Today was not our best day ever on vacation. Far from it. All in all, it was trying in the extreme and just a day to endure, to get through for the better days to come.
PDX to ANC
I don't sleep well to begin with (this getting old stuff is much overrated) and I sleep even worse in hotels, especially if I have an early morning alarm that I am waiting for. We are holed up at the Ramada Inn at PDX awaiting our 6:30am flight to Anchorage. Before we went to bed, we both set alarms for 4:40am, to give us 20 minutes to catch the 5am shuttle to the airport. I woke frequently in the night to check the clock. To say that I woke refreshed would be a bald-faced lie.
Getting dressed and brushing our teeth quickly, we did a final scan of the hotel room and set out for the front of the hotel to catch the shuttle. We arrived just as the shuttle pulled up and given the obscene hour, we were the only passengers in the van. In speaking with the driver, this was his first day back on the job since the onset of COVID closures. Poor guy. We tipped him well.
Although in the real world we have been unmasked for a few weeks, federal mask mandates still apply to mass transit and so we masked up as soon as we hit the airport, a three- or four-minute drive from the hotel. Being masked up again after a few weeks of blessed reprieve was weird yet strangely familiar. Welcome back to the world of fogged up glasses and Face ID no longer working!
Security was a snap like it always is at PDX, unlike IAD (Dulles, our prior home airport) where security is a bear. I got my usual pat down, probably because I am almost as tall as the scanning booth and cannot really raise my arms fully over my head in the cramped little space. In any case, the scanner always notes an anomaly or two and I get a follow-up pat-down every time. I'm used to it.
Anyway, PDX security was a snap—except for a small 911 debacle. Who knew that if you press the side button on your iPhone five times in a row, it dials 911? And if your phone bumps into the side of the bin five times in a row going through the TSA luggage screener, the phone can’t tell a human didn’t press the button? I found out that you cannot stop a 911 call once it starts. It makes sense.
Long and short of it: I had a nice early morning chat with a Portland 911 dispatcher. Naturally, my kids got the emergency alert from my phone and started calling and texting. On top of not sleeping, I really did not need this stress.
After security, the first item on the agenda was coffee. The line at the name brand coffee stand was insanely long. While I was putting my shoes back on post-security, the airport café just beside us opened and we took advantage of no line to grab a cup. And it was pretty decent for airport coffee as you would expect in a coffee crazy town like Portland.
Fast forward to the cup of coffee they served on the plane: awful. The side of the cup informed me that Alaska Airlines proudly serves Starbucks. Well no wonder it sucked so bad. So over-roasted, bitter and thin, without body, complexity, or charm.
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| Boarded and Flying First Class |
We booked our seats back in early June when the airlines were still offering significant discounts to entice people to travel (what we thought at the time was) post-COVID. We were able to book first class seats for roughly what we would have paid for coach class seats in normal times. I don't know if I will ever go back to flying coach class, if I can afford to fly first class. The lack of hassle in boarding and the leg room are so worth it.
Our flight was totally uneventful, just how I like my flights, and nobody gave the flight crew any grief about masks. The highlight of our flight was that as we turned due east over Cook Inlet on our approach into Anchorage, we had a great view of Denali and the Alaska Range, snow-covered and all lit up in the morning sun. This would be our only view of Denali, the highest mountain in North America, for the entire trip.
We wanted to visit Denali National Park on this trip, but when we booked, COVID restrictions really hamstrung what we wanted to do and so we decided to head south of Anchorage and explore the Kenai Peninsula, saving the north for a subsequent trip.
Ann was chatting on the plane with a couple just returning home from a PCT section hike in Oregon. As we were walking through the terminal to the baggage claim, they strongly recommended a Portage Glacier hike to us, a different hike than I had in mind for the area. They were extremely persuasive and some days later, we would take their advice and not regret it. It was probably the hike that we enjoyed the most in Alaska.
Rental Car Pickup
So early morning and 911 debacle behind us, how bad can the rest of our day be? It was about to nosedive.
After retrieving Ann's suitcase—we could have carried it on, but we checked it to bring a few bottles of Pinot Noir with us—we headed for the rental car counter to pick up our vehicle, a process that would take 90 minutes despite there being no line.
I am still so irate about the process that I can barely write about it now, three weeks later. Dollar, I am gunning for you.
During the last year when nobody was traveling because of COVID, the rental agencies liquidated their vehicles. Who can blame them for that? And now they are short of vehicles. I can't blame them for that either. What I can blame them for now is price gouging.
We reserved a vehicle on-line weeks ago as we have done dozens of times before. When we got to the rental counter, they claimed that our agreement had a lot of fine print about limitations when paying for the car using a debit card rather than a credit card. We don't have a credit card.
They claimed that we needed to leave a significant deposit (not a problem), show the entire declarations page of our auto policy (a big surprise to us), and that we could not rent the class of vehicle that we reserved using a debit card (a bullshit move). We could only rent a more expensive class of vehicle.
When I tried disputing the rate charges, the agent claimed that we reserved a vehicle, not a rate, and furthermore, because we were at the counter an hour before our reservation "started" there would be extra charges.
