This and That in Anchorage, AK

Leslie, Saturday, June 26, 2010
Mountain View RV Park, Palmer, AK

Saturday morning was chilly and spitting rain.  We headed to the Anchorage Fair which is held every Saturday during the summer season.



Fair vendors feature a wide variety of goods from vegetables to fur pelts.  Some of the pelts are animal faces; that’s a bit grim.

As we wandered through the tourist district, Connie and I each posed with a stuffed (never having been alive) grizzly bear.  The bear was a bit shop-worn.  You can tell from our jackets that we aren't suffering in the extremely hot temperatures of some of the lower parts of the country.

 

Stan and Robert suffered through posing with the larger grizzly in the store entrance.



And a bit later I admired this puffin welcoming tourists to another shop.



We enjoyed lunch at Humpy’s Bar and Grill (fresh fish and chips for some and crab roll for me). Humpy's is a favorite lunch spot in Anchorage. The food is classic bar food, but quite good.  In recent years Humpy's  has expanded and acquired quite a following.  They even have a Humpy's Company Store next door.

In 2005 Robert and I had seen an excellent movie on the 1964 Alaskan Earthquake.  We wanted to share the movie with Connie & Stan.  After a bit of asking around, we were directed to a different theater for the “Earthquake movie”.  The new movie was enhanced by special effects.  Although the film footage was old black & white film, the theater had been mechanically altered to simulate the feeling of an earthquake at various points during the movie.  I could have done without the special effects.  :-( 

We all find the earthquake materials very interesting and have now seen several earthquake movies.  The devastation that Anchorage experienced is unimaginable.  In the downtown area there are some buildings still standing that look like the photos from the earthquake.  Throughout the region, there are large sections of “stick” trees.  Stick trees are defoliated dead trees that were killed when the earth dropped and the land was flooded.  It looks somewhat like the forest many years after a forest fire, except the trees are white, not black.