Alaska Day 15: Alaska Botanical Garden and Anchorage Brewing

Yesterday on the seemingly endless four-plus-hour train trip back to Anchorage from Seward, it became brutally clear that today was not going to involve any of the potential items that we had mulled over previously. We had thought to hike the Crow Pass Trail from Girdwood or to tackle the other end of the trail in Eagle River from the Eagle River Nature Center. We were both too exhausted to contemplate doing anything active on our last day in Alaska. There comes a point in almost every trip when we find we have had enough. We were beyond that point in this trip.

Although I awoke at 0630 and Ann at 0815, 0900 found us both still in bed, the last two weeks of travel having come crashing down on us in the last 48 hours. We looked forward to our dogs, being at home, and getting back into our routine again. Though the weather forecast back in Oregon was for brutal 100+ highs, topping 110 once again this summer by the end of the week, home is home.

We got out of the hotel room finally about 10:00 and walked a couple blocks to Dark Horse Coffee Company, a cute little coffee house with an impressive collection of teas lining the wall. The patrons were a mix of a few tourists like us and regulars taking a break from work, mainly the latter.

Dark Horse Coffee

Breakfast Bagel and Coffee

While we were sitting in the café eating our ham and egg bagels and sipping our coffee, we searched the internet for something low-key to do today before going to Anchorage Brewing later for a food truck dinner and our farewell to Alaska brews. In our stupor, we had forgotten based on our prior pass-by that there are no food trucks at Anchorage Brewing and that will come to bite us in the rear later today.

Ann stumbled upon the Alaska Botanical Garden and that seemed to fit our mood to a T, something leisurely and unchallenging. After breakfast and coffee, we walked back to the hotel parking lot to retrieve the car, wandering a little bit through downtown Anchorage on the way. With much of the city wiped out in the 1964 earthquake, a lot of the city features modern construction and parts of it are visually appealing.

Alaska Center for the Performing Arts

Flaming Red Pelargoniums in  Town Square Park

Alaska Botanical Garden

Our route from downtown to the Alaska Botanical Garden took us right by the Elmendorf Air Force Base end of JBER where we heard the thunderous roar of a military jet taking off. I looked to my left briefly, long enough to see an F-22 Raptor heading straight for the sky in a nearly vertical climb. We would hear takeoff after takeoff through the morning.

Alaska Botanical Garden is situated in mid-town, but on the far eastern side of town. It shares a parking lot with a secondary school. There are a few flower beds outside the tall moose fence, but the majority of the garden is inside the fence. A hardscaped walkway makes a loop around the property. A nature trail leaves the back of the garden and follows a creek for a short ways until looping back through the fence and rejoining the main loop.

After paying the entry fee, we walked the half-mile loop through the gardens twice and the 1.2-mile Lowenfels-Hoersting nature trail once. The young lady at the front desk warned us pretty thoroughly about bears, but we saw none, unfortunately. The staff seemed pretty bear averse, probably from an abundance of CYA for liability reasons. Two staffers would come racing up to us later on ATVs because they got a report of a bear. And we would see two women walking through the urban gardens with canisters of bear spray. I chuckled, just having been face to face at 15 yards with a brown bear in Katmai.

Dahlias Near the Entrance

Delphinium and Rudbeckia

Flowers Grow Tall in the Long Summer Days

Stunning Delphinium

A Tall Lysimachia

Fantastic Stone and Steel Sculpture; the Rocks Rotate

Lashed Wooden Raven Sculpture

Entry to Formal Herb Garden

Love the Two-Tone Calendula

Painted Sage, Salvia horminum

Huge Meadow Rue, Thalictrum sp.

Veronicastrum virginicum 'Fascination'

Glowing Domestic Red Currants

3-Foot Wide Leaves of Shieldleaf Rodgersia, Astilboides tabularis

Peony Seed Heads

Chinese Globeflower, Trollius chinensis

Globe Thistle, Echinops bannaticus

After walking through the manicured gardens, we took the nature trail through the woods, through the tall moose fence surrounding the gardens, down a hill along a creek, and finally back up the hill and through the fence to the paved garden path once again.

The Woods Full of Highbush Cranberry, Viburnum edule

The Ubiquitous Devil's Club, Oplopanax horridus

Bee on Fireweed

Wild Rose Hips

Beautiful but Poisonous Amanita muscaria

Western Oak Fern, Gymnocarpium dryopteris

Birch Polypore Shelf Fungus, Fomitopsis betulina

Anchorage Brewing

After a couple hours at the botanical garden, we were ready for our last beer hurrah in Anchorage and it turns out that we saved the best for last. It took perhaps 15 minutes to get to Anchorage Brewing in an industrial part in the south of town. We did not visit earlier because people in Oregon had told me that we should avoid Anchorage Brewing. On the other hand, the locals have been telling us for days that this is where the innovation and great beers are, despite their international distribution. The vibe is super chill and the beers are the best we had in Anchorage.

Anchorage Brewing

With five hazies on tap (a 4%er, a singles, two doubles, and a triple) it was hard to choose. We tried all but the triple, not really wanting to tangle with that much alcohol, and they were all tasty. I've never been to another brewery that serves their beer in the expensive and bad-ass Teku beer glasses. I wish we had more time to try other beers.

Unfortunately, there was no food truck at Anchorage Brewing and we were getting seriously hangry. We got a recommendation from our bartender for a late lunch/early dinner, a pizza place whose menu sounded wonderful. Alas, when we got there, we found them closed on Mondays, despite their Google information saying they opened at 4pm on Monday. This has been happening all too frequently with COVID: owners forgetting to update their information. And of course, we should have been calling these places to make sure that they were open.

Ann and I, we had a little hanger meltdown in the parking lot of the pizza place while searching for someplace close by. We found a local “roadhouse” with decent reviews. It was mediocre and nothing that I need write about. We had really looked forward to first-class pizza as our last meal in Anchorage.

We headed back to the Hilton to get ready for our flight in the early morning, packing everything for travel. Bedtime came early, long before dark, on our final night in Alaska in preparation for our 0445 alarm. We were beyond ready to be home.