Alaska Adventure Day 11- Anchorage

It was tight, packing everything before the trip. After buying two sweatshirts and adding a set of longs johns, I needed to make rooom for the return flight. I tossed the raingear (a couple of rips), an old t-shirt and any other little thing I could find. Still, jamming everything into two bags became a wrestling match.

We checked out of the motel (a cheap junky place, but warm and dry) and had time on our hands, so we zipped over to Earthquake Park. A more appropriate name may have been Earthquake Skeeter Park, the pesky little beasts attacking us relentlessly.

We stood at the top of a slope and peered down, fifty feet or more to the slab of earth that used to be up here. Wow, what a temblor. On Good Friday of 1964, the earth shook with a 9.2 rating, and lasted over three minutes. The damage was horrific, with streets broken, houses crushed, tsunamis and fires. The worst sounding effect of the event, in my opinion, was a tsunami in Homer that carrried flaming oil with it.

We swatted our way to the bikes and headed to a house built in 1915 (how did it survive the earthquake?), and after searching, found it to be closed. Off to a sandwich shop for a delicious lunch and quite nicely priced, then we still had time on our hands, so we toured Anchorage. We found an affluent neighborhood where one could fly home in a seaplane and dock it in front of the house. How nice! Alaska leads the world in seaplanes per capita.

Back at MotoQuest, I needed to add the helmet, Gerbing pants and gloves to the already tight bags and it bacame a two man wrestling event, thank you Jim for the extra hands.

Alaska proved to be a great adventure, truly the Last Frontier, with over 300 miles of the trip over dirt roads and much time riding through very remote areas. The weather never really got good, but the viewpoints, flora and fauna were staggering. Truly a place of pristine beauty.

Tomorrow we'll post the Awards, along with Muttering, Musings, Rants and Raves. Read it and decide if I'm a racist or not. See you then.