Anchorage, Alaska - June 28th to July 4th, 2022

When you’re on the road for long periods of time, you need to schedule some time to regroup and get some needed chores done. Anchorage, Alaska was our chance to relax a little. Spending seven nights in town gave us enough time to see some sights in addition to taking care of our to-do list.

Tuesday was another clear, sunny day as we drove from Matanuska Glacier to Anchorage. The Glenn Highway follows the Matanuska valley alongside the Chugach Mountains on the way to Palmer. The Matanuska River near the road was a gray color, due to all the fine silt created by the glacier. We saw a couple of clear streams flow into Matanuska River, with the colors mixing at the confluence. Another gray river flowed into the Matanuska, so there must be another glacier that feeds that river as well.

We could tell we were approaching a city, as the traffic picked up, more buildings lined the highway, and the highway turned from a two lane road to four lanes and even more at times. Anchorage is a big city, but not as busy as something like Denver. However, after being away from large cities for weeks, it seemed rather hectic, busy, noisy, and stressful.

It was a little too early to check into the campground, so we headed to Moose’s Tooth Pub & Pizzeria. A few people had recommended Moose’s Tooth for their great pizza. One person even went so far as to say it is the best pizza they have ever eaten in their life. So naturally we had to try it out. The place is large, with an extra temporary building to enclose more seating. We arrived around noon and we had about a 20 minute wait for a table. The place was hopping, on a weekday, at noon. What is this place like on a Friday or Saturday night?

We each ordered a small thin crust pizza with somewhat our normal ingredients on it. Keith’s pizza was a pepperoni with sliced tomatoes, marinara sauce and their cheese blend of mozzarella and provolone. Ann’s had reindeer sausage, red onion, roasted red bell peppers, and fresh basil along with marinara sauce and cheese blend. OK, reindeer sausage is not what Ann normally has on her pizza, but it is close to an Italian sausage. They were delicious! Ann was a little concerned that the thin crust would be like a cracker crust, but it was a good New York style crust, a nice yeast dough, crispy on the outside, but still with a good “chew”. We’re not sure if we’re ready to say it is the best pizza we’ve ever had, but we can’t think of another place off the top of our heads that we like better. We decided right then that we need to come back for an evening meal before we leave Anchorage. We wanted to try some of their other unique ingredients and sauces. Plus Keith wanted to try some of their Broken Tooth Brewery beers.

We thought Moose’s Tooth was a weird name for a pub & pizzeria, but then we found out that Moose’s Tooth is the name of a nearby mountain. The peak of Moose’s Tooth is at 10,335 feet and is located in Denali National Park and Preserve, just 15 miles southeast of Denali. Cool!

The rest of the day was spent taking care of chores. We picked up groceries on the way to the campground. After checking in, we did our laundry, including sheets and towels. We’re staying in Anchorage for seven nights, so we have plenty of time to check out the area. Our reservations were for the Golden Nugget RV Park. We had full hookups, although we really only needed a fresh water fill and a gray water dump. The place is a typical city private RV park where the sites are tightly packed. However, it is a little better than just a gravel parking lot. There are plenty of machines in the laundry room and plenty of free showers. And best of all, there were no bugs!

Thankfully we did not reserve a site in the city’s Centennial Campground. We heard that City Council decided to convert it to a homeless camp for the month of July. There was a wildfire recently in the city and the fire danger remained high for the month of July. They wanted to make sure the homeless were not in the high fire risk areas and had a safe place to stay. However, that meant that the people who had reservations in the campground were given only a few days notice that their reservations were cancelled, just days before the holiday weekend. Hopefully everyone found another place to camp.

We had a 7 am appointment on Wednesday with the Ford dealer to have our Red Tail Lodge (our van) serviced. It was due for an oil change and tire rotation. We also had them replace the engine air filter, since we’re sure it was full of dust from all the dirt and gravel roads we had been on. While it was being serviced, we walked to downtown Anchorage, a couple of miles away. For the first little ways, we followed the Chester Creek Trail in the trees alongside a creek. Then we headed north on A Street.

Our first stop was the Alaska Crepery for breakfast. We got there a couple of minutes before they opened at 8 am. We enjoyed our nice light breakfast. Ann had the whipped cream and berry crepe while Keith ordered the brie, walnut and honey crepe. Very tasty. While Ann had a chai latte, Keith tried the Turkish coffee. It’s the first time he’s had one. It was tiny but potent. He would order it again, but not two in the same day.

