Alaska Day 13: Return to Anchorage

Saturday morning I awoke in a complicated mental tangle: exhausted from two weeks on the road, missing our dogs terribly, disappointed that our vacation was coming rapidly to a close, looking forward to getting back to our daily routine, and feeling reluctant to head back to the big city of Anchorage after a wonderful week in the country down on the Kenai Peninsula in Homer.

The inn was quiet and we had it to ourselves, Mike and family already gone fishing for some hours. We took a last few minutes at the table on the patio while we drank our final coffee at The Good Karma Inn, and then we set to packing up, a task of no more than ten minutes as we packed extremely lightly for this trip.

One Final View of Kachemak Bay

In the early morning, the birds were raising a ruckus, so while Ann was in the shower, I walked around for a minute, shooting a few final frames.

Noisy, Busy Black-Capped Chickadee

Female Yellow Warbler

Exquisite Angelica Bloom

When I moved the car next to the house to load our bags into it, pit bull Sammy tried to get in, riding in the car being one of her favorite activities. She really does get sad when Mike is not there. Ann comforted her in her bed underneath the stairs before we left. It has been hard being away from our dogs for this long. It was hard leaving Sammy too.

Goodbye Sammy!

We intended to grab a bagel at the Bagel Shop on our way past, but they were closed for their own vacation. We ended up at a Tesoro gas station on the outskirts of town, where while I was filling up the car, Ann ordered us a couple of breakfast sandwiches. As I filled up the gas tank, I watched a bald eagle in the parking lot. They are truly everywhere up here, the big black and white scavengers.

After several minutes, I went in to see what was taking so long. The gas station had a very nice guy masquerading as the world's slowest short order cook. The sandwiches were really good, surprisingly good for convenience store food, far better than a lot of food we have eaten here in Alaska.

The plan for today was to grab a burger at the Burger Bus in Kenai, take a hike to see Russian River Falls, grab a beer at Cooper Landing Brewing, then make the schlep back into downtown Anchorage. As plans go, it was a fine one, except that it failed to take timing into consideration. We would pass the Burger Bus in Kenai long before lunch time and we were not delaying our start time just for that, so we scratched the bus from the plan in favor of grabbing something from the food truck at the brewery.

But before lunch, a hike. I had read on the internet about a spectacular walk just outside Cooper Landing to a fish viewing platform at the Russian River Falls at the confluence of the Kenai and Russian rivers. The draw at the falls is watching the red salmon, the sockeyes, jump the falls on their way upstream to spawn.

When we arrived at the entrance booth in the Chugach National Forest, we had to pay an $11 entry fee and they do not accept credit cards. The area around the Russian River Campground is so popular that they assign you a parking lot and as we drove the mile or so into the lot along the Kenai River, we saw scores of hikers and vast numbers more of fly fisherman heading down to the river to try their luck with the spawning reds. On the way out, at the booth, they would ask us what parking lot we had vacated and about how many open spaces we thought there were in the lot, their system of tracking parking status.

Russian River

Sockeye Jumping at Russian River Falls

Sockeye Pooling, Waiting to Go up the Falls

Alas, the highly-lauded viewing platform is really too high and far off the water to offer a great experience. The fish were jumping infrequently enough that you really had to look for them and this is definitely a place where shooting video would be more successful than shooting stills. I'm just not a video guy, though. At the bottom of the falls, I could vaguely see some salmon milling about in a pool. I was really surprised to see how many there were and how many are already turning red in the photo above. The circular polarizing filter on the camera cut right through the glare showing fish in the photo that we couldn't see with the naked eye.

The walk itself along a wide flat gravel path reminded me of the fire road walks that I despise. This was one of the few things that we did in Alaska that was not worth our time. I am learning that taking cues about hikes from the majority of tourist forums and tourist-oriented websites is not a great idea. Their ratings appear to be a function of how accessible, how flat, and how short hikes are. They appear not to have anything to do with actual hiking.

The place was overrun with people on a Saturday morning/early afternoon. Many, in passing us, would ask if we had seen bears. How could we with all these damn people making so much racket, parading around with their brand new hiking gear festooned with all manner of carabiners and cylinders of bear mace?