After a bunch of run around and finally getting a copy of our insurance policy from our agent back home, we were faced with an outrageous rental contract that we accepted merely to get on with our vacation.
I have asked Dollar to refund most of our money. We will see what they say. My next step is to dispute the credit card charges.
Worst Lunch Ever
After our horrendous experience with the Dollar car rental franchisee at the airport, we just wanted to sit, have a beer, and a bite to eat. At the airport, we googled for a brewpub that was open on Mondays and of the slim pickings, decided that 49th State Brewing offered the best looking beer and lunch selection.
About ten minutes after leaving the airport, we found ourselves right downtown in Anchorage. In searching for parking near 49th State, we discovered that all parking in downtown is paid. We fed a meter on a side street and it being a few minutes before the brewpub opened at 11, we decided to take a stroll.
In very short order, walking down the hill towards the water, we found ourselves at mile zero of the Tony Knowles Coastal Trail, an 11-mile urban greenbelt trail named for a former governor. We walked a half a mile or so down the trail before returning back to the brewpub.
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| Fireweed on the Tony Knowles Coastal Trail |
At 49th State, we encountered a situation that we would relive over and over during our stay in Alaska. COVID has forced many businesses to alter their hours and days of business, yet the business owners have not updated their information on their web sites and with Google.
We arrived at the front door to find that the brewpub is closed now on Monday and Tuesday. A guy in a 49th State t-shirt working on some maintenance out front told us that the closure was for lack of staff, which in this day is easy to believe and something that we see frequently at home.
When I asked him where to get a beer, he recommended Matanuska Brewing just down the block across from the Hilton where we will be staying after our return from Homer. We found the building, but Matanuska had closed this location and it was now converted to a really seedy looking tap room which we decided to pass on. We will revisit this tap house on our return to Anchorage in about ten days and it will confirm our gut feel about the place.
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| Decent Cask Ale at Glacier Brewhouse |
Back to Google for plan C. We located a Glacier Brewhouse a short walk from where we were and it appeared to be a well-appointed high-end restaurant. We beat the crowd and had a seat at the granite bar just as the lunch rush was starting. Suddenly, we found ourselves surrounded by tourists, tourists of the cruise ship ilk. Ugh. So not our scene.
We had a pint each of the house IPA and it was really pretty good, so good that I took a chance on a glass of their cask-conditioned ale, also very good. Despite the really good beer, we had the shittiest food ever: calamari, fish and chips, and fish tacos. As the self-billed "Alaska's first choice for Wild Alaskan Seafood," Glacier Brewhouse hit the trifecta: each dish was the worst example of its kind that I have ever tasted.
We decided then and there that Anchorage is a place to land and take off from, otherwise to be avoided, and headed south to get on with our day, ideas for which I had sketched out back at home.
Seward Highway and the Boring Tide
To understand the highway in and around Anchorage, it helps to know a tiny bit of geography.
Anchorage occupies a point (like so, <) on the eastern end of Cook Inlet (which ultimately heads southwest out to the Pacific and the Gulf of Alaska). This point is formed by two waterways, the Knik Arm running northeast and Turnagain Arm running southeast, Anchorage sitting between the two. These so-called arms would be called bays pretty much everywhere else in the world.
The highway runs from Anchorage both northeast and southeast along the edges of these arms, inland being entirely too mountainous for a road. South of Anchorage the road is called the Seward Highway. I had sketched out several things to do along this highway.
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| Lone Windblown Sitka Spruce Along Turnagain Arm |
After our disgusting lunch, we headed southeast on the Seward Highway, ultimately to catch the bore tide in Turnagain Arm at Beluga Point. A bore tide occurs when a large amount of water gets funneled into a very narrow waterway. Bore tides in Turnagain arm create a large wave that can be surfed. The Turnagain Arm has reputedly the second highest bore tide in North America after the Bay of Fundy. According to the tide charts, today would be the best day in weeks to see the bore tide with the largest spread between high and low tides and subsequently, the most impressive bore tide.
We had time to kill, it being about 1pm, before the bore tide would reach Beluga Point at 4:43pm, so I had a couple of other things in mind to do down the Seward Highway.
About mile marker 106, there was supposed to be a pull-out off on the bay side of the highway. At this pull-out, if you look back across the highway to the mountainside that comes tumbling right down to the roadway, you can see Dall Sheep doing what they do, that is, walking along sheer cliffsides like they are strolling along a beach boardwalk.
The random pull-out is not marked (as in, "View Dall Sheep Here!") in any way and the mile markers are hard to spot, so we missed it on the way south. After finding a suitable place to turn around (few and far between on the narrow highway wedged between the water and the mountains), we managed to spot some mile markers and count them down to the correct pull-out.
Immediately out of the car, we looked up the tall, tall cliffs and saw four sheep, looking like two ewes and two lambs. We watched them for about ten minutes and were amazed at their sure-footed antics on the cliffs. Finally, a high point in our lousy day!
