Sharp's Travels

We had our Sunday Prayer Service at 8:30am at the park shelter. Spike’s wife and mother-in-law were there. They will be traveling the rest of the trip with us. After the service we roasted Spike. It was his birthday and we had given him a group birthday card along with a number of gag gifts. It was great fun.

We left at 9am to carpool for our city orientation/tour. We were shown all the shopping area and best restaurants to eat at. We went to the Ulu Factory and got a demonstration on how to use the Alaskan knife and could see where the handles and blades were made. Lots of purchases were made in there by our group.

The salmon run had started and we got to see several people fishing for them. Also saw several that had been caught.

Then we headed for Earthquake Park. Spike showed us where over 1000 feet of land dropped below sea level. It was a sub division at the time. The quake was rated at a 9.2 and 127 people died. Down town on 6th street one side of the street dropped 12 feet.

Spike took us through the Float Plane Harbor. There were hundreds and hundreds of planes—60% of the people here have airplane licenses. In the winter time they convert the planes from wheels or pontoons to skies. It is the only way they get into remote villages up here.

We stopped at the Millennium Hotel-Iditarod Race Headquarters for a coffee break. Spike wanted us to check out the lobby with all the stuffed Alaskan animals.

Spike pointed out the Black Elk Leather store and we stopped into the Alaska Fur Exchange. It had authentic Alaskan gifts. It had real animal head fur hats and lots of wall-mount heads of every species. You could get all the tools needed to do leather work and tons of beads for decorating clothing.

For lunch we went to the Market & Festival. We had deep fired Halibut, hushpuppies and fries. It was all real good. We walked around the grounds and checked out the booths. When we finished there we headed to the train station to take advantage of the tour of the Port of Anchorage.

We were bussed into the secured area and up to where they unloaded the ships, the containers are trucked away. They served us hot dogs and chips high up on the 3rd floor deck so we got a bird’s eye view of the operation.

Patty wanted to go to the quilt shop to collect more fabric for her Alaskan quilt. It was fun checking out all the animal prints. The guys patiently waited for us.

We checked out the book store and picked up a few more Clive Cussler books for Gay and then headed to the Army Surplus store to get a folding shovel to carry in the 5th wheel. We might need it to go gold panning again.

It was 5pm when we got back to the 5th wheel. We were free until 9pm when everyone gathered at the park shelter for birthday cake for Spike.

For pictures of the day see album: Anchorage 7-20-08