 11am tour. We decided to wander about for a while and then catch the 12 noon guided tour. We went up to the top floor (I obviously had to try out the bannister for slidability) and found a small art gallery with photographs and a couple of glass sculptures.
We went down to the next floor and took a while amongst the display cases of Native Alaskan tribes all on loan from the Smithsonian Institute in Washington, DC. More than 600 indigenous Alaska artifacts are stored here, providing access for their study by Alaska native elders. Visitors are able to find more information via touch screens around the exhibit.
As it was almost time for the 12 noon tour, we walked down to the ground floor. They had a large room which had a cool snowmobile so we had to get a picture. Then it was time to meet our guide at the bottom of the stairs for our free tour of the museum. We started on the ground (first floor to Americans, who crazily start at "one") floor - the large room with the snowmobile is used as public space and hosts a collection of artworks. This was the Near The Bear Exhibit (Arctic means "Near the Bear"). The walrus picture is on an animal skin. Frank liked the otter painting by Alvin Amason, especially the nose.
We moved into the adjacent room which again was a large public space - folks can sit here and eat lunch purchased from the small snack bar, or just hang out on the bean bag/cushions. There's a Totem Pole in here which they think was originally carved in the late-19th Century. It was exhibited in the 1904 St Louis Exposition and the 1964 New York World's Fair. Totem poles apparently had several purposes - they could represent a family's genealogy, totemic figures owned or associated with a house or clan or it could even be a mortuary pole, housing the remains of an important person but they were never worshipped. This particular pole is shorter now than when originally carved as a bear at the base has long since rotted away (Hmph!), however, this red cedar pole still has carvings of a wolf/fox and a dogfish (shark).
Our guide took us up in the elevator to the 4th floor gallery where we had started earlier. Outside on a flat roof is an installation for a previous exhibit and as it is wearing so well, they've left if there. She explained that those glass items found in the display cases were actually polar bear dens - well, obviously they weren't life size, but still very interesting, they are pretty large, proportionally. We could see outside an extension was being built to expand the exhibition space.
We went down another floor and saw a "whale" made out of maps.
Then we headed down to the second floor to the history exhibit. This was an interesting exhibit in the Alaska Gallery and we'd missed it the first time around. Our guide took us on to the Smithsonian exhibit we'd seen earlier so we returned to the Gallery. There are a lot of good exhibits in here about the history of the indigenous people.
They had quite a few animals in here so we checked them out for you. Theo had a close shave with an eagle and we all got a bit close to that bear!
We thought it was time for lunch and took a look at the lunch kiosk but it didn't really have much. We tried the café but it was really too upmarket for what we were looking for. We gave up on that and decided to see what we stumbled across on the way to Walmart, our next planned stop. It wasn't the most scenic of walks alongside a busy road, but we did cross Chester Creek which was quite pretty.
We stumbled across Kriner's Diner. It looked okay so we headed inside. We didn't want much so ordered a Pepsi and some fries, Dave had a grilled cheese and ham sandwich. It was freshly prepared, hot and really good. It was a good find. Stuffed, we continued the thirty-five minute walk to Walmart.
We arrived and took a look at their touristy tat as well as grabbing some supplies (beer and wine!) for our trip as we weren't sure how much we'd find en route. Having done the walk we decided our best bet was to get a taxi back to the hotel, which was easy to do as there was a taxi zone in the Walmart parking lot. We got back to the hotel a little after 3pm.
We went to the hotel lobby at 4pm to meet our new Tour Director Kip. We mentioned our room mix up issues. He gave us our list of optional tours and talked about what was to come. After the chat we set off down 4th Avenue to do a recce of more tourist tat shops and a liquor store to get some beer for one of my pals back in England.
We did do a little sightseeing while we were out. We saw City Hall, some furry guys with an odd chap as well as this fabulous mural.
We then headed for Humpy's Alaskan Alehouse where we knew, from pre-trip research, that we could get food (including veggie options) and craft beer. We were lucky to find a booth available when we arrived so we settled in and made ourselves comfortable. We ordered some beers and perused the menu.
We ordered food. Dave got the reindeer burger as he'd not had reindeer before (don't tell Santa!) with teriyaki rice, Di chose the veggie burger with fries and Paul the hamburger with teriyaki rice - we shared. They dropped a Ted because despite asking for her burger without mayo it arrived fully slimed. They offered to make another but she got them to just bring another roll top as the rest was slime free.
The food was good and hot. The rice with teriyaki sauce not so good, but what do you expect if you choose not to have fries? Weird humans! Overall it was a good meal with a great selection of beers. After dinner we headed back to the hotel, dipping into another couple of gift shops on the way. Tired after the day we headed to the room for a final beer and some much needed sleep.
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