Anchorage - Marcia used to live here

With the help of an address from Marcia’s sister Pati, we try to find the house where Pati, Valerie, and two other girls lived for a couple years in the 1960s.  Marcia stayed with them for a summer in 1969, working downtown, and considers it one of the best summers of her youth.

The house is on Government Hill near Elmendorf AFB.  We find it, we think, although it has been remodeled and apartments have been added to the back.  Marcia is able to wallow for a while in those empty years when she did not know me, and had to travel to a far off state for employment.  She even spots the path she walked each day, down the hill and across the tracks, to her job with Color Arts Printing.

211 W Manor, Anchorage

We spend the rest of the day exploring Earthquake Park, the excellent Anchorage Museum, and scratching a shopping itch. 

Earthquake Park is quite large and mostly trees with jogging trails and some memorials.  Dramatically, although it takes a sign to understand it, there is a steep drop-off running the length of the park that occurred during the quake.  As we are driving out of the park we stop because of a police car ahead doing its thing; I look toward Marcia and notice just a few feet outside the window a male moose with rack.  Marcia turns to take a photo but a tour bus arrives from the opposite direction, sees what is going on and hits noisy brakes – and off goes the moose before Marcia can click the shutter.

The Anchorage Museum is really about the entire state, with an emphasis on territory and state history, contemporary art, and native arts and culture.  Well worth a visit.

Marcia finds some minor souvenirs downtown and we see some great native artwork, but the prices are beyond our reach.

We decide that Anchorage and the areas that can be reached from it would be worth another visit sometime.   In Fairbanks the river tour and the gold mine tour were great but the downtown had little to offer; Fairbanks is worth a first visit, but probably not a return trip.

Airstreamers adapt well to loose sewer connections in their midst at cocktail hour.

The NorCal Ladies decided to celebrate civilization with pedicures.

There were two other caravan groups here.  Adventure Tours meetings run much longer than our meetings, apparently to the exasperation of their pets (see right).

Barry and Claudia have de-parking duty.