Amanda and I are embarking on an adventure to the Last Frontier. We’ve been telling each other for years that we want to go to Alaska. Last January we decided to make it happen and bought our tickets for September right there and then! We have a loose yet ambitious itinerary, however, we are also flexible and will adapt to the transitional, sometimes erratic, weather that September usually brings to these parts of the world and make it work with our planned stop! We are also arriving during the end of the Summer season, when tourism is starting to wrap up in many parts of the state. The North tells us that “Winter is Coming”, and yes I’m aware it is a GOT reference quite useful in our current trip. Come with us as we get to know South and Central Alaska during a time of transition. Also, Happy Centennial to the National Park Service! What a time to be alive and travel to national parks during this celebratory and historic year!
Day 2: Anchorage, temp 50-70 degree range, Sunset around 10pm
Bear Sightings: 0
Other Wildlife: 4 beluga whales, 1 bull moose, 1 bald eagle, plenty of other birds.
Bear Sightings: 0
Other Wildlife: 4 beluga whales, 1 bull moose, 1 bald eagle, plenty of other birds.
Breakfast: On Day 2 we had breakfast at the White Spot on 4th avenue. What a colorful place! The staff is mad sassy but friendly, and you’ll be able to tell right away. I had a mushroom and eggs omelet and Amanda had an eggs and reindeer breakfast. The place pays an ode to Coca- Cola, it’s quite entertaining.
Today we rented bikes at the Downtown bike rental store. Half a block from the Aviator motel. The owner is very attentive and easy-going, likes to be asked questions it seems and never minds his business—I mean that in a good way.
We set out to bike the Coastal Trail, a 12-mile trail that allows you to enjoy Anchorage’s cook bay. Visible from the trail are Mt. Susitna, Mt. Denali and the Talkeetna mountain range. What an amazing experience! Minutes after we started biking the trail, we spotted beluga whales on the bay who were swimming in our direction. We happily enjoyed their company over the next 20 minutes. An hour after this sighting we came across feet from a giant bull Moose who was feeding. We were able to take some pictures and enjoyed seeing its giant antlers, from afar of course. The views of the bay are espectacular, and during this time of the year, it isn’t crowded which allows you to enjoy some long quite moments between you, your bike and the nature surrounding you.
Lunch: We stopped at The Lakefront Anchorage restaurant (part of the Millennium Alaskan hotel) where the largest float plane lake is located. We had lunch while watching the float planes land and take off in the lake. For the paranoids like you and me, this is also a great place to have lunch while your bike is parked in front of you. Great spot!
Five hours and four sore legs later we were back in our motel. We found out that the First Friday of every summer month is free at the Anchorage museum between the hours of 6pm-9pm, which was perfect because Amanda is a huge napper and refused to go to the museum with me if she didn’t get a nap first. I watched a show on TV called off-the-grid, which turns out, stars an Alaskan family, it was a fitting show to watch on a getaway like this.
We spent the evening at the Anchorage Museum. I got an Anthropology degree so I was looking for the exhibitions about Indigenous Alaskans but the museum actually has a mix of science, history, geology, and modern art. Since it was a special night, they also had live music: two musicians playing radio hits on a giant elevator that will take you up and down the four museum floors.
After the museum we headed to the Bernie's Bungalow Lounge, a beer garden across from the museum offering live music during the Summer season. We thankfully were able to catch the last free concert of the season while drinking some local beers and a small dinner. Highly recommend it if you’re going to be in Anchorage during the summer season. After the concert, a live DJ plays until late at night (I don’t know how late as we left right after the concert ended.)
Lesson Time: Honestly, I would highly recommend the exhibits about the First Peoples of Alaska (and parts of Canada). So much culture, wisdom, humbleness, and beauty. The United States has a past tainted in colonialism and imperialism, from which it continues to benefit from to this day. The cultural destruction, harassment, and isolation that these communities received is a sobering lesson to learn from. Many of these groups were pushed out of their lands once oil was found, or killed by force or illnesses brought by the usurpers (first the Russians, then the Americans), and shut out of opportunities to gain them back. If you didn’t know the language, you didn’t know the law, and you didn’t have rights. And in order to learn the language, you had to go to school, from which these groups were shut out until the 1920s, after a long fight with the state to recognize them. Going to school meant that English will only be spoken and taught, and in order for the children not to be discriminated, the parents had to stop speaking their mother tongues at home. And it is through speaking that the majority of these groups passed down their culture from generation to generation. It saddened me to learn the incredible loss of culture and the treatment they received. They spent the majority of the 20th century trying to gain “rights” to their homelands, to a western education that will help defend their community, to a citizenship that was forced unto them, and to access resources that will keep them economically stabilized in a changing, modern world. I have so much respect for their resiliency, respect for all Indigenous groups within US territory. Resiliency is surviving and thriving and still loving despite the pain and the loss.
I am in total solidarity with Standing Rock Sioux Tribe in North Dakota as they fight to keep the sacred water from their land clean and away from the pipeline that corporations are greedily trying to build in their land. Especially after seeing how the discovery of oil and the eventual pipeline in Alaska destroyed, isolated, neglected and pushed Indigenous Alaskan communities out of their lands and rights to it.
-FM