From there, we headed over to the Log Cabin Visitor Information Center. An Alaska Trolley Tour was just about to start, so we bought our tickets and hopped on. We had purchased the Alaska TourSaver phone app, so we could purchase two tickets for the price of one. The basic one hour tour is normally $25 per person.

The tour goes by the train station, Earthquake Park, Lake Hood Seaplane Base, and through some neighborhoods. The tour guide is entertaining and told a lot of stories. We even learned some history along the way.

After the tour, we went into the visitor’s center to gather some info, then walked down to the train station to take some pictures. Unbelievably, Ann did not take any pictures from the trolley. She figured she would be by those places again later and could take her time getting the shots she wanted. We also scoped out Downtown Bicycle Rental for information about renting a couple of bikes later in the week.

There was a free music concert in Peratrovich Park, next to the Visitor Center, from noon to 1 pm. So we grabbed a reindeer sausage from the Red Umbrella Reindeer Hot Dog Stand across the street and sat down in the park to wait for the concert to begin. The sausages were delicious. They grill the sausages to order and served them with grilled buns and sautéed onions. There were a variety of sauces to choose from. We both picked the Sriracha Mayo, which added a nice zing.

The local band playing that day was HarpDaddy & The BackCountry Mojo. The harmonica player and lead guitarist were quite talented. It was a nice entertaining hour.

Afterwards, we headed over to Wild Scoops, just a block away, for ice cream. They have inventive flavors with local ingredients. We actually stepped out of our usual flavors for a change. We both tried a scoop of the spruce tip. Keith accompanied his spruce tip with a scoop of vanilla, while Ann opted for the wild lingonberry. They were fantastic! We not sure how to describe the spruce tip, it does not have a very strong flavor. Perhaps a little nutty and minty? You’ll just have to come and taste it for yourself.

Our Red Tail Lodge was ready for pick up, so we walked back to the Ford dealer. When we arrived, we found out that our tires needed replacing, as the tread was worn too thin. We worked out that we only needed to replace two of the four. The issue was finding the new tires. We have an unpopular sized tire and wanted to replace them with KO2’s. Even finding the factory size tires for our van was a challenge. The dealer was able to track down two of the KO2’s and ordered them from the warehouse. They’ll let us know when they receive them so we can schedule a time to have them put on.

We headed back to the campground and spent the rest of the afternoon planning out our activities for the rest of our stay in Anchorage. The weather looked good for the remaining of the week, but heavy wildfire smoke had settled in. Keith found a website, smoke.alaska.edu, which had smoke forecasts. We used that to plan which day would be best to hike up to Flattop Mountain, since we wanted to have a clear view from the top. We’ll see how accurate the forecast is.

Thursday was a day of waiting. We hung out at the campground, waiting for the Ford dealer to call and let us know they had our new tires. Our expectations were that they would arrive around 9 am. The dealer didn’t call until 11 am. We headed right over to have them put on.

Then we hung out in the dealer’s lounge, waiting for the tires to be installed. We were hoping it would only be about an hour so we could still have time to spend the afternoon at the Alaska Native Heritage Center. Due to a couple of various reasons, our Red Tail Lodge was not ready until after 2:30 pm.

Since we didn’t think we’d be waiting long, we had no food or drink with us in the lounge. By the time we were back in our van, we were dehydrated and hungry. We drove over to Goose Pond Park to eat lunch. Google Maps said there was a picnic shelter, but we didn’t see one. We ate in the van. There was a little swim beach on the pond and port-a-potties behind a building. It wasn’t the prettiest park we’ve had a picnic in, but it will do.

Since it was so late in the day, we scrapped all of our sight-seeing plans for the day. Instead, we tried to salvage the day by getting more errands done. Keith wanted a hair cut, so we headed over to Great Clips. There was a 100 minute wait, so we used that time to pick up some needed items at the other stores nearby. To make good use of the time, Ann made a batch of gazpacho soup and put it in the fridge to chill. By the time Keith was done with his hair cut, she had finished washing all the dishes.

Now it was about 5:30 pm. Ann had spotted a Texas Roadhouse restaurant not far from Great Clips. Having a nice steak dinner seemed like a perfect way to pick up our spirits. Most of the Texas Roadhouses we’ve been to usually have long waits to get seated. We braced ourselves for a long wait for a table. To our surprise, we were seated right away. Yay! Finally we didn’t have to wait for something. Although we like to try new and local restaurants when we travel, having a familiar meal was very comforting and exactly what we needed. Well, it probably wasn’t what our waistlines needed, but it did improve our mood.

