Anchorage, Alaska

We did a lot today and got some things done as well.

We started by heading to the Lake Hood Seaplane Harbor. It is the busiest seaplane harbor in the world. It is a small lake and is lined along the shore with docked seaplanes. Along the one end, there are two "lanes" with a grassy divider and that serves and the takeoff and landing strips for the many planes. While we were there, we saw many takeoffs and landing. It was pretty cool. This particular area has a lot of planes as there are flightseeing services and storage for hundreds of planes. They say that 1 out of 6 Alaskans have a plane. It is the only way to get into some of the more remote areas. There is also an aviation museum on the lake and we went to that. It was a nice little museum. One interesting tidbit about this orange and black plane. It was tethered down during a horrific storm. A pilot flew the plane at full throttle into the wind while tethered in order to keep it from being destroyed by the storm. This was in 1991 in Valdez, Alaska, in 120 mile winds! It survived with damage, but survived, nevertheless.

From there we went to the Earthquake Park. This is a park that commemorates the 1964 earthquake which devastated Alaska, particularly the Anchorage area. There were some areas within the park that had actually dropped 10-15 feet from where they were. It's hard to imagine this destruction now because everything is "healed" and grown up now and the scars are just not visible. That's why it is important to remind people that these things occur. They say that Alaska will have more earthquakes.

We drove around to a couple parks, hoping to actually see some of the wildlife that lives in/around Anchorage, but we didn't see any.

We decided to go to the carwash and give MinnieMee a much needed bath. She had really gotten dirty, what with all the dirt/much from road construction we drive through. It was to the point that we couldn't lean up against her without getting filthy! She appreciated the bath!

Till next time. . .

Dale