Reflections of My Travel

click for pix
This was a sad morning, knowing that we were going to have to go home in a few hours. It’s sad enough when a good vacation comes to an end, but it’s even sadder when you know you’re going home to check into a hotel since your house is destroyed. And it being our honeymoon… So, when we finally got up and got around to checking out, they let us store our luggage there while we went out to walk town some more before airport time. We went to the mall and walked around it several times (much smaller than it looks from outside). We had gone there thinking that, surely, they must have a movie theatre in such a big (looking) downtown mall. We were mistaken. No movie theatres within walking distance of downtown Anchorage. So it goes. We walked around the mall so many times that we finally found some nice comfy chairs and sat down for a short nap. Finally, we had wasted enough time to slowly make our way back to the hotel to catch our shuttle to the airport. We walked along a sidewalk that was well-flowered and took pictures of the myriad of pretty flowers. You wouldn’t think too much of Alaska as being a floral state, but they grow such pretty and HUGE (21 hours of sunlight) flowers. When we got to the airport, there was a long backup at security and when we got to the gate, my very charming husband was able to talk one of the gate attendants into upgrading us to first class since it was our honeymoon. I’ve gotta say, first class was nice. The seats were big and cushy and had a blanket, pillow, and bottle of water in every seat waiting for us to board. Drinks were free so we each had a glass (actual glass, not plastic cup) of red wine before liftoff and another with dinner. Dinner was grilled chicken with a red sauce, garlic-cheese mashed potatos, steamed vegetables, and a roll. As far as airline food goes, it was by far the nicest meal I’ve had. And they put table cloths down on your little tray before setting down your plate. After dinner, they started the movie and as the previews were playing, they came out with ice cream and made us sundaes. My only complaint was that the big comfy seats do not have liftable armrests like coach usually does. This meant that I could not lay down across my husband’s lap, which meant I was able to get 0 sleep on the long flight home since I’m not good at sleeping upright. By the time we landed in Atlanta at 06:56, I understood why they called it a red-eye flight. When the plane did land, one of the flight attendants gave us a bottle of red wine to take home with us as a happy honeymoon gift, which I thought was a really sweet gesture. I’m thinking that if we drink it on our 25th anniversary, it might have aged enough to be decent wine. Going straight into work, seeing our poor house on our lunch break, and checking into a hotel brought reality crashing back in. The honeymoon was definitely over.

click for pix
We spent most of the day today in our hotel room relaxing. Late in the afternoon, we went out and walked down to the river to see the fish ladder. I was amazed by how HUGE the salmon are. We only saw one actually make it up the ladder while we were there. We also saw a family of beavers and some pigeon-courting. We then walked back up toward the mall to try to find some food but the mall was closed. And most restaurants were closed. You would think that Sunday or no Sunday, when the sun is bright as noon all night there should be food to be gotten after 18:00. We finally found a little pizza shop a couple blocks down that was open. On the way back to the hotel, we stumbled on a mmmMarble Slab-esque ice creamery from which we bought a pint to take back to the room with us. It was another nice relaxing evening, this our last night in Alaska.

click for pix
This morning we got up and drove over to the earthquake park. Before Good Friday of 1964 there was an affluent residential area on the bluffs above Cook Inlet, but the 9.2 earthquake dropped the houses into 30 foot crevasses and destroyed the entire area. It is now a park with all kinds of monuments and interpretive signs telling about the quake and showing where the coast line used to be and such. It was pretty impressive to see the how the landscape changed in one day. Good Friday is not such a good day for Alaska. They had a 9.2 earthquake in 1964, then 25 years to the day later, they have the Exxon-Valdez oil spill on Good Friday of 1989. After spending some time walking around and reading all of the signs, we went to the Aspen Hotel to see if we could check in a little early but they did not have our room ready yet. So we went out to lunch and then grabbed a quick nap before heading back to the hotel for another try. This time they had the room ready and when we got into it, they had upgraded us to a room with a jacuzzi next to the bed and a little fruit/chocolate basket with a note to “Mr. and Mrs. Holloway” congratulating us on our marriage and wishing us a happy honeymoon. It was so nice. We unloaded all of our stuff out of the van and arranged for a shuttle to pick us up at the airport before we took the van back and turned it in. We figured we were just going to rest so we didn’t need the van anymore. It was a good call. We had a very relaxing night in our very nice room.