The forecast was right; the smoke did clear up by Friday. Our plan was to hike Flattop Mountain. The trail is in the Chugach State Park and starts at the Glen Alps Trailhead. Parking costs $5 per day. Word had it that Flattop Mountain is a very popular hike, so we went somewhat early on a weekday in hopes there would still be parking spots left. On the way, while Keith was pumping gas, Ann went into the store to buy a couple of Cokes to make sure we had exact change for parking. When we arrived at the trailhead, a little bit before 10 am, there were still plenty of spots to choose from. It is a rather large parking area, with additional parking in another lot. There is a machine that will take credit cards for a parking pass, but the machine was out-of-order when we arrived. So we paid using the old fashioned fee envelopes and our exact change.

The hike starts out on the Blueberry Loop Trail, which is rated as a moderate trail. It had a few loose gravel, somewhat steep, sections that required your attention so as not to slip, especially on the return trip when you are going downhill. It doesn’t take long before there are nice views from the trail. At the far end of the loop, the Flattop Trail branches off and starts a steep climb. The first half has a couple of sections of stairs, most of which were in pretty sad shape. Again, loose gravel and rock require your attention. After the stairs, we reached a saddle which had a bench. We sat down and ate a snack so we could watch and contemplate if we wanted to go further. We knew the last section was a technical scramble to the top.

After watching others for a while, it didn’t look too bad. We are not big fans of steep drop offs, otherwise known as exposure, but, depending on the route you chose on the way up, that could be avoided for the most part. From the saddle, there is not a definite trail. You have to choose your own route up. Another hiker, a kind gentleman from the area, told us there are some faded orange dots that map a good route to the top. We followed his advice and that seemed to help. Thank you!

The scramble is across a boulder field, with a lot of loose rock. Ann got an “owie” when a 10 inch diameter rock rolled down onto her shin. Other than that, we did fine. We just needed to go slow and pay attention to where we placed our hands and feet.

The top of the mountain is flat, just like its name suggests. You can easily walk around on the summit and get beautiful views in all directions. In one direction, you can see downtown Anchorage and out to Cook Inlet. In the other directions are mountain peaks with patches of snow. A flag pole with an American flag is at the top of the scramble, which gives you something to aim for during your climb and gives you a nice photo op once you reach it to prove you made it.

As we circled around the flat top, we noticed a trail leading down the back side of the mountain, which looked like it led to a road with cars parked on it. You mean there is another way up that doesn’t require a scramble? We’re not sure if that is an official trailhead or how to get to it. We’ll leave that up to you to research that.

While we were at the top, we noticed a woman in a calf-length dress and slip on sandals. We thought “surely she must have come up the back side”. However, as we were slowly scrambling down, she passed us right on by. That was impressive. That is definitely not the attire we would recommend for the hike.

After scrambling back down, we stopped again at the saddle for another snack. We definitely do not set any speed records on our hikes. We find it more enjoyable to take our time. We completed the 3.7 miles with 1473 feet of elevation gain in fours hours and 14 minutes (including both snack breaks). This was hike number 22 of our 52 Hike Challenge for 2022. Even though it was a short hike, we could tell our legs had a pretty good workout from the rock scramble.

Saturday got off to a bad start. We both woke up, got dressed, and walked over to the restroom. When we got back to our Red Tail Lodge, we realized we were locked out. The keypad entry was not working. Keith normally carries his van key on him, but he switched pants in the morning and had not yet moved everything over to the fresh pair of paints, like his key and wallet. Luckily, Keith had his cell phone on him. We called a lock smith and they arrived within about 20 minutes. After he opened up the van, not only did the keypad not work, but the unlock button on the van door also did not work. Luckily, the key fob still operated the locks. Later, after we started the engine, everything was working fine again, including the keypad. We had an issue with the keypad the previous morning, but thought we must not have pushed the buttons hard enough or fat fingered the combo.

We still have some experiments to perform, but we think it has something to do with unlocking just the sliding door. When you do that, then shut the sliding door, the door locks itself again. We’re thinking that might put everything in a weird mode. We’ll test that to see if that is the case. In the meantime, we’re both making sure we always carry our car keys on us. The lock smith cost over $100 and we’d rather not have to pay that again. It didn’t occur to us to contact our roadside assistance that we have with FMCA, which would have covered the cost of the lock smith. Oh well. We’re just thankful it happened when we were in a city with a good cell signal. If that would have happened at Tetsa River Regional Park, with no cell service and an hour’s drive or more to the closest town, we could have wasted a whole day getting back into our vehicle, or more. And we would have been locked out of our shelter!