We met a rather odd duck out on the trail, chrome-plated shotgun slung over his shoulder and picking berries. Always curious about wild edibles, we asked him about the berries that he was picking, berries that we had seen before on prior hikes and earlier today as well. He introduced us to watermelon berries, so called because of their flavor which reminded me more of cucumber than watermelon. They are full of tiny, white, and annoying seeds so they are not great for eating out of hand. But, they are full of juice if you’re thirsty. I'd say they are best for jelly or syrup. I could imagine a pretty good gin and watermelon berry juice cocktail as well.

Watermelon Berries, Streptopus amplexifolius

Juicy, Seedy, Interestingly Flavored Watermelon Berries

All grousing about the experience aside, we still enjoy any time we can get out in the woods and we got to see a few things to add to our memories of Alaska in this popular part of the Chugach National Forest.

First Ripe Bunchberries, Cornus canadensis, of the Trip

Nootka Lupine Growing out of a Spruce

The Locals Call Viburnum edule Highbush Cranberry

False Toadflax, Geocaulon lividum

Interrupted Club-Moss, Spinulum annotinum,
Western Oak Fern, Gymnocarpium dryopteris

Within a couple minutes of leaving the park, we arrived at Cooper Landing Brewing. From pictures posted on their web site, it looked to be a really cool space and it proved to be just that and was easily my favorite brewery space of the entire trip. Not only was the interior space well done, but the exterior space was equally well thought out.

Cryo Camper NE IPA

Really Excellent Outdoor Space at Cooper Landing Brewery

We were mid-afternoon getting to the brewery and our egg and bacon breakfast sandwiches were mere memories by this point. Good thing that the Blue Yeti food truck (operating Thu-Mon) was in the parking lot. I ordered us a couple of burgers while Ann played with a dozen or more four-legged tail waggers. The burgers were so good that we got two more and a four-pack of beer to go so that we didn’t have to deal with the dismal food situation in downtown Anchorage where we were heading.

We really did not want to leave the brewery but all good things must come to an end and we hit the Sterling Highway back to the Seward Highway and back through the gap at Turnagain Pass through which we had come a week prior. In the Portage area along the Placer River, we saw several huge trumpeter swans in the wetlands, studded with dead trees, remnants of the land sinking during the 1964 earthquake.

We retraced the now very familiar highway alongside Turnagain Arm all the way into Anchorage, only to find the highway in mid-town closed at one point for construction. Finding the Hilton was trivial in that we had already been right by it on our very first day in Anchorage. Moreover, as the third tallest building in relatively flat Anchorage, the 21-story building is impossible to miss.

I pulled up into the portico to let Ann out to register and to figure out where to park the car, all parking in downtown being paid. Tour buses were disgorging senior citizens by the hundreds in something of a chaotic mess. Having left our luggage with Ann, I parked the rental car in the Hilton lot just a hundred yards or so down the street. Returning from lot, I passed by the building that formerly housed Matanuska Brewing’s Anchorage outpost.

You may recall that we were referred there the day we arrived in Anchorage by an employee of 49th State Brewing (a block down the street, but which was closed for the day). Ann and I chose to bypass it, because Matanuska had vacated the premises and it seemed like a shithole bar to be avoided. Fast forward: as I walked by today at roughly 5pm, the outside patio was teeming with camo-clad rednecks and Harley mamas with all kinds of skin showing that is better not seen. No doubt the place specializes in pitchers of Bud Light, hard to imagine in the high rent district of downtown Anchorage.

Once in our room, we got comfortable, ate our burgers and cracked a beer apiece. Tomorrow is a very early morning, which will see us take Alaska Rail’s Coastal Classic in a day trip to and from Seward, with a boat tour to Kenai Fjords National Park. I am looking forward to not driving for once and being able to see the stunning beauty around me, although the weather forecast does not bode well for seeing anything.

Alaska Railroad Station from our Hotel Room

Just before going to sleep, when figuring out how long the drive to the train station was likely to be so that I could decide when to set the alarm, I looked at the relative position of the train station and our hotel. I was pleasantly surprised to see that the station was in sight from our window, just down the hill, well within walking distance, about two blocks. What a relief that we would not have to screw with the car tomorrow morning and could sleep in a tiny bit longer!