Day 12 - our second day starting and ending in the same place

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The day starts off with a bit of admin. Our plan is to catch a train from Anchorage to Fairbanks tomorrow, a biggish town steeped in gold-rush history. From there we'll get to within the Arctic Circle, which has always been one of this trip's highlights. Then we plan to spend about 10 days in Denali National Park before returning to Anchorage. (Maggie - we should have some bear stories by then, and hopefully we'll live to tell the tale.)

We hired mountain bikes and took them out for most of the day, timing it just slightly wrong as the heavens opened when we were about 20 minutes from home. At one stage we had to cycle on the extremely wide pavement. When we stopped for a sandwich shortly afterwards an angry man followed us in and in a very roundabout way told us that we must have different bikes in Europe without bells, and that this is highly dangerous (he could have been walking with his grand-daughter, who could have acted unpredictably). We politely thanked him for his advice and have passed on his safety concerns to the rental company.

That said, the bike trail around Anchorage was excellent. Gemma spotted a bull moose and we had a group of people all watching (and no doubt individually checking that they aren't the group's weakest member). We met one lady who had participated in a city-wide training day for Anchorage's emergency services, which involved a mocked plane crash, where a plane laden with nuclear waste crashed on a park full of people watching an open-air concert (that would be seriously bad luck). An airport worker who was eavesdropping, and at first didn't realise she was talking about a faked event, was just itching to say that the woman was lying. Then it clicked and he walked off sheepishly.

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Comments

[Barbara Simmonds]

Nothing like a good yarn...............
Just saw you haven't had any comments yet, so here's a comment! Do keep telling us about the stories people tell you. Many have a huge fund of knowledge and experience about the local area, (or are just good at telling a good story!). Can't wait to hear more............!

[ben]

guess the blog
am enjoying playing "guess who wrote which blog". see if you can write in the 3rd person as well...as in, "the decision has to be one that's right for Nasser Hussain"

[jess]

wow!
Dear Ed and Gemma, Have just been catching up with your travels - everything sounds amazing!!! You made me feel really nostalgic about Toronto - must get ourselves back there. I especially like all your exotic animal sightings - wolves, bears and whales all sound very cool! So glad your having the time of your lives. Keep the info coming. Lots of love, Jess P.S. Sounds like you were drinking alot of Molsen in Canada which is totally correct but what about Alaska? Whats the beer?

[Gren]

Congratulations - married one month tomorrow!
Looking forward to the update on Denali, otherwise there is a BBC tv series this week on bears so we may have to make do with that. Collected even more wedding photographs yesterday from Robert Lawler who hopes to have the best 200 on a web site shortly. Many many fantastic pictures of everyone.