For some reason, the commotion that morning just threw Ann off. Even though we resolved the issue in less than an hour, she still felt stressed. Our plan for the day was to visit the Alaska Native Heritage Center. We weren’t sure if there was food available at the center or if we could exit the center to eat lunch in our van and get back in. So we decided to hang out a little longer at the campground and eat an early lunch before heading over to the heritage center.

Our TourSaver app provided us with one free admission, so it only cost us $29 for the two of us. The center consisted of a theater, a gathering place, the Hall of Cultures, and the Village Sites. Every half an hour, a different film was shown in the theater. Different programs were scheduled all day long in the gathering place, like traditional song and dance performances, question and answer sessions, and native games demonstrations. The Hall of Cultures contained information about each of the main five different cultural groups of native people in the state of Alaska along with local artists. The Village Sites contain six life-sized traditional native dwellings representing 11 different cultural groups.

Included in the admission price are two different guided tours, one of the Hall of Cultures and another of the Village Sites. They are offered several times a day. We chose to take the guided tour of the Village Sites. It was very informative and interesting. Our native guide wove his own personal stories into the tour.

What became even more evident to us from our visit to the Heritage Center, was how much of the Native culture and knowledge has been lost, mainly due to the oppression of the Russians and Euro-Americans. The Native People were forced out of their traditional homes and into European style housing. No one lives in traditional housing today. They were forbidden to speak their own languages or wear their traditional clothing. Their children attended school, away from their elders so they were not taught by their elders to learn their knowledge and values. Our guide’s father was reluctant to teach our guide his native language, because his father grew up being punished by the missionaries for speaking his native tongue. None of the native staff that we met could fluently speak their native language.

Kudos to the Heritage Center for trying to salvage what is left, tapping into the elders’ knowledge before they pass away. The Center reconstructed a couple of qayaqs (kayaks) and a dug-out canoe from a few different cultures. They were able to find a couple of elderly natives with the knowledge on how their culture constructed their qayaqs. However, no one was left who knew how the dug out canoes were made. A native wood carver used an old model and figured out the rest himself. The construction of these boats was the first time they had been built in over 50 years.

It turned out that the center has a small cafe, so we could have eaten lunch there. Part way through the afternoon, we refreshed ourselves with fruit smoothies from the cafe. We had a great time and the stress Ann felt earlier in the day faded away.

Sunday was a biking day. We rented e-bikes from Downtown Bicycle Rental in Anchorage. Neither one of us has ever ridden an e-bike before, so we wanted to try one out. We have been researching e-bikes for a little while, but the e-bikes they rented us were a brand we were not familiar with. It was the Fuji E Crosstown. Being rental bikes, they looked like they had been well used. Ann’s disc brakes worked fine, but they made an awful noise. It didn’t take long for us to figure out how to use the e-bikes. It was pretty simple.

Downtown Bicycle Rental provides you with maps and directions for riding Anchorage’s Tony Knowles Coastal Trail along with an alternate route back that takes you by the Lake Hood Seaplane Base. The Coastal Trail is 11 miles long, from downtown Anchorage to Kincaid Park. It is paved the whole way. Part of it is through woods, but there are plenty of nice views out over the mud flats of Cook Inlet. After passing by Earthquake Park, there is a spot along the trail that is right at the end of a runway where the jets take off from Anchorage International Airport. There was a crowd there waiting to experience the planes fly right over their heads. In just a few minutes, we were able to watch a couple of them take off. You can sense how powerful they are.

Before we reached Kincaid Park, we found a nice picnic table along the shore to eat our lunch. The snow capped mountains on the other side of the inlet were in view in the distance. After Kincaid Park, we followed the directions for the alternate way back. The Tasty Freeze was at the corner of our first turn, so we stopped for shakes. Not the best shakes or malts that we’ve ever had, but not the worst either.

There were a couple of sections along busy roads to reach Lake Hood. The Coastal Trail is definitely more peaceful. So if you just want peaceful scenery, you could just return on the Coastal Trial. But Keith wanted to watch the seaplanes take off and land. The route took us along most of the length of Lake Hood. However, the best views of landings were from the end of the lake near the Lakefront Hotel. You are farther away from the landing point, but the island is not blocking your view of the actual landing.

Lake Hood is right next to Anchorage’s International Airport and they share the same control tower. There is also a small air strip for bush planes to take off. We watched a couple of those take off as well. Keith was happy. He even stopped to take a picture of a shiny metal bush plane. Squirrel!

