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The People Movers DowntownBy 7am we were up, dressed and heading towards the People Mover bus stop. Fortuately it was just a few blocks down the road the motel was on, and then a couple blocks to the right. On the way there, we spotted Fred Myers and a number of others stores, and decided we'd stop there on the way back. Just like in Fairbanks, we lucked out and found out that the bus ride was free today, to seniors over 60. After a couple miles, and a good number of stops, we reached the downtown station. We'd already decided we were going to take a trolley tour, so we asked for directions to the Visitor Center. Just a few blocks away, we found it, and the trolley starting place too, right next door. We went inside to ask about the trolley tour, and a guy followed us in. Turns out, he was one of the trolly employees, which we should have realized by the jacket he wore. LOL After he gave us a run through of the 3 trolley tours, we decided on the combo tour for $50 each, which lasted about 2 hours.
We had about half an hour until
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The Anchorage Visitors Center the tour started, so we wandered around a bit, then returned to the Visitor Center. We boarded our trolley, the driver introduced himself and away we went. The first place we stopped was the "bridge", where our driver/tour guide told us about the different types of salmon, and explained how they swam upstream every year. Unfortunately it was a bit too early for that. He also told us how the Beluga Whales tended to follow them and try to catch them before they got too far. He also explained some stuff about how the salmon died on their way back downstream, and how Anchorage or Alaska allowed citizens to capture a certain amount, to last the winter. I don't remember all he said, but it was interesting.
We got back on board and headed down the road, to the Captain Cook Park. There were some pretty good views of Anchorage and the mountains and sea around it. The tour guide explained a lot about Captain Cook and his two trips to the area. He died before he returned from the second one. They have a cool statue of him at the park. Next, we headed towards the airport and
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A couple of cool statues Earthquake Park. Just before we got there, I noticed a moose right next to the road on the other side of a fence. The driver was almost as excited as I was, so we turned around in the park and headed back to it. It had hardly moved, so we got pretty close to it, and of course took a bunch of photos. After turning around again, we went back the park and parked. The driver explained how an earthquake occurred here in 1964, killing a good many Alaskans, and leaving the ground raised by several feet. He explained that the raised ground was due to a fault line.
We returned to the Visitor Center, thanked and tipped the driver, and started to look for a place to eat lunch. We ended up at a place called F Station, mostly because they had seafood. Manoli ordered a bowl of chowder and I ordered a fried halibut plate. Manoli's chowder was good, although it wasn't the clam chowder she expected, it was seafood chowder. My halibut plate was delicious. The french fries were very tasty and the halibut was probably the best I've ever had. After lunch, we wandered around,
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Our stop at the bridge stopping at a couple of souvenir shops. I bought a thimble for Anchorage. After walking down the street towards the mountains, wanting to get good photos, we asked a guy in a wheelchair where the best place for photos was, and he told us to go back up the street, and look for the parking garage. We could get onto the roof, and take some really good photos. Sure enough, we reached the garage, took the elevator up to the roof, and got some awesome photos.
Afterwards we returned to the bus station, and took the next bus, number 10, towards the Fred Myers near our motel. Strangely enough, the number 10 bus was about the last to show up. The ride wasn't that long, and we got off at the Fred Myers store. I bought some prosciutto with cheese and a 4-pack of churros pudding, and Manoli got a bowl of chili from the nearby Wendy's. We walked back to the motel, ate dinner, and crashed pretty early, since we needed be at the train depot soon after 6am. Tomorrow we take the Alaska Railroad train to Seward, our last stop before the cruise.
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