Anchorage - Day 2

Checked out of the hotel and caught the People Mover to downtown Anchorage, dropped our luggage at the Westmark Hotel where we'll be staying tonight and went to the visitor center to buy "Trolley and Traditions" tickets for the Red Trolley and the Native Alaska Heritage Center. We were the only people on the Red Trolley tour. It's a family run business, with dad Caleb Alderman driving the trolley, and his son Cyrus organizing and promoting the business on the street. Great people! After the one-hour trolley ride, on which we saw a couple of moose (or is it meese?) close up, we caught a shuttle to the Heritage center a few miles out of town.

Once you pay your entry fee, you're hooked up with a tour guide. Again, we were the only 2 people with our guide, Shawntay. (It pays to go early in the season when there aren't dozens of tour buses hitting these places.) The Native Alaskans are grouped into 5 culture groupings. Shawntay is part of two of those clans (Yupik and Sugpiag), part Cherokee, and part Irish. She is married with 2 children that are home schooled and learning as much as possible the ways of her people; they have no running water, they heat with wood, they live off the land when they can. She reminded us very much of Don's cousin Jeneanne in both her actions and her appearance, and neither Don nor I were smart enough to take a picture of her. The afternoon was very informative and, although we didn't know it at the time, it really helped us understand more of the country as our tour progressed.

We caught the shuttle back to town, then bought a reindeer sausage from Tia's Gourmet trolley cart on the street - very popular in Anchorage. It sort of tasted like a mild Italian sausage, and we thought it would be real unique, but we found reindeer sausage to be readily available throughout our trip.






We then did some "touristing", bought some souvenirs and took a walk around town to take photos. We had seen great reviews about the Glacier Brewhouse, which was right across the street from the hotel, so we went there for dinner. We weren't real hungry, but knew we had to get something before the night was over. Don ordered seafood chowder and bread pudding; I had carrot coriander soup and Aloha pie. It was all super delicious - we highly recommend this place, but it's busy so go early and plan to wait a few minutes for a table.





We met our tour director, Peter Gaspar, in the lobby of the Westmark and get our initial travel documents. Don made sure Peter knew of my motion sensitivity, so Peter was kind enough to reserve seats for us in the front of the coach for our entire trip. Thank you Peter!! It made my trip so enjoyable! Tomorrow we are to be on the coach by 7:00 am for our trip to Denali.