As we made our way back over to Earthquake Park, we spotted a moose alongside Lake Hood Drive. It was behind a fence, so Ann stopped to take a video. It was a mama with a baby. Despite the chain link fence, Ann kept her distance. She’s pretty sure if the mama felt threatened, she would have no problem tearing through the fence to charge her. It is estimated that there are around 1500 moose living in and around Anchorage. According to our Anchorage Trolley guide a few days earlier, the fences are designed to keep the moose off the roads and runways. The fences are not full enclosures, so the moose are not fenced in. There are gates that are designed to allow them to go through the fence easily from the roadway, but difficult to come back out towards the road.

We stopped at Earthquake Park to check it out. At first glance, it just looks like a wooded park with trails. However, reading about the history, you realize what you are really looking at. Before the 1964 Earthquake, this shoreline was a neighborhood of houses at the same level as the parking lot. Although no longer visible, houses and cars are still buried under the dirt. The ground steeply drops off from the parking lot and the earth is very rippled. The rippling hills run parallel to the fault line, evidence of one of the teutonic plates being folded up from the pressure of the opposing teutonic plate. We hopped off our bikes and walked up and down a few of the ripples.

After Earthquake Park, we headed back the rest of the way on the Coastal Trail. We took our time, stopping to observe some of the birds we saw along the way. There were sandhill cranes and Canadian geese with goslings out on the mud flats. A lesser yellow legs was pecking for food in one of the streams that flowed out to the mud flats. A variety of ducks and geese were swimming on the ponds. One duck was feeding a couple of ducklings. The one duckling was swimming in the water while the other one was on the back of another duck. They were so cute!

After returning our rental bikes, we walked down to Ship Creek. There is a trail along the creek with a couple of pedestrian bridges where you can observe the salmon running up stream. The King Salmon normally run from late May to mid July and the Silver Salmon run from late July to early September. However, it must have been in-between the two runs, because we did not see any fish. Oh, well.

The 4th of July was a relaxing day for us. We started off the day by taking care of a couple of chores like laundry and grocery shopping. At 4 pm, we headed over to Moose’s Tooth Pub & Pizzeria for dinner. Thank goodness we went early, because the place was packed. It was a 45 minute wait to get a table for two. We ordered slightly different pizzas this time. Keith had the Classic which has sausage and mushrooms in addition to his normal pepperoni. Ann tried the Brewhouse Favorite because she was curious what Denali sauce was. It comes with sausage, onion, and sun-dried tomatoes. She added roasted red peppers. The Denali sauce was green, like some sort of pesto sauce. However, it didn’t tasted like it was made with basil. Perhaps it was broccoli? Ann is still not sure what it was, but she liked it. We both had the thin crust again. We contemplated getting the thick crust to try it, but we generally like a New York style crust. We really like their thin crust so we stuck with it. Keith preferred the pizza he ordered the first time we were here. Ann really liked both of hers and could not decide which one was better.

Ann decided to order dessert, but Keith was going to pass. She get the mixed berry cobbler with a large scoop of vanilla ice cream on top. The single order was large enough for two people. Ann was grateful that Keith decided to help her eat it. It was very tasty. If Keith had not helped her, Ann is afraid she would have eaten the whole thing and been uncomfortably stuffed full.

From Moose’s Tooth, we drove over to Mulcahy Stadium for a double header baseball game. We haven’t seen a baseball game in years. The Anchorage Bucs were playing the Glacier Pilots. Mulcahy Stadium is both teams home stadium. They traded off being the home team. The teams are part of the Alaska Baseball League. The league is a minor league level competition for NCAA players who wish to go on to play professional baseball. The players are not paid, but they live with host families. For $10 per person, we were able to watch the double header along with fireworks afterwards. They only played 7 innings the first game and they called the second game after 6 innings, as it was approaching midnight. The Pilots won both games. The first game was 5 to 0 and the second was 2 to 0.

The sun set at 11:36 pm, but it was still pretty light when the fireworks went off. They set them off right behind the outfield fence of the stadium, so we had front row seats. We were concerned that we wouldn’t be able to see the fireworks because it was not dark outside. They probably would have been better in the dark, but they weren’t too bad. It wasn’t the best fireworks we’ve even seen, but they were enjoyable. Pizza, baseball, and fireworks. A great American way to spend the 4th of July.

Even though not everything went according to plan, we still managed to accomplish all of our planned goals. Van maintenance, done. Hair cut, done. Hiking, biking, and Heritage Center, all done. And in the process, we enjoyed the sights and flavors that the city had to offer while having a relaxing time. We were recharged and ready to continue exploring Alaska.

Check out our related video: Anchorage, Alaska

(Ann)