Rainy Days in Anchorage

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Danielle, Gabbi, and Jacqui had a play date in Girdwood (about a half hour south of Anchorage) with some friends. They built fairy houses in a forest near the fancy Alyeska Resort with their friends Kara and James. That evening we walked around downtown. The girls showed me a train that they used as a jungle gym that they had been to before. Then we walked over to the start (Sun) of the planet walk. It is quite a partnership with an endowment to ensure maintenance needs are met for the foreseeable future. We did some window shopping and looked around a typical tourist trap gift shop. We searched for a restroom and stumbled upon a silent auction art show. There was some beautiful work including a photo of a musk ox with the tiny reflection of the photographer in the creature’s eye. The downtown area is certainly a touristy area, with restaurants, bars, shops, and reindeer sausage vendors (believe it or not we haven’t tried any).

On Saturday, the drizzle was coming down and we started the day with a walk to the SnowCity Café for breakfast. As you might expect from a place that was voted best breakfast in Anchorage, we had about a half hour wait. Danielle and I loaded up on coffee and got a muffin for the girls while we waited. We had a decent breakfast (we tend to be overly critical of breakfast….) then headed back to our apartment to figure out how to fill our rainy day. We decided to explore the city a bit. We went to the farmers market and stocked up on the best produce that we’ve seen since we got here (organic and very expensive) boy do we miss Brookfield Farm!!!!! Then we stopped at the library, returned a couple of dozen books and re-stocked our supply. We checked the pool listings in the city recreation guide and headed to the West High School swimming pool for open swim. The girls were really excited to swim and try out the water slides that would cost us extra! We ran into a closed road with some road construction and it took us a while to figure our way around it. Then we went into the door marked GYM (should have looked for the one marked POOL). We got back on track and found the right place!! As we were walking in, the attendant was closing her window and informed us that she was over capacity and could not let us in. That went over really well with the girls…. After a few tears, we decided to see if we could crash a hotel pool. Danielle navigated us to the Howard Johnson, went inside and worked her magic. Thirty seconds later we were on our way to our (almost) private pool. A local (well he grew up in North Pole) who visits “pretty often” swam in the pool and floated on the lifesaving ring while we were there as well.

After a long day we ate at “home” and crashed!

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