Anchorage Monday: Yesterday Sunday after 2 freezing nights in Denali without power we hit the road and headed to Anchorage. The weather was just magnificent. We had clear views of Mt McKinley most of the way. Its the largest mountain in North America. The Highway was a beautiful avenue of Fall coloured trees. Just perfect. We stopped halfway at Mary Carey's Diner with a view. It was a family run business and had a gift shop. The Lady in the shop was the daughter of the original owner Mary Carey. This Mary was a bit of a legend in her day being a female pioneer in that area. Kaff was taken with the whole thing and had bought her book about her life, I went halves so I get to read it second. We had gorgeous views from our table having lunch. We also met 2 hunters all decked out in their camouflage gear, the whole nine yards but they don't actually kill anything, they just go out into the woods and camp...If you kill anything you have to have it recorded and you must use the beast. ie skin it slice it & eat it. So really they are just wildlife watchers not hunters...they looked the part though..We had a good laugh with them.
Pushing on we completed the 5 hour trip and arrived in Anchorage . We drove passed the RV Park and had to go around the block..Kathryn nearly freaked out as all around the RV Park is trailer home...I mean really trashy trailer homes. So when we leave the van we hide the valubles..There are some larger Motor homes so we are hoping if anyone gets robbed its them as it looks like they have more money than us.
We caught up on jobs like washing and I popped over to Costco which is just over the road to pick up some dinner. Kaff booked her Prince William Sound tour for Tuesday.
Today we started out at 0730 to get out to Lake Hood at the Airport for our trip in the float plane out to Redoubt Mountain Lodge on Cresent Lake which is in the Lake Clarke National Park.
3 planes left "Rust's" ours was an 8 seater..Beaver. It was magnificent , the trip took just over an hour and we flew across Kenai National park and Oil rigs and fishing camps, it was just so gorgeous from the air. When we arrived the lake was a Glacier one so flying in it was that bright aqua colour. We were met on the beach by Honey Bear who ended up being our guide . After a quick pit stop we 6 from our plane loaded onto one of those party boats and we floated around the lake edges where there were many bears mainly female some with triplets others with twin cubs or just one or alone. The bears don't hang together..sad really because they could have so much fun if they hunted together. The Sock eyed Salmon are coming back into the lake to die and as they are finishing the Silver Tail Salmon are just starting so there is heaps of food for the bears and they are just loving it. The male bears don't like to work so hard for their dinner so they stay up higher in the streams and let the Salmon run up to them..(pretty typical I thought)..
The Bear cubs are booted out by their mothers at about 3 years of age and from then on it is on its own, Mother bear goes off and has more babies and then boots them out as well, so in the end they all end up alone..sad face.!
we went into the lodge for lunch and had some hot drinks to warm up as it was freezing in the boat. For lunch we had some Salmon, but not the dead ones ..they are for the bears.
Throughout the day float planes would land carrying day fishermen and at one point the plane was loading up as a bear was walking down the beach toward them !!
After lunch we went out and did some more wildlife watching. We spied a bald eagle and a young bald eagle and then it was back to the bears...There were so many bears I lost count and to think I was thinking we had left it to late but the guy from the lodge said September is the best month to come so we jagged it.
We came into dock at about 1645 and warmed up again before the float plane came and picked us up. We had another glorious ride home and by the time we drove the RV home it was 1900.. so we are both trying to sort through the hundreds of photos and type this up before bed..
Tomorrow Kaff has her tour and I am going to Gas up then hang out at the shops..I found a "Chuck E Cheese" which I haven't had before so I may go there after the shops. We are also catching up with some people who are friends of a friend who we met on the train so should be interesting.