Chris and I have been home from Alaska for a little over a week, so I’m sharing some photos of our last full day in Alaska, which was brilliantly crisp and windy (we’ll slowly work backwards and tell you about the rest of our trip). “Termination dust” fell on the tops of the mountains surrounding Anchorage the day before we left, cloaking them in winter white and reminding us that Alaska does, indeed, close on September 15. We’re goin’, we’re goin’; no need to push.
On Friday, September 14, we woke up at Tenderfoot Creek Campground, across Summit Lake from the highway that runs between Anchorage and Seward. We rarely managed to camp away from highway noise in Alaska, ironically enough. The sun rose behind us, a bald eagle kept his eye on the lake from a nearby spruce tree, and the hills across the lake gained color from the top down, rising from behind the lake mist swirling in the warm air.
We drove north to Anchorage, stopping along Turnagain Arm to enjoy the sun and scan the water for beluga whales. William Bligh, Captain Cook’s Sailing Captain, was searching for the Northwest Passage when he reached the upstream end of Turnagain Arm, and so had to turn [around] again.
We spent the afternoon returning unused stove fuel and water treatment to REI (Can I ask what other store would take back a canister of fuel and a bottle of chlorine? To my response of “Really? You’ll take it back? We haven’t used them, but . . . ,” the sales associate grinned and asked, “Are you lying?”), seeing 3:10 to Yuma (okay movie, good acting), visiting with a friend Chris hasn’t seen in twenty years (How’s that possible? I’ll let him tell you about that one.), and getting a yummy takeout salad that we learned, after we put it on the conveyor to go through Security at the Anchorage airport, came with a 6-ounce side of dressing. The very understanding TSA agent allowed me to go back out through Security, dress the salad (with a bit less than the six ounces), and come back through.
Good-bye, Alaska. You were lovely, autumnal, and brimming with wildlife. But I do love my sunlight and my bike-able city.