Day 23: Girdwood, AK to Anchorage, AK to Aurora, IL - Saturday, 6/1/24

Photo of the day.

We checked out of the condo and headed into Anchorage.

A lot of suitcases packed really full!

We visited the Alaska Candy Store that claims to have the world's largest chocolate fall. Turns out it was not running, but we went in the store and bought a couple treats.

World's Largest Chocolate Fall

From there we went to Point Woronzof Park, which is a city park where, from the beach, you can see views of Fire Island and multiple mountain ranges, including Denali. We believe we got to see Denali again from this point as shown below. (But they did not have a helpful sign like they had in the park to confirm if we were looking at the right place.)  

You also can watch planes land since the airport is right behind this park. Pretty cool.

Denali from Point Woronzof Park.

The beach at Point Woronzof Park

Nearby we found Earthquake Park, which had some great displays explaining more about the devastating 1964 earthquake that killed over 100 people.

We went to the Alaska Public Lands Information Center in downtown Anchorage to kill time and found it had some great exhibits.  We also watched 15-30 minute movies about 

1. the people of Sitka  (No, it was not the Paxtons from The Proposal.)
2. the 1964 earthquake
3. the 1896 Klondike gold rush
4. the bears in Katmai National Park  

All of them were good and information, although we might have napped through some sections.

Next we visited a couple souvenir shops in the Mushing District and stopped at a street vendor for a reindeer dog. It was pretty tastly!

It says Chicago is 2839 air miles - 2nd sign from the top on the left

Reindeer dog for lunch

Looks like it hit the spot

There were 2 of these vendors on the same street. 
The one we ate at is listed on Google maps so must always be there.

View of the Mushing District / shopping area of Anchorage and mountains in the background.

One of the "justice totem poles" by the courthouse. 

We went to a coffee shop and did a little bit more walking before dropping Dad and Carol off at the airport. Since we had a couple more hours to kill before our midnight flight home, we stopped by two breweries in the area: Ship Creek Brewing and Brewerks.  Apparently Ship Creek is the newest brewery in Alaska at about 5 months old.  There are a lot of breweries, so hopefully they survive.

One thing we learned is that, until recently, breweries could not stay open past 8 pm. They have since extended it to 9pm.  Also, a person can only be served 36oz at a brewery visit, but there is no such limit at bars or restaurants. 

Dave had #1 and Lynda had #8.  We liked them both.

The owner of Brewerks was a super social guy, and we ended up talking to him for over an hour and at least a half hour after closing time.  He spent many years in a smaller village in Northwestern Alaska (think way out there) and had some great stories.  We tried to educate him on the finer points of Chicago pizza, but we aren't sure we changed his mind.  The beer was good - probably the best we had on the trip.

We had Shop Lion, All Along the Briny, The Big Goat and Midnight Mistress.

The owner let us walk around, so we did!

There was a door with stickers on it at the brewery.  On the middle right, near the 2nd hinge from the bottom, is a Calusa Brewing sticker.  They are in Sarasota and we visited there with good friends a couple years ago.

We finally got to the Anchorage airport.  This picture was taken after 10pm.  In fact, there was still some daylight when we boarded at 11:50pm!

There are nice mountain views from the airport

Our last moose sighting of the trip

From our seat on United - shows 2843 miles back home

We had an amazing trip and would definitely do something like it again in the future.  Dave would be happy to do this same trip again, but Lynda is less inclined simply because the roads were rough. But, we can both agree that we want to go back to Alaska some day!

We might post a recap this week yet of things we learned along the way as first time RVers including taking a look at things we packed that 

1. we needed
2. we were glad we had in case we needed
3. we did not need

Thanks for following along on our adventure!

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