Alaska - Anchorage

After my early departure from the State Capital of Alaska, Juneau, I moved on to the biggest city in Alaska, Anchorage.

For once in my life I actually managed to sleep on the plane, and I REALLY slept, I slept for all of the 2 hour flight.. which was an absolute miracle for me (I'm not exactly the most comfortable flier) I woke up right as the captain announced that we were approaching Anchorage and I was treated to some spectacular views of barren Alaska from my window. It was pretty breathtaking and made me think that I probably should had stayed awake for the flight because I missed alot of cranking views... oh well, such is life. Here is a photo I took.


Mountains

The first thing I noticed about these mountains was the lack of vegetation, I pretty much figured this was down to the cold-ass climate that this area endures for most of the year. I wouldn't want to grow there if I was a tree either.

I touched down in Sunny (and yes, it really was SUNNY - and fairly warm) Anchorage and found that the hotel I had booked (I had become fed up with Hostels for a while and wanted to live like a king for a few days) did not offer a shuttle from the airport like I had originally believed they did. I decided that the taxi drivers could blow me because I wasn't going to pay $20 to get into town and waited for the bus instead. After about 30 minutes I was on my way and got dropped off a couple of blocks from my hotel. Which was a Howard Johnson. My first impression of downtown Anchorage was that it was a city. Just like every other city I had ever been to. Only this one was in Alaska, one of the most inhospitable places in the world, yet here was a city with 200,000 people equipped with J.C Penny, McDonalds and all the rest of it. It was kinda.. weird.

Anyway, I trooped off to my hotel and promptly fell asleep. I got up a bit later in the day and walked around downtown Anchorage (which consisted of a couple of streets) and got bored pretty quickly. There wasn't anything of particular note there at all. I ended up having a couple of beers at a pub and a pub meal (Halibut), sampled a few different beers that I had never had before then went home and crashed into bed.

The next day I spelt until about midday and consulted my lonely planet guide and decided that I would wander down to the 12km walk that ran next to the ocean. It has a fancy name but I can't remember it.. After about an hour I saw a sign that stated something like

"Moose Country - What to do if you see Moose" as well as other assorted bits of information about Moose that would come in handy if you ever get attacked by one. Local lore has it that they carry about cleavers and chop off the heads of wandering Australians. This might just be a tale told by idiots though.

All i remember is that if the Moose's ears are back it means it is hungry and is trying to get you to feed it by looking pleasant. :|

Nah, really this means that the moose has the shits and will charge you if you keep pissing it off.

Anyway, so i thought - hey, this could be an awesome way to see a moose.. i might just keep walking

So I did, and I walked and I walked and I walked. I felt just like Forrest Gump. I figured I had nothing better to do, so I just kept walking.

I walked about 30km that day, I walked passed the airport that I was at the previous day, passed the "Earthquake Zone" where there was some remnants of a big earthquake that dumped half of Anchorage into the Ocean about 50 years ago (Incidently, Alaska has a massive percentage of the worlds earthquake activity.. I didn't know this and now I'll bet you feel heaps smarter (but then again, you are reading my blog so your I.Q will be going down progressively with each word you read so you are in a no win situation really)) and passed lots of stuff when finally some dude walked passed me and warned,

"Big Moose up ahead."

to which I replied

"Cool!"

I'd never felt like such an Aussie in my life. The guy was probably warning me so I didn't get my nuts kicked off by a Moose and I was happy about it all.

Anyway, I kept walking for about 10 minutes and I started to think that the jerk that had told me there was a moose up ahead was being a prick and just getting me excited because I was tourist but then I turned a corner.. and there is was!!

A tree!

Hang on, no a

Moose!

Equipped with a little baby Moose. It was pretty cool, the Mother kept putting its ears back and I was pretty tempted to feed it, luckily I didn't have any food. After gawking at it for about 15 minutes and taking a bunch of photos and a video, I turned around and walked back the opposite direction back to my hotel.


Moose with the calf. I wanted to see a Moose with horns, but I got to see one of those at the Zoo.

All in all I walked for about 8 hours. It was awesome. On the way home I stopped off at a couple of pubs, got a few beers (one from a pub that didn't have beer on tap?!?!? WTF?!?!) and a pub meal, got a bit drunk then went home and watched something on TV. I cant remember what it was, its not really important.

The next day I got up and decided to go to the Zoo. I got some wacked bus map of the city and figured out how to get there, it took 2 different buses and about 3km of walking (!) again. Stupid buses. On the plus side I found about 3 golf balls on the way there, so it wasn't all bad.

I had heard that the zoo had a Grizzly bear that hung out with a Polar Bear, so when I got there and discovered that the Grizzly bear had been moved somewhere else I was a bit dissapointed. There was a fair few animals that were kinda cool though. The Grizzly bears, the black bears, there were foxes, owls a Polar Bear that slept the whole time. I waited for about 10 minutes for it to move but it didn't.. then I came back about 20 minutes later and the bastard had changed positions, only now it had its back towards the gallery area. What an asshole. I also saw a Lama (I was scared of it, I thought it was going to spit at me, those things look pretty crazy), some big Yak things, a Moose with horns and a Tiger (in Alaska.. interesting)

I pretty much took a photo of every animal that was there but here is a picture of the Grizzly Bear. After seeing this thing I have decided that I do NOT want to see one in the wild, they are friggen massive!


Fat Grizzly Bear

After that the Zoo Keeper kicked me out and I walked back towards the bus stop but then I figured I'd just walk back to the first bus stop I took since it was only a 10 minute bus ride (it turned out it was a 1 hour walk though) and I found a pizza place that had all you can eat for $10. It was pretty nice and reminded me of an eat in pizza place back home that my mate Rob and I used to go to during Uni (usually in place of class)
On the way home I stopped in at Chilliwack Charlies (One of those places where people who have been to a particular city say "If you can't get laid at 's you can't get laid anywhere" (needless to say I didn't get laid). It was pretty good though, a place that has about 10 bars with all different themes. I sat down for one beer and some redneck started talking to me about baseball stadiums or some such rubbish so i finished my beer and left.

I stopped in at another pub after I got freshened up back at the Hotel and sampled a few more beers, watched a live act (usual 3 piece pub band - pretty crap) Got some pub grub, went home drunk and fell asleep.

The next day I checked out of the hotel, got my plane back to Seattle. Waited in Seattle airport for 7 hours for my connecting flight - got zero sleep but got to listen to idiot American news reporters blabber on about the rating of the second cyclone that went through Texas. I mean who FUCKING CARES about what rating the storm is? How about you report about how it sucks that people are losing their livelyhood by getting a big fucking storm come through and total their houses and fuck up all their shit. Assholes. I hate sensationalism in the media in the states. Morons.

Anyway my plane came, I went back to Vancouver and then I fell asleep for the next few days and was depressed for a long time. Overall it was an awesome trip though - a little pricey and all, and I wish I had more time/money to see more of Alaska because its too damn big to do in 10 days or whatever it took for me to see it, but totally worth it. I give it a giant thumb up.