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| Dall Sheep, Ewe and Lamb #1 |
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| Dall Sheep, Ewe and Lamb #2 |
After this, we retraced our steps back to Potter Marsh Bird Sanctuary just outside the Anchorage limits. The park consists of a series of board walks elevated above a marsh and is supposedly a great place to see elk and marsh birds. At 2pm, I did not expect to see anything, animals mainly being active both early and late in the day. And we did not see anything.
A highly tourist-infested place, people were all over, some quasi-freaking out about a lone and barely visible Bald Eagle perched atop a tower perhaps 800 yards away. Mid-afternoon with the sun baking down on us and having to deal with noisy tourists were quite enough to send us running for cover without visiting the better part of the boardwalks.
This might be a great place to visit at the right time of day, but I have it in my mind that it is highly recommended because it is close to town, a trivially easy walk, and highly accessible with plenty of parking for tour buses.
As we were leaving the marsh and pulling back out to the highway, Ann recalled seeing a trailhead back down toward where we saw the sheep, so we headed there to a pretty little waterfall on Fall Creek. We started up the trail a bit, but it got very steep very quickly and neither of us were up for a serious climb, especially being clad in travel clothing from our flight in. And travel fatigue was starting to set in.
Low on the slope near the road, the primary timber was fairly tall cottonwood trees with the understory showing a lot of red color from Devil’s Club, Oplopanax horridus, berries. We would find in the coming days that Devils' Club is everywhere in Alaska, but I had never seen it before though it is reported to grow here in Oregon. The spines on the stalks and on the underside of the giant maple-looking leaves looked lethal. Some of the larger leaves were fully 24 inches in breadth.
Speaking of lethal, I did see a bit of what the locals call Baneberry, Actaea rubra, sporting toxic red berries each with a single black dot. I'm no stranger to poisonous Actaea: back east we had a plant called Doll's Eye, Actaea pachypoda, so called because of the single black dot on a round white berry, quite unnerving looking at times.
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| Delightful Fall Creek |
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| So Peaceful After our Stressful Travel Day |
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| A Heuchera Growing on a Soilless Boulder |
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| Wicked Looking Devil’s Club, Oplopanax horridus |
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| Toxic Red Baneberry, Actaea rubra |
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| Beluga Point |
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| Annie Taking in the View of Turnagain Arm |
Further down the rocks, we would find the first of a lot of very common harebells called Bluebell-of-Scotland, Campanula rotundifolia. Each day on our trip, we would see this harebell and/or the more alpine version, Campanula lasiocarpa, also called the Alaska Harebell.
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| Bluebell-of-Scotland, Campanula rotundifolia |
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| Male Hairy Woodpecker |
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| Ravens are Always Entertaining |
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| The Turnagain Arm Boring Tide |
Beer Hunt
After such a disappointing and disillusioning day, there was only one thing to do: find a beer, feed our growling stomachs, and take the edge off. Given that we were south of Anchorage and that our lodging was located also in the south, we looked for brewpubs in the southern part of town. The closest and therefore first target was Anchorage Brewing, which several people had pooh-poohed to me before our trip. Those people got it all wrong, but that's a tale for the very last day of our trip, a couple weeks down the road.
Anchorage Brewing and King Street Brewing are located on the same street on opposite sides from each other. The Anchorage Brewing signage is not visible as you turn onto the street while the King Street signage is clear. The Garmin announced "Arriving" as we pulled up to King Street, so we mistakenly assumed that because of COVID, Anchorage Brewing had closed this location and King Street had taken over. We parked and investigated King Street, overrun with people (because of $4 happy hour pints, we later discovered). Starving, we found that they offered no food and Ann vetoed staying. I was also happy to move along to find grub.
On exiting the parking lot further down the street, we saw Anchorage Brewing across the street and knowing from the web that they don't do food and not seeing a food truck in the parking lot, we set sail for Midnight Sun Brewing way out in an industrial park. Midnight Sun's web site promised a kitchen and had a food menu posted.
Ravenous, tired, and grumpy for a beer, we sat down at a fire table on the patio despite the chill that was increasing in the shade of the building. We attempted to get the table lit, with and without the server's assistance, to no avail for the propane tank was empty. Our server was a total spaz. I'm convinced that he would forget his own name if people did not call him by it on a regular basis.
After about ten minutes, we finally got beers which were competent but also not all that memorable. Ann's second beer, a porter, was decidedly better than the ale that I was drinking. We managed to grab the server, pretty much physically, and forced him to put in a food order. It was sustenance, Ann's mac and cheese and my hummus gyro, but it wasn't all that good either.
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| Midnight Sun Brewing |
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| Lame Mac and Cheese and Hummus Gyro |
To recap our day: very little sleep, obscenely early alarm, 911 debacle at PDX, rental car ripoff and run around at ANC, shittiest lunch ever, tourist-infested Potter Marsh, boring tide, lengthy beer hunt, mediocre dinner, and disquieting B&B. Can it get any worse? That's the question that we are both silently asking ourselves before bed.
Welcome to f'ing Alaska!
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