Seward to Anchorage

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Well, we managed to fit everything into our bags… that’s quite the impressive feat if you can visualize how much crap both me and Mom bought. (Not to mention 3L of alcohol… not exactly flexible with our packing there).

We got off the ship quite early – at 7:30am – to make our transfer from Seward up to Anchorage, Alaska. We had booked the transfer/tour with Alaska Cruise Transfers… yeahhhhhh, our driver was awesome, but the set-up at the cruise terminal was a complete and utter joke. Without being funny.

In their instructions, they stress that you cannot leave the terminal area because they will walk around with a sign for where to go. At 8am we had to be in the terminal with our bags, for departure at 8:30am.

Funny, at 8:15am there was still no one walking around with a sign. Cool.

I overheard this Vancouver family and a guy from Texas saying someone was in this other area, so we all went exploring together and finally found the mythical “sign-carrier” who was now getting mad at everyone for being late.

Guess where their sign was?
On the back of her clipboard.
Which she was writing on… so the sign was facing down.

Needless to say, we left 30min late by the time everyone found the girl... not cool.

Our driver made up for the bad start though – he was hilarious in a cute, lil Russian accent way. I love hearing Russians say: “population”. Epic.

Anyway, he had a lot of good little tidbits to share – some facts, some stories, a good mix. One of my favourites was talking about this little town called Moose Pass. There was a huge debate a few years back about building a gas station there, not because of the environmental concerns or population problems, but because they couldn’t imagine having a “Moose Pass Gas”

Yeah. I laughed. I laughed hard. I’m a child.

On the way to Anchorage, our one main stop was at the Wildlife Rehab Centre, where they take in orphaned and/or injured wildlife that wouldn’t survive on their own. It was mostly moose/elk/caribou and that kind of deal (sidenote: baby musk ox? Totally cute), but they did have some black bear cubs that were being trained to do movies and such.

We got there just as it was feeding time for the cubs – that was quite the show. The trainer also had them show-off their tricks, he played a few games with them, and all that jazz. The girl cub kept going off and sitting up on her haunches to try and get the crowd’s attention whenever the boy would be do something. She knew how to steal the spotlight back.

My favourite part though? At one point the male pawed at the trainer – so the trainer stood up tall and very forcefully said “NO”. (He explained they obviously need to discourage any contact like that while they’re young). That poor bear… he made such a startled face haha, I wish I could’ve captured that on film. Poor baby.

Anyway, the scenery up to Anchorage was right up there with Alaska’s best – passing thru valleys, by pristine lakes, and seeing more eagles in 3 hours than we’ve seen our entire trip. (Unfortunately, flying bird + zooming bus = horrible photos). One other neat area was Turnagain Arm (a fjord, pretty much) that has the second largest fluctuation of high vs. low tide in the world (after Fundy). It was low tide, so the ground was all silt and mud from the glaciers – looked disgusting, but in front of the mountains it made for a great shot.

We arrived in Anchorage around noon; we met this great guy – Ryan, who was around my age – at the airport on our way into town on the shuttle. Once again, I was wearing my Ottawa pants, and when he saw me (he was working in the airport convenience store) he’s like (in a growingly excited voice): “Hey! Ottawa! Do you go to University in Ottawa?!” . Uhm, yes? “SO, ARE YOU CANADIAN?!” . Uhm. Yes. Yes I am. He then bounced over and gave us both a great big hug. Aw haha. “I LOVE CANADA!!” . He proceeded to explain that he was immigrating to Canada in a few weeks. Unfortunately the convo didn’t last much longer since he had a customer, and we had to go. Fun little talk we had though 😉

Once in Anchorage, we lounged around the hotel and spent the afternoon shopping haha. Finally, a real mall! I was quite pleased with myself - got a whole bunch of clothes, shoes and jewelry. Perfect.

Tomorrow we're going to really explore the city - it has a nice feel to it so far. For its size, it has a small-town, homey feel to it which is nice =)

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Photos

Owl
It was giving me the stank eye.

Buffalo
He stopped chewing his grass just to stare haha.

Musk Ox babies!
So cute!

Alaskan ghost trees
After an earthquake in the 1960s, the trees looked like this throughout the valley