In Anchorage

July 21-22  Day 43-44

We parked the rv at Earthquake Park which is not too far from the international airport and rode our bikes 6 miles, round trip, into downtown Anchorage.  This time, there was not feeling that we would be mugged on the way. :-)  We went to Ship Creek in downtown Anchorage to watch many people fish for salmon, and many of them were pulling out 10lb. silver salmon; I was not one of them.  The city has hanging baskets of flowers all over the place, and the long hours of sunlight along with the rain, make conditions right for very prolific flowers.

We rode back along Knik Arm which was very picturesque from the bike trail.

The next day, we went to another park and rode our bikes the opposite direction 13 miles, RT.  This was along the Turnagain Arm and the Turnagain Mud Flats.  Upon returning from our bike ride, we ate lunch and decided to hike up to Flattop Mountain, which is shaped just like it sounds, and is in the Chugach (pronounced CHEW-gatch) State Park.  This was only a 3 mile hike, RT, but there was a 1300' change in elevation.  The last 1/4 mile going up, we put our hiking poles away because we needed our hands free to help pull us up the rocks.  The reward was worth the effort.

Here is the trail from the bottom looking up

OBSERVATIONS (and other unscientific data)

• Anchorage is a city of ~300k people, but the number of homeless and panhandlers seems to be a high percentage.  At one intersection there would be 8-12 people begging.
• Bonnie and I both noticed that there are a lot of women who look 'hard', a very high percentage of them.  They will have children with them, but even though they are mothers, they don't look like moms.  I mean they look like motorcycle gals that had a child or four, then went right back to their motorcycle life.  Then to make them look even more 'hard', they have a plethora of tattoos.